Occidental College Launches Oxyconnect
provided by Google Apps for Education

Your Email Account is Changing this Summer

During the last week of May 2010, ITS will begin moving all Oxy faculty and staff email accounts to Oxyconnect, an email and application platform provided by Google. (Google Apps for Education). This new service will replace your existing Exchange email service. Both your email address, accountname@oxy.edu, and your password will remain the same.

How will this change affect me?

Unfortunately, successfully moving to a new email system is not something that ITS can accomplish without your assistance. The process has been designed to reduce risk and inconvenience as much as possible. Nevertheless, this is a complicated and complex undertaking that will take several months to complete. ITS is committed to keeping you informed about the process overall and in addressing your individual concerns. This email is the first major communication about the move to Oxyconnect. More communications will be coming as the process begins in May. Please read these emails and get in touch with the Helpdesk (helpdesk@oxy.edu) or phone (323-259-2880) immediately if you have any questions or concerns.
 

How will my email be moved, and what do I need to do?

You will receive an email message from ITS two weeks prior to moving your email. The ITS message will include instructions for specific preparation steps you must take during that two-week period and directions for accessing your Oxyconnect account. The preparation steps, which may require up to one hour of your time, are necessary to help ensure that moving the numerous mail messages and files will happen with minimal errors. ITS is not expecting significant issues, but moving large amounts of data from one system to another is not a simple task; therefore the staff is trying to anticipate and address potential risks before they might become problems.

Additional ways in which the moving process is designed to minimize risk to the integrity of your email include staging a specific number of individuals to be moved at one time and implementing a phased approach to those moves. Groups of individuals, such as an academic or administrative department, will be moved at the same time. For each of the individuals in that department, the first step will copy 30 days of old email, plus all contacts and calendar items from the Exchange account to the new Oxyconnect account. This process will begin on a Friday evening and will most likely be completed within 24 hours.

You will receive an email to your exchange account on Friday evening confirming that the migration process will begin shortly. At that point, all new mail will be sent only to your Oxyconnect account. This email should be the last message delivered to your Exchange account and will repeat the earlier instructions on how to log onto your new Oxyconnect account. Beginning that Friday evening, you will need to log into Oxyconnect to see and respond to new email. Over the weekend, older emails will be migrated to your Oxyconnect account. By Monday morning, you will have 30 days worth of email as well as all of your contacts and calendar items from Exchange. During this transitional time, you still will be able to view all of your old messages in your Exchange account, but you will no longer be able to send messages from that account.

As you begin using Oxyconnect with 30-days of mail and calendar items, ITS will continue transferring all of the older mail and calendar items for everyone in your moving group. This fill-in process may take a few weeks before it is completed for everyone, depending on the amount of mail in the individual mailboxes in your group. You will still be able to view all of your old messages in your Exchange account during the time it takes to copy your old email into your Oxyconnect mailbox. After ITS has completed transferring all of your old email to your new Oxyconnect mailbox, your Exchange mailbox will be deleted.

The reason for moving people in groups and using this two-step process is that the possibility of error and the transfer time increases in step with the amount of data that is moved at one time. As you can see from the description of the process, ITS has elected to pursue a very conservative strategy that seeds each person in a small group with an initial, reasonably-sized set of messages, as well as calendar and contact information and lets all members in the group begin to use Oxyconnect quickly. The continuing follow-up transfer of older email information can happen essentially in the background with the goal of providing as little disruption to your use of email as possible.

Finally, ITS has engaged SADA Systems http://www.sadasystems.com to provide expert assistance with the move of all email accounts. SADA has handled email migrations to Google Apps for a number of schools including Northwestern University, Goucher College and the University of San Francisco, as well as moving email for all employees of the City of Los Angeles. The SADA staff have been working with ITS to develop the process for this large-scale move, to test various methods and will also be helping to develop training materials and documentation for Oxy faculty and staff.
 

How can I learn more about using Oxyconnect?

ITS is hosting an Oxyconnect (Google Apps and Email) Open House Tuesday through Friday May 4 - 7 from 9 am - 4:30 pm each day. Staff will be available to demonstrate all of the features of Oxyconnect, answer all of your questions about the new service and address any concerns you might have about making the transition from your current email platform to Oxyconnect. The Open House will be on the first floor of the Library in the CDLR and ITS area. Breakfast, lunch and light snacks will be available each day.

Additional training will be available in hands-on sessions throughout the summer and fall, and through live webinar sessions that can be accessed from anywhere that has an Internet connection. Details about these sessions will be sent to you in a welcome message when your email has been moved to Oxyconnect.

What is different about Oxyconnect?

Your Oxyconnect account will provide 7 gigabytes of storage for your email and documents. You will also have access to instant messaging, personal web sites and a suite of online applications that include calendaring, word processing, spreadsheets and presentation programs. These applications allow you to work on documents and presentations from any computer or a variety of mobile devices at any time. You can also use Oxyconnect to easily share calendars and collaborate on documents with colleagues or students.
 

Why are we changing the email service?

The project to provide Occidental students, faculty and staff with enhanced email and applications began in January 2009. The project goal was to find a new service that:

• provided a richer set of collaborative tools for messaging needs,
  worked equally well regardless of computer platform (Windows, Mac, or Linux),


• was capable of tighter integration with other communication services such as cell phones and instant messaging,


• would reduce duplication of services for students and faculty that already forward their Oxy email to other systems and


• could reduce costs and complexity for the ITS campus data infrastructure.

Students, faculty and staff tested potential solutions from Google and Microsoft. Their feedback, accompanied by a technical and cost feasibility analysis, led ITS to select Google Apps for Education (Oxyconnect) as the best option for the College.

The advantages include:

• More storage for email with 7 GB, which is 4.5GB more storage than you have available with the current email solution.


• Improved search capability that lets you more easily locate specific email messages


• Superb spam and virus protection that exceeds what the College can provide


• Google services supported by a large staff and monitored 24/7


• No ads and no data mining - Oxyconnect provides Google services without ads and with privacy for your data for College accounts.


• Google docs let you store your work online and access it from anywhere you have an internet connection. You can also invite other people to collaborate with you on specific documents and use the audit feature to track changes over time.


• Google sites let you create and edit your own websites to share with a few people or with the world.


• Google chat lets you chat in real-time using Google's built-in IM client.


• Mobile email for a smart phone lets you easily access your email without a computer.
   

Questions?

ITS recognizes that changing email systems is a major project that disrupts everyone on the campus. We apologize to each of you for the inconvenience that this move will create for you. We do believe that faculty and staff will find the new Oxyconnect system to be a useful and effective solution for communication and collaboration as the students have discovered over this past year. We will try to make this transition as painless as possible for each of you and strongly encourage you to contact us with any questions you may have. Please contact the Helpdesk at helpdesk@oxy.edu or 323-259-2880.