Friday, March 16, 2012

Later that Same Week: IMPORTANT: Update on Email Change #5

Greetings UVI,

If you have not had your mailbox converted please respond to this email with a time you can be available to convert your mailbox.

If you want us to move you automatically and tell you about it later, we can do that too. Just reply “permission granted”.

If you want to wait until after the cutover to move your mail, reply “Decided to wait”. The mail will be on the exchange server until it fails or is taken offline.

The conversion will not impact your ability to get mail, we simply take copies of it to put on the new server in the cloud.

Hoping to year from you soon both on your date for conversion and your choice for a cut over date.
Tina

RE: Update on the Internet

Good Afternoon,

Broadband VI was able to restore service to the STX campus. We are still unclear to the exact nature of the problem and will be pursing that with them.

Because we are seeing the return of the errors on our CHOICE connection, we will be taking it down and reverting to the STX connection for our Internet as we have been running the past month. This should not be noticeable to users but I wanted to let you know what was happening. It is important that we make the switch before errors build on the CHOICE side.

CHOICE indicated that our replacement equipment may be on island. We are waiting to hear from them on an installation date.

We will continue to provide you with information as it becomes available.
Tina

Update on the Internet

Good Morning UVI,

At approximately 8:40 this morning, the Internet connection to the University became unavailable. As you recall, we have been running on a single connection for a few weeks, as we work with CHOICE to replace equipment. We have temporarily restored the CHOICE connection to provide Internet access to the campuses, while we work with Broadband VI and the St. Croix staff to determine the cause of the failure.

Please be patient and frugal in your use of the Internet. Our CHOICE connection provide half of the capacity as the connection from STX. Services will be slower than they have been.

We will let you know as the problem is corrected.
Tina

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Week of March 12: IMPORTANT: Update on Email Change #4

Good Morning UVI,

During Spring break, the ITS Team on both campuses were able to convert 262 exchange mailboxes into the cloud. That puts us a little over the half way mark for fulltime employees. We thank you all for your help in making this change. We have some important work left to do. It is outlined below, so read it carefully and let me know if you have questions:

1. There are some mailboxes that are under 1 gb in size. The conversion of these mailboxes can be done remotely. So you will be contacted by email when it is your turn to be converted. During the conversion you will continue to get email. The process will take about 6 hours. If you have concerns about the timing please respond to the notification email.
2. There are still mailboxes that are HUGE, and these need to be reduced in size so they can be converted. We will be contacting you individually to begin this process. These conversions will be done in person, or will be scheduled with you to be done by technicians remoting into your desktop.
3. If we missed you last week, please send me an email so we can schedule a time to make the changes.

DECISION FOR INPUT:

We are on schedule to complete the conversions in the next 7 to 10 days. So we (all of us) need to determine when is the best time for the cutover. The cutover consists of telling the Internet to stop sending “uvi.edu” email to our server and to start sending it into the cloud so everyone can get their email at their new “live.uvi.edu” accounts. This process will take 48 HOURS to complete. During that time email sent to your “uvi.edu” address will be held by the sending email server – it will not be delivered to either your new account or your old account. When the cutover is complete the sending servers will know where to send it and it will be delivered to your new account. At the end of the cutover your uvi.edu email will go to the live.uvi.edu mailbox. Your email address will not change; it will still be tkoopma@uvi.edu. IN addition however, any email sent to tkoopma@live.uvi.edu will also go to that same mailbox. Both of these email address will continue to work.

So this means that during the 48 hour cutover, if you are afraid that you will miss email, or that you have something very important coming in, you can tell the sender to send to your address at live.uvi.edu and it will be delivered. You cannot forward email during the cutover, because our exchange server is what provides the forward and it will not be available.

Please keep in mind that we do not know if the current exchange server will continue to run. It is still fragile from the January crash. And if it goes offline we do not know whether we will be able to restore service.

With all that being said we have some options.

1. Schedule the cutover on the weekend (we know we get less email over the weekends) as soon as the mailbox migrations are finished. Tentatively March 23-25.
a. Advantage: It gets it done as quickly as possible, reducing risk of further outages
b. Disadvantage: This is the middle of the semester, it increases risk of missing an email
2. Schedule the cutover during the Easter break, April 6-8
a. Advantage: We will have engineers onsite during this time to monitor cutover + less email during holidays
b. Disadvantage: It makes us dependent on the exchange server another month
3. Schedule the cutover during the carnival break
a. Advantage: Less email during this break
b. Disadvantage: It makes us dependent on the exchange server another six weeks, right before finals
4. Schedule to cutover after the semester
a. Advantage: Semester over
b. Disadvantage: Increased risk that server will go down before the cutover

Each of these, would come with the contingency, that if the exchange servers go down again, whether it is a weekend or not, we start the cutover so we can solidify email services without further outages.

