Missionary email system

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bartbarker
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Missionary email system

#1

Post by bartbarker »

I'm curious about the email system missionaries use to communicate with their families. My son is serving in the West Indies Mission and has an email address in this format: eldername@myldsmail.net. He has occasionally mentioned that the email system is a problem. Often he can't get on to read or write email. Perhaps this is because of the number of missionaries that hit the system around the same time of day.

The problem is that missionaries don't have much time to do their email on p-days. When they have these problems they often don't have time to write much more than "hello, we're out of time because of email problems."

Is the system inadequate to support the number of missionaries who use it? Are there plans to improve the system? My son has only a few months left to serve, and I appreciate the fact that he has access to email at all. I really appreciate the Church for providing a safe system for this. But I can see the problem continuing and growing as the number of missionaries grows.
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thedqs
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#2

Post by thedqs »

During mission, Brazil, I rarely had a problem with the system, except for internet connection troubles or that the system disallowed all cookies which meant you couldn't log into anything jsut browse. Could try using a different LAN house if possible.
- David
bartbarker
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#3

Post by bartbarker »

He has experienced this in Houston (where he was temporarily assigned), as well as in the countries of Barbados and Guyana, where he has served. I've heard others mention the problem, so I have a sense that there is something to it.

I'm not trying to be critical. It's great that the Church has a system for the missionaries, helping to insulate them from other things that are on the Web. (When I served a mission, personal computers hadn't even been invented. Every time I receive an email from him the same day he sent it, I marvel.)

But there seems to be a problem with the missionary email system some of the time. That's why I am curious about the system being used and why it might be failing sometimes.
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WelchTC
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#4

Post by WelchTC »

I'm sorry but I don't have any data on this. I'll pass message along.

Tom
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greenwoodkl
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Archive?

#5

Post by greenwoodkl »

Perhaps this has been addressed since I returned home 2+ years ago, but I'd like to see an archive of the messages on MyLDSMail.net available for missionaries before their accounts are disabled post-mission. I have some of the emails I manually copied and pasted into MS Word, but I wish I could've archived my emails to review later as a secondary source of what happened on my mission prior to my account deactivation.
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thedqs
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#6

Post by thedqs »

Have you tried your account recently to know if it is deactivated? You might still be able to get ahold of those e-mails. (This might be only for people with really unique e-mail addresses).

I would still appriciate a POP3 interface though so I could quickly download all the e-mails using POP3 protocal.
- David
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greenwoodkl
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#7

Post by greenwoodkl »

My account was deactivated over a year ago. The emails may be in some archival file if only my rights to access were revoked. But I got no helpful response from tech support, I just think that future and current missionaries could use the feature - including my brother who is scheduled to go out in about a year.
bartbarker
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#8

Post by bartbarker »

kgthunder wrote:Perhaps this has been addressed since I returned home 2+ years ago, but I'd like to see an archive of the messages on MyLDSMail.net available for missionaries before their accounts are disabled post-mission. I have some of the emails I manually copied and pasted into MS Word, but I wish I could've archived my emails to review later as a secondary source of what happened on my mission prior to my account deactivation.

I have been keeping emails from my missionary son. I'll copy them to a disc for him when he returns. When I write to him I've been sending copies to his Yahoo Mail account. I don't know if that account will still be active when he hasn't accessed it for a couple of years. If not, I have copies of the emails I've sent as well.

But you're right: it would be very useful if a missionary could download all the emails at the end of the mission to create a kind of journal and history.
zholmquist-p40
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POP3 and MyLDSMail

#9

Post by zholmquist-p40 »

As a recently returned missionary, I can honestly say how
incredibly *slow* myldsmail is . . . it is way over featured
and too bulky for what it needs to really do.

Is the ability to find Elder Hollands e-mail a function a missionary
really needs?!

Of course being a little more literate in Internet Technology than
my cohorts, we set up a nice little system, which may be a little
complex, but being able to POP3 my emails out successfully
and save them to a disc has been of great value.

In a nutshell. . .
MyLdsMail allows you to forward emails ( probably end after
this post ) to another account you have. We forwarded it
Gmail, I mean it offers 2GB of space, more than plenty to
keep 2 years of stuff in it AND it allows for POP3 access.

Having returned it was just a matter of downloading Thunderbird
from Mozilla Corporation, turning on my POP3 option, and getting
everything hard copied on my drive, than burning it to a disc.

I also am aware that Gmail allows you to send e-mails through
another account, Settings->Account->Send mail as:
but that would be going far beyond what is needed . . . or even
allowed.

Maybe that has sparked some ideas for those of you wanting
to save your e-mails.

I just assume the Church strike a deal with Google . . .
I understand Novel was done by a member, but it needs
a serious over haul and slimmed down and quite frankly
missionaries would love the space or be taught how to
save their e-mails in another form.

Zach
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greenwoodkl
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#10

Post by greenwoodkl »

A few thoughts:

1. As tagis72 said, 10 MB is not enough storage to keep 2 years worth of emails. Regardless of policy, this is going to drive missionaries to using third-party email services such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc... It did drive missionaries to do so back in 2003 when I was a missionary and it first came out, and from tagis72's comments, it sounds no different now. If the Church hopes to maintain some control over missionary email use, storage capacity is an easily remedied solution that can help limit use of non-approved platforms.

2. The Novell platform is difficult to use and there are many better platforms out there. A platform such as Microsoft Exchange Server w/ Outlook WebAccess is a much more user-friendly platform. Any platform with better addressing features (perhaps access to a directory of missionaries in the same mission?), export capability, etc... would be a more welcome sight and help keep users on the platform. It is well-known that Microsoft software is common to most users in the world and could be more welcomed than Novell.

3. As tagis72 mentions, the value of a missionary's email address is partially found in being able to distribute the email as a communication link to those you teach and fellowship for use after the mission. I propose an interface be built for RM use where they can download a compressed archival file of their emails from their mission from a server and have the ability to forward the emails sent to their former mission account to whatever email they currently have. Therefore the "journal" of their communications is still available and the account is acting as an email alias but hopefully the large percentage of the resource requirements for the Church would be eliminated. If archiving emails would be too resource-hungry, having it available for a specified period (up to a year?) after the account closing would be preferable. But an email alias functionality could be maintained at low resources I imagine (without too much expertise in email server technology).
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