Diocese of Sacramento: Success Story
M+Guardian and M+Extranet add value to the collaboration system of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento
Background
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento was formed officially in May 1886 and is one of 12 dioceses in the state of California. Located in the province of San Francisco, it encompasses 20 counties and more than 42,000 square miles. The Information Systems Department of the Diocese handles the IT infrastructure and communications of the headquarters, as well as the 100 parishes, 55 schools, and several remote sites that are part of the Diocese network. For a few years now, they have been using Messaging Architects’ M+Guardian and GWExtranet to take the best advantage of their investment in the GroupWise collaboration system.
Ensuring Email Security with the Least Possible Overhead
Like most faith-based organizations that rely on their collaboration systems for interaction with the parishes, one of the most important tasks for the Diocese of Sacramento Information Systems Department was to ensure that legitimate email flow was not hindered by the onslaught of spam and ever-growing volume of inappropriate email. For several years, they have been solving the problem successfully by using Messaging Architects’ Guardian technology. Recently, they upgraded to the new M+Guardian appliance, which offers new features and additional levels of intelligently-layered anti-spam filters. In addition to opting for the Linux operating system, another consideration that weighed heavily in favor of M+Guardian was the fact that it came as a self-contained, pre-configured appliance.
Kevin O’Brien, Manager of the Diocese of Sacramento Information Systems Department, talks about the decision to upgrade to M+Guardian: “The Windows server on which GWGuardian was running was aging, and this was affecting its performance. We realized it was time for an upgrade of the Windows box. When Messaging Architects came out with the new Linux-based appliance, we were happy to give it a try. The Linux OS is very stable and doesn’t require much intervention to manage. After the initial set-up and the transfer of the accounts, I haven’t had to do much else. I log into the admin interface primarily to monitor the email traffic and to get specific reports on the email flow. The real-time dashboard shows me that over 97 percent of the messages sent to our system are spam that M+Guardian blocks before they ever reach the email system.”
The Diocese administrative staff is being trained on using the web quarantine so they can take full advantage of M+Guardian’s advanced features. For O’Brien, M+Guardian’s web-based admin interface offers a lot of useful functionality and flexibility.
A Simple Way to Manage All Diocese Resources and Calendars through GroupWise
The Diocese of Sacramento automated all conference room reservations directly in GroupWise by taking advantage of GWExtranet. GWExtranet is a simple application that dynamically publishes to the web calendar information stored in one or multiple GroupWise accounts or resources. Similarly, the Diocese solved the problem of managing the two bishops’ public schedules and their internal calendars using GWExtranet. By creating GroupWise accounts for the conference rooms and assigning proxy rights to the staff handling scheduling and reservations, the IS department established an easy process for managing the resources through GroupWise.
“Overall, both products have been good investments and have brought definite benefits in the way the Diocese is able to keep in touch with the parishes and the public,” concludes O’Brien.
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