Please let me and your colleagues know your thoughts and we can collectively make the decision.

Thank you for your time and consideration.
Tina






From: Tina Koopmans
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 10:43 AM
To: ALL
Subject: TUESDAY: IMPORTANT: Update on Email Change #3
Importance: High

Good Morning All,

First let me thank all of you who have taken the time to make your mailbox size manageable. This has sped up the process greatly. We were able to migrate about 45 users yesterday. I need to emphasize how important it is for the rest of you to do the same. If a mailbox is below 3 gb, it takes about 30 minutes to get emails moving to the cloud. It took on the average three hours for mailboxes that were larger and need to be archived first.

It is very important to get everyone on the new mail system and ready to start receiving mail. The risk of the in-house servers failing again gets higher every day. We are working very hard to make sure we are positioned not to lose data in the event of another failure. We need you help to protect that data. PLEASE take an hour to delete items which you do not need. Your sent emails and your deleted emails are the perfect place to start deleting. Remember on the new system if you reach the limit (10 gb), you will no longer be able to send or receive emails.

The ITS staff is out in the field again today. On STX, Derval and Gio started on the Evans Center and will continue today. The STT crew will continue on their lists as well.
Tina

The instructions to archive your own mail is below.

THINGS TO DO TODAY: Archive or Delete all old emails!
Here’s how to quickly clean your Inbox in Outlook 2003/2007
If you receive a lot of emails every day your inbox can fill up quickly. Outlook 2003 has an easy way to clean up your inbox quickly without having to go through each email individually to decide what needs to be kept.
To get to this window, click on Tools \ Mailbox Cleanup.

In this window you have several options to choose from. The easiest option is to select Auto Archive, which will move older items into the Archive Folder. You could also choose to empty the deleted items.
One of the more useful features however, is to quickly find all large emails using the “Find items larger than” button. Deleting all the largest emails would very quickly bring your inbox size down to a reasonable size.

Here’s how to configure AutoArchive in Outlook 2007
The Auto Archive feature can be used in order to control what email is kept on the server’s storage and what can be saved to your local hard drive or preferably an external drive. AutoArchive is turned on by default in Outlook 2007 and will actually remove some of the oldest files (you determine the amount of time).
Open Outlook and click on Tools \ Options

Now click on the other tab and click the AutoArchive button.

This opens up a whole menu of options and settings to pick from: for instance you can choose how often AutoArchive runs for example it can run every 20 days. A check should be placed next to “Prompt before AutoArchive runs” so users can confirm the AutoArchive run.

This is also where you decide when to clean out old items. You can select the Browse button to indicate where you want to move them to, your local hard drive or an external drive. You can always select to permanently delete old items if you do not want to keep them around any longer. Click OK to save your settings.
NOTE: A mail folder will not use the “default archive settings” unless you tell it to do so. In Office 2010 it is almost automatic so when you choose to autoarchive it will set it to autoarchive all folders. In Outlook 2007 you have to choose the check box that turns on autoarchive all folders in the autoarchive settings or you can right click on the email folder, go to properties and choose the autoarchive tab shown below.





From: Tina Koopmans
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2012 4:54 PM
To: ALL
Subject: NEW: IMPORTANT: Update on Email Change #2


Good Afternoon,

This message is to those of you that will be in your offices next week. Starting at 9:30 on Monday morning, the ITS staff on St. Thomas will be out in full force to visit offices to prepare you for the new email system. St. Croix users will get a schedule on Tuesday. Burt, Dannica, Dawn, Cherie, Marilyn, Ted, Erik, Desha, Christa, and Debbie will be on lower campus to assist users. Romeo and Jose will be taking care of anyone in their office in the upper campus. Sharlene and a staff of students will be manning the phones.

If you are away from your office when someone visits, they will leave a note for you. Call x1367 to set up a return visit. We are keeping a master-list so we can check-off the accounts when completed. Some migrations will go very fast – we also know some will take a little longer. We are prepared to assist to meet your needs.

