Carnegie Mellon University

ChemE Computing

Chemical Engineering Computing

ChemE Computing  ›  Announcements  ›  University Migration of Exchange Email and Calendar to G-Suite
October 04, 2021

University Migration of Exchange Email and Calendar to G-Suite

The University is moving to consolidate email and calendaring services to the Google (g-suite) platform and eliminate the Exchange email service. This migration affects most of the staff, several faculty and many researchers. The Chemical Engineering Department has elected to migrate in the next group which starts today, 10/4. The migration is an 8-week process that includes a discovery phase, individual prep phase and finally the actual migration.

Go-Live Date is Monday. Click HERE for more info.

ChemE will begin this process on 10/4 with a go-live date of 12/6.

All information on this project and the migration process can be found on the office of the CIO's initiatives page: https://www.cmu.edu/cio/key-initiatives/exchange-google/index.html

There is a ton of information on this page, but not all of it is relevant to ChemE users. We invite anyone affected by this migration to review this page at their convenience.

Here is a brief summary of the process: (UPDATED 10/27)

  • 8 weeks before - Discovery phase. (This will be handled by the ChemE IT team)
  • 5 weeks before - Individual migration checklists are sent to users. Everyone will have 3 weeks to complete the steps set forth in the checklist
  • 2 weeks before - Historical email will be migrated (This is actually 3 weeks long as no work is conducted during thanksgiving week)
  • The weekend before - All calendar events and current email will be migrated (No changes to your email account or calendar during this weekend)
  • Go-Live - In the morning on the Go-Live date you will receive an email in your exchange mailbox with a subject "Welcome to Google". This email will detail the next steps of your migration
  • Post-Migration - You will receive a report of any items that could not be transferred. You will have two weeks to retrieve these items from your Exchange inbox and save them locally

Migration Support options offered by ChemE-Computing

We will be coordinating with Computing Services throughout this process. In order to efficiently support ChemE personnel we are setting up several internal resources to supplement the project documentation provided by Computing Services.

  • We are setting up a mailman list for current Exchange users, cheme-exchange-users@lists.andrew.cmu.edu. This will be an open forum where anyone can ask questions about the process. Answers will be sent publicly to the list so everyone has access to these answers. We will also be capturing the Q&A from this list on a dedicated web page on the ChemE Computing site. Anyone on the list is free to unsubscribe and use the web page as a resource if they prefer. (If you are affected you will receive a welcome notice when this ready)
  • We will be offering one-on-one sessions throughout the migration process. There will be in-person and virtual options. A schedule of time slots will be posted on the ChemE Computing site. These can be scheduled by sending a request to the ChemE IT helpdesk at cheme-computing@andrew.cmu.edu
  • On the Go-Live date, department staff will be handed over to the DSP support team for client configuration and post-migration issues. Everyone else will have the option to use the Computing Services Helpdesk (it-help@cmu.edu) or the ChemE Helpdesk (cheme-computing@andrew.cmu.edu) for client configuration or post-migration issues.
  • We will be hosting open office hours post-migration for anyone to stop by for assistance. Virtual sessions will need to be scheduled by emailing the ChemE helpdesk (cheme-computing@andrew.cmu.edu)
  • ChemE specific documentation will be updated on the website to reflect process changes for migrated services such as conference room scheduling.
If you have any questions feel free to contact the ChemE Helpdesk or the mailman list.

Q and A

Below are questions that have been asked specifically by ChemE users. These answers have either been compiled from the University page or from direct communication with the migration support team.

No. Your email address will remain the same.

The Gmail web client is the preferred client, however on windows machine you can continue using Outlook and Apple Mail on Macs. Outlook for Mac is not supported.

Other clients such as Thunderbird do work with g-suite however there is some limited functionality.

No. All email will transfer over. Some attachments are not permitted on g-suite. You will receive a post migration report listing any attachments that did not transfer and will have two weeks to retrieve them from your Exchange account.
No. The d-list and Mailman systems are separate from from the email systems and should not be affected. The only reported issue has been for people sending to mailman lists from shared mailboxes. We have already added the shared mailbox addresses so this issue should not affect ChemE

There are several shared mailboxes in the department that are currently on Exchange that will be migrated to G-suite. The issue we have seen here is that the Exchange address gets captured in some clients. Exchange shared mailboxes have two addresses.

An example in our case is the ChemE PSO Inbox. You all know this as cheme-PSO@andrew.cmu.edu, but in reality the actual address is cheme-PSO@exchange.andrew.cmu.edu. The address chem-PSO@andrew.cmu.edu is just an alias. In some cases some clients will save the @exchange.andrew.cmu.edu address. In such as case you may have to delete this address from the collected/saved addresses. Follow the steps below to remove the address from Outlook (If you use another client, check the clients documentation or reach out to the ChemE Helpdesk):

  1. Start a new email message
  2. In the To field start typing the name/email address.
  3. You should see the Recent name/email. Click on the 'X' to the right of the name to delete the recent contact.
  4. Click on Address Book to find the person.
  5. Send the message again.