In an effort to avoid confusion in the conversion to Gmail on Feb. 12, usernames and passwords will not be changed until the end of the semester.

Tom Bonvillain, director of academic computing, said components of current accounts will remain the same. The account will simply switch from Novell WebAcess to Gmail.

Students who began attending the University two years ago or prior, Bonvillain said, will be the ones impacted by this change. Newer students will see no change.

Once the complete conversion occurs at the end of the semester, new usernames will be found on Banner.

“Banner generates a third party ID, which is a unique thing,” Bonvillain said. “We, in turn, will use that for e-mail addresses.”

Usernames and passwords can be found by logging into Banner Self Service. Banner IDs located at the top right corner are the passwords, and usernames are the first part of University e-mail addresses. Banner IDs are case sensitive.

“The whole rationale behind the delay is that we need to be able to point them to Banner,” Bonvillain said. “We want to have a place to point them to read their e-mail address and password.”

Once usernames and passwords are changed, students will be also able to pick a password for their account they can remember, Bonvillain said.

“Ultimately, students picking their passwords will be way more secure for our network systems.”

Novell will probably be shut off for a few days after the switch, and Bonvillain said students will not be able to send e-mails from the account after this point. It may show that an e-mail has been sent, but it will likely never be received.

“We want everybody to get the message that this is not the place to be,” Bonvillain said.

Eventually, Novell will be put back up but only for students to retrieve old e-mails.

There will be a short period of time where no e-mails can be sent or received while the University sets up the new account, but Bonvillain assured the conversion will be an absolute cutover. The system will buffer any incoming e-mails during that time and will get them to the correct account once the system is in place.

“We’re confident we know everything now and are ready to put it all into place,” Bonvillain said.