The University of Tennessee Office of Information Technology has been working since July to plan and prepare for a single Webmail system to accommodate university needs and technological advances.

The university now has 40,000 to 60,000 accounts with four different systems that are divided among students, faculty and staff. And last winter the administrative system experienced many problems, such as limited functionality and outages that took until summer to clean up, OIT executive director Mike McNeil said.

The decision to push for a new system also coincided with technology improvements and changes in software that he hopes to bring to a new system, McNeil said. Such improvements could include calendars, instant messaging, file storage, web support, task manager, address book and other advances with e-mail altogether.

It would give students the opportunity to “use many tools at once that you would have in the business world,” McNeil said. And it would provide better services for the academic process.

Information technology manager Bruce Delaney said it would also help students with classes that are oriented around e-mail.

“We want to make use of what students use with the university as a whole,” Delaney said. “The timing is just right.”

A survey will start Wednesday and runs until Sunday. Administration, faculty, staff, SGA and students have carefully put it together in order to get input and find what people think is important.

There were many advocates of the project, although some prefer other traditional standards, McNeil said.

“A change always brings some problems, but I expect a positive result,” he said.

Once the surveys are analyzed he said they will have a better idea of what preferences are on matters such as what student technology fees everyone would be willing to spend and how to classify interests. Results will also be compared to help identify trends for a long-term solution of five years minimum.

“It’s an important project that we will implement slowly so all are comfortable,” Delaney said.

In addition, the project will be an “open process,” McNeil said. “We believe in this project and want it to succeed.”

University e-mail users can expect to receive notice about the survey through their e-mail accounts.

Everyone’s opinions and thoughts are requested in “one survey, shooting for one system that is robust, reliable and rich in features,” Delaney said.