To make things easier:
1. Make sure your email boxes are less than 3GB. If they are not, we will need to work with you to make them smaller.
2. Bring your mobile devices so that they can be set up at that time.
3. Make time for this critical migration. We know everyone is very busy, but we need to complete the tasks to ensure you have proper email services.
4. Watch the migration so you can assist others. Ask questions so that you understand what is happening.

Schedule of Personnel to Department
Department/Office Technician(s) Campus
President’s Office/Board of Trustees Burt STT
College of Business Jose STT
VP Admin & Finance Dannica STT
School of Education Cherie STT
Provost Office Dawn STT
School of Nursing Romeo STT
Vice Provost – RPS/Spirituality Center Erik STT
Science & Math Erik STT
Public Relations/Purchasing Dannica/Marilyn STT
Social Science [Building] Kimbalee STT
Internal Auditor/Title III/IRP Kimbalee STT
Associate CEA Burt STT
Accounting Debbie STT
Music/Bookstore Desha STT
HR/CEA Christa STT
Security/CES Ted STT
ACES Debbie STT
Physical Plant/Capital Projects/Mailroom Dawn STT
Institutional Advancement Dawn STT
ECC/CELL/RTP/EPSCoR Erik STT
Marine Science Ted STT
CA First Floor Ted STT
CA Second Floor Ted STT
CA Third Floor Ted STT
CATS Ted STT
SFC/CSS/Athletics Erik STT
Humanities[Building] Ted STT
Reichhold Center Desha STT
SBDC Dannica STT
Quarters B [Building] Kimbalee STT
Student Housing/Counseling & Placement Desha STT


Please let me know if you have any questions.
Tina

From: Tina Koopmans
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2012 4:20 PM
To: ALL
Subject: IMPORTANT: Update on Email Change #1

Greetings All,

This is a very important message, please read it carefully.

First, let me thank the faculty and staff for providing input directly, through the staff council and the Academic Technology/Library Committee on the proposal to migrate from our in-house Exchange email system to the cloud. While there was general consensus that the move to the cloud was beneficial in the areas of service and costs, there were discussions about privacy, ownership and which cloud service may be best. There was agreement, we needed to make a move to protect ourselves from further loss of service because of the fragility of the current e-mail system.

With this input, we have moved forward to implement LIVE@EDU as proposed and addressing the questions raised. We have however, committed to continue to review cloud options for a system that could provide more opportunities for our community. Since LIVE@EDU does not change our user interfaces, it is the most expeditious, and safest choice at this point.

On Tuesday (two days ago), we created new email accounts for everyone. We are in the process of testing these accounts to make sure they work as we expect (and by that I mean just like your other one); we are branding the site with UVI information and testing processes to easily add these accounts to everyone’s desktop and phone and any other device that you currently use to access your email.

The steps we will take include:
1. Make sure everyone can access their new account
2. Make sure that the accounts are accessible from desktops and mobile devices
3. Move emails, calendars and contacts from the old account to the new account
4. Schedule a cut over to have your new emails delivered to your new email inbox
5. Make sure all accounts are working as expected and all important data is moved or archived
6. Take the old exchange server offline

We plan to start this process with STAFF over spring break to make sure that we identify any issues that may arise and to take advantage of the extra bandwidth we will have available (with students off-campus) to move data to the cloud. This process will include someone coming to your desk to help you backup your files; reduce the size of your mailboxes and add your new email account to outlook and your mobile devices. We will share a schedule as soon as we can. This same process will be used for faculty upon their return and as their class schedules permits. If there are any faculty members that want to start testing their accounts over spring break, please let me know I can send you documentation about the migration process.

Things to remember:
1. Your email address will stay the same. It will not change. So I will still receive all of my email at tkoopma@uvi.edu. I will ALSO be able to receive mail at Tina.Koopmans@uvi.edu
2. Your email will be accessed through Outlook or whatever mail client that you use just like it was before. If you are using Outlook2003, we will need to upgrade your client. If you are using Entourage2008 on your MAC, you will be able to migrate to Outlook2011.
3. Your email will be available on the web just like it was before, except with an updated interface.
4. You will have a separate password for your new email until we make it part of the single sign-on environment. This may take a few weeks.

Prior to the cutover, we will schedule meetings on each campus to address any questions you may have.

Please look for additional emails with this subject line to make sure you are up-to-date on the migration.
Feel free to send me any questions you may have.
Tina