Most Sympa Mailing Lists can recreated as Google Groups without much trouble; however, there are several differences between these technologies (outlined below) that may require special handling. Please read on for details.

Figure out which lists you own:

  • All mailing lists have at least one owner, and many have multiple owners and moderators. You will need to work with any other owners/moderators of your list(s) to determine who will create the new Google Group, how it will be configured, who will be an owner/manager/member, and so on. To get started, it is helpful to log into the existing mailing list server at https://lists.carleton.edu (use your email address and Carleton password) and check the left-hand sidebar to see which lists you’re an owner or moderator of. For each of those lists, you’ll want to develop a plan for who will handle the migration.

Lists that want to preserve existing Sympa archives:

  • List archives maintained in Sympa cannot be moved to Google Groups. Your new Google Group will archive future messages by default in a feature-rich, user-friendly online forum. If you wish to preserve the Sympa archive, list owners or moderators can download the archives as a ZIP file and save them to Google Drive, Dropbox, or another storage location as desired. Please click here for instructions and guidance on downloading your Sympa list archive.

Lists that use the anonymous sender setting:

  • Google Groups do not provide an equivalent to this setting in Sympa. Although few lists at Carleton make use of this feature, please review how it is used for your mailing list(s), if at all, before attempting to migrate to Google Groups. If you have questions about this setting, please contact the ITS Helpdesk at x5999 for assistance.

Lists that should not be migrated by hand:

  • Many mailing lists are populated in part or entirely by data from other systems using Sympa’s built-in data sources functionality. These lists will be migrated by ITS on your behalf; please do not attempt to migrate them yourself, as Google Groups does not natively provide this type of functionality. ITS maintains a spreadsheet of these lists which will be migrated automatically on November 6, 2017; please feel free to review that spreadsheet.

Borrowed with permission from Case Western Reserve University,  https://case.edu/utech/google/groups/pre-migration-checklist/