While studying abroad in Florence last semester, checking StagWeb e-mail wasn’t always easy for Giselle Medina ’05. Supposedly, StagWeb is available to students 24 hours a day.
But a year after The Mirror originally reported the lack of 24-hour access, there are still parts of the system that are offline in the early hours of the morning.
“The e-mail system would be down when I would get out of class at about 8:00 a.m. and wouldn’t be available until around 11:00 a.m,” said Medina.
StagWeb has been updated and improved during the past year to allow for easier student access and manipulation.
Furthermore, each student now uses his or her StagCard ID number, rather than a social security number, to log in.
Considering all of the changes that have been made to create a better StagWeb, many students are curious as to why they are still unable to use their e-mail service 24 hours a day.
While Medina did not cite the offline hours as a major problem, she did feel it was an inconvenience.
“We are required to take the email system offline each night for approximately two hours to perform backups,” said Kevin Clancy, director of administrative computing. “This is a limitation to the SUN I-Planet software, which houses the e-mail system.”
Not all sections of StagWeb are unavailable to students during these hours. Because of “hot backups” that are performed nightly, the StagWeb portal itself, as well as the internal calendar function, are always available with the exception of scheduled system maintenance.
“Last year the entire StagWeb portal was not accessible between 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. Today, a user can access the portal 24/7 with the exception of the e-mail system being offline approximately between the hours 3:00 and 5:00 a.m.,” Clancy said, “This allows the system to get an accurate backup of the e-mail server.”
While students who aren’t studying abroad rarely experience being shut out of the system unless they are early risers, some still have problems with the system.
“StagWeb is still slow, especially the amount of flow during registration when all students are logged in at the same time,” said Jenna Marmo ’07.
Others have noticed the improvements but feel that there could be more.
“The added a lot as far as the amount of information,” said Julie Briggs ’07. “But it is still hard to find what you need. StagWeb would be better if they would put e-mail on the first page so you can see it as soon as you log on.”
According to Clancy, uninterrupted access to StagWeb and e-mail capabilities is in the future.
“Once the SUN I-Planet overcomes its limitations, we will work to implement the e-mail to be running 24/7,” he said.
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