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As of 5pm last night, everyone on campus is Gmail and Google Calendar. Some people with specific needs may also have access to Zimbra, but for the first time since early April we are no longer straddling two systems for major populations on campus.

As the last group of people settle into Gmail and Google Calendar, feel free to stop by for some training. Even if you’ve used Gmail and/or Google Calendar before, come play with features and strategies that are useful for emailing and calendaring at work, which can be a different beast from email and calendaring at home. And there’s a lot of help and information on our website and built into the Gmail and Calendar interfaces.

Did you know that in addition to the various settings and options available in Gmail and Google Calendar, each program also has a section called Labs? This is where Google makes features available that they’re developing and testing, and they include all kinds of interesting ideas, such as developing canned responses to common emails, adding a world clock to your calendar, or adding a calendar gadget to your email interface.

Browse through available labs by clicking on the Gear icon in Gmail or Google Calendar, then click “Settings,” and then click “Labs.”

The largest batch of people to move from Zimbra to Gmail have now completed their transitions. Only one more batch of people is still waiting to move to Gmail, and they will all move beginning the evening of July 7th. By this time next week, the whole campus will be using Gmail and Google Calendar!

As we near the end of the email and calendar move, various departments are working with ITS to determine their best options for shared email resources (like shared inboxes or shared email addresses). ITS is reaching out to people we know of who use these shared resources but if you haven’t heard from us about a shared resource you use, please contact the ITS helpdesk (webhelpdesk@carleton.edu or x5999).

As the email and calendar transitions wind to a close, the transition from Collab to the Cloud is ramping up. Our three early adopter departments (ITS, Library & Archives, and Off Campus Studies) have all completed their transitions and report that the process went well. We have learned a lot from the experience of these early adopters and are now distilling what we’ve learned into a process for the rest of campus. Plan to hear from us 6-8 weeks before your department is scheduled to transition away from Collab! And if you’re curious or want to get a jump start, there is is an ever-increasing amount of information about Dropbox and Google Drive and ever-increasing training information available on our website.

Zimbra was quite generous with the file sizes it allowed people to attach to emails. No other major email system is as generous, and Gmail is no exception. This means that if you have a file larger than 25MB, you’ll have to use a method other than email attachments to send it to other people. While there are lots of ways to do this, the two most common and best supported on campus will be to send links from either Dropbox or Google Drive. Here’s how to manage this….

Last week, the majority of faculty and a few staff got their Gmail accounts and began having their email and calendar appointments copied over from Zimbra to Gmail and Google Calendar. The process went well, by and large, with two minor snags. First, there was a configuration error that resulted in incoming email bouncing back to the sender for 50 minutes on Thursday evening. ITS was able to contact the small number of people who would have received these bounced messages and tell those intended recipients who had emailed them and what the subject line of the message was. Second, the initial stage of email copying had to be run twice, resulting in the initial copy finishing up around 11am on Friday morning rather than at 8am as planned.

Email sent to lists (like those ending in @lists.carleton.edu) was also delayed initially, but is now running smoothly.

If you have not yet attended a training session online or in person, check out the training options. And if you are having trouble getting Gmail to work for your needs, consider stopping by a drop-in session or contacting the ITS Helpdesk.

In COLLAB news, Off Campus Studies will begin moving their COLLAB files to Dropbox and/or Google Drive tomorrow! They have been thinking through their new file organization and seem ready to make the leap.

After OCS moves from COLLAB to the Cloud, the next big transition will be moving all the returning students from Zimbra to Gmail and Google Calendar starting the evening of June 23rd.

Why get just one tip when you can have a whole library? Google’s Tips Library is full of ideas for all of the Google Apps (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, etc). It’s definitely worth exploring.

At 5pm most faculty and some staff will make the move to Gmail and Google Calendar. Exciting times!

One of the questions we’ve heard is “why today?” Janet Scannell worked hard and talked with lots of faculty to attempt to find the best of all the bad solutions for a transition date, and the consensus was that June 9th at 5pm was after senior grades were due but before large portions of the faculty leave for the summer. We know it’ll be a squeeze, but we hope that it won’t be too disruptive.

And don’t forget to attend post-migration training sessions or drop in to our drop-in hours. All the sessions are listed here.

Many of us have had the experience of receiving an invitation to a Google Doc, clicking the link that should take us straight to the document, and instead landing on a page that says that we need to request permission to access the document. This happens when your browser remembers you being logged into one Google account while the invitation was sent to a different Google account. Maybe you’re logged in to your personal Gmail account but trying to open a Google Doc sent to your Carleton email address. As more and more of us will now make daily use of Carleton Google accounts in addition to personal Google accounts, here are two ways to manage multiple Google accounts….

As of last Thursday, all ITS staff are now living in Gmail and Google Calendar, so everyone should be familiar with the system and the transition process if you have any questions at all. We’ve also published all of the preparation emails that people will get in the month before they move, so if you’re curious about what’s coming or if you lost the message that was sent to you, they’re all now posted here.

Next week, on Thursday June 9th at 5pm, faculty and departmental assistants will begin using Gmail and Google Calendar. There are many online and in-person training options available, and early adopters who attended or used these report that they were very useful even for people who have prior experience using personal Gmail accounts.

Just as a reminder, people’s email addresses will not change when they move to Gmail (except for the people who specifically asked for a change).

In file storage news, the Library and Archives moved their files from COLLAB to Dropbox beginning last Thursday. The next department making the move from COLLAB to the cloud is Off Campus Studies, who will begin moving on June 16th.

Reminder! Many Carleton usernames were created at a time when we could only use eight characters, resulting in everyone with last names longer than seven characters losing the last letters off their names. Usernames are no longer restricted to only eight characters, and while there’s no direct connection, changing email systems is a good opportunity to revisit usernames. If you would like to change your username to more closely reflect your last name, please contact the ITS Helpdesk. For details, please visit this site. You can find this information, plus comprehensive training, frequently asked questions, and more on the project website.

[Reposted from the Carleton Weekly]