Since 2006 students had used the UT Tmail system for e-mail. In 2010 the decision was announced that student e-mail would be outsourced to Microsoft and Google, although Tmail would still be supported. The Technology Advisory Board approved the decision at the end of fall 2009.
The implementation began with Microsoft, since UT was currently using Microsoft Exchange. Because of strong student insistence upon retaining the netid@utk.edu format, the implementation was complicated. In order to have the mail route directly to the outsourced provider, the address would have had to be lastname@microsoft.utk.edu or lastname@google.utk.edu. In order to accommodate the previous convention, the mail had to be delivered to the UTK.edu server and sorted out to the providers. In spite of the expressed preference to retain the current format, UT announced in April 2014 that the login address for student Volmail would change from netid@utk.edu to netid@vols.utk.edu. UT computer officials indicated that the change would simplify the management of the entire infrastructure and build the transition between Gmail and Microsoft Outlook. UT also announced that students would be able to retain their new “@vols.utk.edu” e-mail account “for life,” rather than having the account expire one year after the student ceased to be enrolled.
Students had complained about Tmail’s interface on non-Internet Explorer browsers and the inability to delete multiple e-mails at the same time. The issue of storage had also arisen, which would be virtually solved with the new providers. Tmail offered undergraduate students storage in the range of 102.4–153.6 megabytes and faculty, staff, and graduate students in the range of 256–307.2 megabytes. The Microsoft service offered 10 gigabytes of e-mail storage and an additional 25 gigabytes of storage for any type of file on Windows Live SkyDrive.