Category: Google Calendar

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.

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.

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.

Want the options of letting students claim portions of your office hours or advising slots? Do you run a service on campus that could benefit from having people sign up for appointments within blocks of time you pre-determine? Google Calendar offers the ability to set up appointment slots in the version it provides to institutions like Carleton.

To use Google appointments, select a span of time and then select the option telling Calendar that this span of time will contain appointments. As you set up your appointment slots, Calendar will give you a link to your publishable appointment calendar. When another person clicks on that link and logs in, they’ll see their own Google Calendar with your appointment times overlaid, helping them select an appointment that doesn’t conflict with their other appointments. As people claim appointment slots, those claimed slots will no longer appear as options for subsequent people. As your time is claimed by appointments or other meetings, slots disappear from the available appointments calendar available from that link you sent out. You can even “invite” other people to your appointment slots so that if someone claims an appointment it schedules more than one of you for the meeting.

Check out Google Help, YouTube, or Linda.com for video walk-throughs.

ITS started moving its own departmental folders to a combination of Dropbox and Google Drive late last week, and tomorrow the Library and Archives will begin the same process. As early adopters, these departments will test the transition process and begin the campus-wide conversation about best practices, tips, and tricks.

Since we expect that the various departments on campus will use the various file storage options quite differently to suit their needs, the process of moving from COLLAB to Dropbox and/or Google Drive will involve much more departmentally tailored information sharing than the Zimbra-to-Gmail process had. Much of the information you get will come to you from your department’s File Management Steward, who will work closely with ITS to develop a plan for your department’s transition.

Meanwhile, pre-migration training for the transition to Gmail and Google Calendar is well underway. Here is a list of scheduled training sessions. Faculty and Departmental Assistants will get their Gmail accounts on June 9th, so if you’re in that group come to one of our upcoming training sessions to learn about Gmail and Google Calendar. Even those early adopters who have used Gmail and Google Calendar for years have reported that these training sessions are useful, so come over to CMC110 and join your colleagues in preparing for the move to Gmail!

And finally, we’re gathering a whole year’s worth of “Tips of the Week” for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Dropbox. Did you know you can set up your calendar so that students can sign up for pre-defined appointment slots? Or that you can filter emails from your aunt to a special space that only appears if there’s a new message to read? Watch this space!