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s planned, next week we will begin the campus move from GroupWise email and calendar to Google Apps for Education. On March 1, everyone will receive an email message from the HelpDesk providing login information to their DePauw Google Apps account, instructions about how to manage their own transition to the new system, and where to get help. In the meantime, I encourage you to review the following important information about the project.If you have any questions about the Google Apps rollout (or any other IT-related projects), please don’t hesitate to contact me at clsmith@depauw.edu.
Thanks in advance for your efforts in helping us all make this transition. We are excited about this upgrade for the campus and look forward to the new possibilities that it will bring to supporting communication and collaboration in all aspects of our campus activities.
Cheers,
--Carol.
Key points in the following include:
- Will my email address be the same in Google Apps?
- Developing your personal transition strategy
- The Google Apps Transition Timeline
- What about special accounts (e.g., basketweaving@depauw.edu)? Will they be ready on March 1?
1) Will my email address be the same in Google Apps?
Yes! Everyone's DePauw email address (username@depauw.edu) will be the same in Google Apps.
2) Developing your personal transition strategy
Over the past month, the Google Apps transition team worked with more than 90 “early adopters,” a core group of faculty, staff and students who volunteered to begin using Google Apps earlier and provide feedback about their own transition experience. We are grateful to these folks for the help they gave us in developing support resources for the rollout!
These early adopters also offered two valuable pieces of advice for the rest of the campus community:
- Identify a time to transition to Google Apps that works with your own workload –
You have until May 1 to learn to use Google Apps, so there is no need to rush into trying to do so during the first week! Evaluate your work projects or teaching load over the next couple of months and time your entry into Google Apps to align with a period when you have the time to devote to it.
- Develop a staged personal transition strategy –
First, start with just using your Google Apps account to send/receive new email and/or manage your personal calendar. Then, at some later point after you have become comfortable with using Google Apps, copy over your GroupWise email messages. Copying your email contents will likely be time consuming, so there is no need to spend your time focusing on this step until you are ready to do so. As long as you get everything copied before October 1, you can wait as long as you wish to do this.
3) Google Apps Transition Timeline
January – March — Early adopters
March 1 – All faculty, staff and students can begin using Google Apps at DePauw at their own pace and start copying their GroupWise contents to the new system.
May 1 – Google Apps becomes DePauw’s primary email system
All incoming/outgoing email to/from DePauw will go through Google Apps instead of GroupWise, but GroupWise will still be available to copy email and calendars to Google Apps.
May – September – Copying GroupWise contents to Google Apps continues
October 1, 2010 — GroupWise server is shut down. Everyone must have copied everything from GroupWise into Google Apps by this time.
You can find more details about the project on the I.S. blog.
4) What about Special Accounts (e.g., basketweaving@depauw.edu)? Will they be ready on March 1?
No. The special email accounts that are often used by departments, organizations or other groups, will not be set up in Google Apps on March 1. Instead, we will be setting these up individually after consultation with the account owners. More information will be available soon about these types of accounts.
In the meantime, but these accounts will still work as usual through GroupWise/Tigermail.
