Update on UAA transition to Gmail and Google Apps

First, thank you for your understanding as we journey together through some uncharted waters at relatively high speed. Like any good adventure movie, the crew of this ship faced overwhelming odds, pulled together and learned a great deal in the process. IT crew members at UAA, UAS and OIT all had something to contribute, as did many of you. And now it is time to announce arrival at the (intermediate) destination. Some additional work remains, described later in this document.

Some facts UAA elected to accomplish the email, calendar and contacts migrations on behalf of users, rather than have users perform the tasks one by one. The main considerations were customer convenience and the fact that many faculty and staff were simply unavailable during the summer months, or off contract. Transferring all old email was estimated to take several months to accomplish-more than 11TB of data-using the Google transition tools provided, due to limitations imposed by the Google servers. So 90 days of emails, one year of calendar items and all contacts were scheduled for transfer. Items older than 90 days (mail) or one year (calendar) can be transferred according to instructions listed below, if desired.

Since the announcement in April, preparations in May and June, and the first migrations in July, IT Services migrated 2,700 accounts, 14 million email messages, more than 1 million calendar entries and a large number of contacts. This was accomplished using the instructions provided by Google, some trial and error and help from other UA technical staff and IT engineers. As a free service, there is little Google technical support available, so a good deal of the work was done by your ITS staff working 60-plus hours per week during the last few months. We owe a special thanks to the IT staff at UAS, whose early efforts informed our own approach based on their lessons learned.

Not all messages, calendar entries and contacts transferred, and some of those that did transfer did not transfer correctly. Some affected users will need assistance from the ITS Call Center to accomplish a final transfer of information. You will be notified by email, or you may choose to call the ITS Call Center, if your account was not completed due to any number of unknown errors. It is estimated that 400 accounts were affected. Some users exposed to Protected Health Information (PHI) as defined in HIPAA regulation will not be moved at this time.

FAQ Our FAQs page is updated: uaa.alaska.edu/google-migration Please visit it for known issues and training resources. You will find these frequently asked questions from your colleagues, and the answers, are listed in useful fashion and readily answer the most common questions fielded during the transition to date. This is an extremely valuable resource. Please take a few minutes to read through this resource before calling the ITS Call Center or attempting self-initiated transfers.

Old email read and send availability Email will continue to route to your old @uaa.alaska.edu Exchange account and be automatically "forwarded" to your new @alaska.edu Gmail account. This will continue indefinitely, helping you keep in touch with colleagues unaware of our email change. When you reply to their email, they will see your new @alaska.edu account as the source. Sending mail via Microsoft Exchange will no longer be available after 10 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 19. After that time, the ability to send from your old Microsoft Exchange account will be removed, and you will be able to send emails from your @alaska.edu account only.

Ninety days not enough? We are accepting requests to migrate more than 90 days of email, now that everyone has been moved. The FAQs page contains the form and instructions for submitting a request-click here to access that resource.

Alternatively, instructions are also available for self-service-inclined users to migrate their own old email beyond the 90-day default transfer period. The instructions can be found on the above FAQs page. Expect this process to take some time if your old mailbox is particularly large. And remember, your old email is still available using the online Outlook (owa.uaa.alaska.edu) and will remain available there for the foreseeable future.

Departmental accounts Departmental accounts will be migrated soon, and will initially be populated with mail from April 1, 2016 to present. Departmental account users will be contacted to provide up-to-date information about who should have access to each account to ensure the Google system has the most current information. Instructions on how to use and manage departmental accounts are available via our FAQs page.

Caution We have seen an increase in phishing attempts during this transition. It is a reminder that bad actors are always watching and looking for opportunities to exploit. Please be extra cautious about any requests for information or invitations to click links-even from familiar names. Check with the ITS Call Center if you suspect someone is misusing our email system.

Thanks I'd like to thank the staff at IT Services here at UAA for maintaining a sense of grace under pressure. No other institution we talked to had attempted such a feat in less than a year. As a consequence, there were many unplanned and undocumented challenges for users and technical staff alike. Thank you for your patience. And a special thank you to some of you who took the initiative to create training materials for your coworkers. Much of that content has been incorporated into the FAQs.

Future updates will be shared via typical governance channels such as Faculty Senate, ITG Group notifications, Green and Gold and the University Technology Council.

-Pat Shier, CIO, UAA

IT Services Call Center (907) 786-4646 / callcenter@uaa.alaska.edu / SSB 120

August Archive