External student email access

[Norphy]

Simple question really, if your students have school issued email addresses, do you allow them to access their school email from home, either by pop/imap or a web interface?

 

Cheers,

 

Norphy

[ChrisH]

Not that we have anything implemented but I would say some kind of webmail reverse proxied to you is one of the better solutions.

[Norphy]

I'm not asking how to do it, I've got that covered. I'm just asking if you do it

[webman]

Yes we do. It's a basic CentOS Linux server, interface currently provided by SquirrelMail. Quick, unlimited users (tied in with Windows domain), didn't cost us anything, and has a global address book The box also runs our website.

[MkII]

We let students and staff access our reverse proxied squirel box from home, yes. I worry that we don't monitor what goes on, but this system [custom build slackware install with web-admin] was rolled out to the whole LEA, so we'll blame them if anything goes wrong, no doubt.

[GrumbleDook]

Oh yes ... our email is tied in with our VLE (FirstClass), and we allow access via the web front end as well as the FirstClass client.

[Sylv3r]

Yes students are able to access their school addresses from home.

[plexer]

All of our staff and students are given email addresses by the lea based on an rm easymail platform.

 

Ben

[NetworkGeezer]

Oh yes ... our email is tied in with our VLE (FirstClass), and we allow access via the web front end as well as the FirstClass client.

 

Is it all AD based or do users have to save their email password in the VLE?

[NetworkGeezer]

Yes we do. It's a basic CentOS Linux server, interface currently provided by SquirrelMail. Quick, unlimited users (tied in with Windows domain), didn't cost us anything, and has a global address book The box also runs our website.

 

Wow! I didn't know that RM did Linux too

[GrumbleDook]

Oh yes ... our email is tied in with our VLE (FirstClass), and we allow access via the web front end as well as the FirstClass client.

 

Is it all AD based or do users have to save their email password in the VLE?

 

We use a nifty tool (FCAD) to authenticate against the AD ... originally they were seperate and some still use a seperate password (we allow this option for a variety of reasons ... including getting users used to having to remember more than one password) but once they log in with their domain password that is it ... it is synched across.

[Dos_Box]

Outlook Web Access over SSL.

[webman]

Wow! I didn't know that RM did Linux too

 

They don't 8)

 

We have the best of both worlds - RM CC3 and Linux We let Linux do what it does best - routing, proxying, serving web pages and handling email.

[k-strider]

outlook web access as well.. over ssl

 

I'm supprised so few people seem to use exchange !!! or is it an un-representative sample??

[webman]

Exchange costs a lot of money and you have to pay extra for web access. Open-source and third-party commercial alternatives cost a lot less in comparison.

[meastaugh1]

outlook web access as well.. over ssl

 

Same here, for staff at least. Technically, students have access, but the fact they have accounts has yet to be publicised.

[limbo]

Outlook web here too - but only for sixth form for a number of reasons.

 

We have nearly 2000 students in main school so monitoring would be a real issue, and until we have a good enough spam filter in place I fear the worst.

[Quackers]

We took e-mail off our students they started e-mailing porn pictures to each other (and not just a few students) head was not pleased, so she requested e-mail was taken off there user accounts, but until then yes they could via exchange web access.

[tosca925]

Our is also tied into our VLE, which is Sharepoint. All students get an email address which is available via OWA throught Sharepoint.

[mrforgetful]

Ours too use Exchange Web Access over SSL.

 

Though again as some people have said already it's not everyone, just years 10 upwards.

[Norphy]

Exchange costs a lot of money and you have to pay extra for web access. Open-source and third-party commercial alternatives cost a lot less in comparison.

 

Open Source ones do obviously. However I don't think third party ones do, at least in the case of Education. Exchange costs £160 odd for the server licence and then £1.07 per user after that. You don't have to pay extra for OWA either. In comparison, Zimbra Std Edition costs $25 per user for the first 25 users and then $18/user after that. Kerio costs $399 then $1500 per 100 users. iMail costs $3000 for unlimited users.

 

Admittedly the other prices I listed there aren't educational prices but I don't think they're going to be significantly cheaper than Exchange.

[djm968]

Exchange costs a lot of money and you have to pay extra for web access.

 

Rubish £310.00 (approx) and £3 per CAL is not a lot of money and outlook web access is built-in.

 

You can also configure exchange to use HTTP over RPC which provides access to the exchange server using the full outlook client over the internet, although this is a bit overkill for students.

[CyberNerd]

OSS zimbra costs nothing. If you don't need Outlook integration for students then this is the way forward. £3 each for 1800 users IS a lot of money if you compare the features, you can do more with zimbra. If you do need commercial supoport zimbra also do educational pricing.

[mrforgetful]

How much is the educational pricing?

[CyberNerd]

dunno, we don't need the Outlook MAPI connector.