Thu 10 May 2012

Pilot users and moving on..

Posted by Mally Mclane under email, google, launch, migration, staff
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Over the past 2 weeks we have been honing our procedures and processes by migrating test users onto our new Gmail service. Our test users have so far been from the University Exams Office and IT Services – each department providing around 10 people to test with. Towards the end of next week we will migrate another pilot – University Human Resources, around 40 people – in preparation for our first migraton at the end of May.

We’ve honed and refined the procedure for migrating staff as best we can. We’ve automated as much of it as we can – but it still needs some minimal input from the user. We’ve made it as straightforward as we can – but it’s not perfect, and that’s exactly what we wanted our pilot users to show us.

Our test users have unearthed issues in Microsoft Outlook that we hadn’t thought of, in our documentation that we’d missed and in our migration process. These are things that we’ll work on and continue to work on until everyone is on Gmail.

Reassuringly, there have been no show stoppers (problems that would halt the project) and people have also been praising us:

“Initial thoughts from me – surprised how easy it was, instructions pretty
much self-explanatory and overall pleased with the process.

I downloaded the free app on my Iphone4 and it works fine as well, much
quicker that the IMAP config I had before.”

 

We’re enjoying moving you to Gmail and we’ll see you there soon!

 

 

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Thu 10 May 2012

Migrating Students

Posted by Mally Mclane under apps, email, google, launch, student event, students, Uncategorized
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We are moving along in the project to move the University email service across to Google and we’re very pleased to announce we are now in a position to begin migrating our current students onto our new service!

Apart from the key advantages of providing significant quota and access to University email through Google mail, students will also be able to retain the account after graduation and use the email address @my.bristol.ac.uk.

We will begin with our students who are in their final year this year, along with our taught postgraduates – we’ll be contacting them directly soon with further information. They will have from Monday, May 21st to the end of June to go through our 30second account creation process to create their Google account, which will work instantly.

Then, from July onwards, we’ll be migrating our remaining students onto the email for life service – again, we’ll contact you closer to the time with more detailed information.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to migrate your actual emails – but we will provide advice on how to do this yourself using Mozilla Thunderbird. While a student you can access your Google email via MyBristol or directly from the Gmail website but when you leave you will need to use the Gmail website.

If you have any questions, please contact the project team via new-email@bristol.ac.uk.

 

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Wed 25 Apr 2012

Communication

Posted by Mally Mclane under google, staff
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You may have noticed that we have a wonderful new colourful banner at the top of the blog – this is part of our new communications strategy for the project.

Moving forward in the year, we’ll be migrating staff and students onto Google, hoping to finish by the end of 2012.  To advertise this, and to ensure staff will be aware of what is happening we will be running roadshows, visits to departments, websites and the new branding, along with the posters below (not the final versions), banner stands, payslip leaflets, a new email website (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/email) and other communication tools are a key part of this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watch out for us running a roadshow at a University venue near you soon! We’d really like to meet you and hear any questions you might have!

 

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Tue 24 Apr 2012

Adding new services & Google Drive

Posted by Mally Mclane under apps, google, launch, students
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We have 2 Google instances at the University of Bristol – my.bristol.ac.uk is purely for our student user-base (and Alumni in the near future) and bristol.ac.uk is for our staff user-base. The student instance went live last Autumn and we’ll be migrating the remainder of our students very soon (watch out for news!) and our very first staff members will be migrating to Google over the next month.

Although you may think they are the same – we do treat the 2 instances very differently as the 2 user-bases have different needs and function in very different ways. The student user-base is more dynamic and keen to adopt new technologies and services, whereas the Staff user-base is, in the main, more conservative and wants a more stable product.

Fortunately, Google do offer two release paths for their new product. The students are on a Rapid Release track, which allows our users to access new features as soon as Google rolls them out to production. These features have been through testing and quality assurance and are  also available to Google’s consumer users. Staff are on Scheduled Release track which allows us to hold back new features from our users temporarily so we have time to prepare them for the changes. Google releases features to the Scheduled Release track on Tuesdays only, at least one week after the feature was released to the Rapid Release track. Of course, at all times, we can turn any service off or on as we need to.

Why does this matter? Today Google launched a product that we had heard about through leaks, glances and rumours for some time - Google Drive. The Google Drive product is a service that is being launched to compete head-to-head with the likes of Dropbox and box.net. 5GB is being offered for free and there is also tight intergration with Google Search and Google Docs. You can read more about the launch at the link.

http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/introducing-google-drive-yes-really.html

 

Because of the Rapid Release schedule, we are pleased to say that this product is available now to all student users on the Google service. 

 

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Tue 20 Mar 2012

Google Apps for students!

Posted by Mally Mclane under apps, calendar, google, launch, students
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Calendar, Docs, Google+ and much more are now available to students when they get the new Google email for life service at the University of Bristol!

After listening to the feedback from our current students we are pleased to announce that today, Tuesday 20 March, we are turning on over 20 apps from the Google Apps suite including Google Docs and Google Calendar. The full list can be found at:

 

 

http://www.bris.ac.uk/it-services/applications/google-apps/

What do these apps offer?

Here’s a quick guide to some of the most widely used and useful:

Google Docs
A suite of products that lets you create different kinds of online documents, work on them in real time with other people, and store your documents and your other files — all online. With an Internet connection, you can access your documents and files from any computer, anywhere in the world. (There’s even some work you can do without an Internet connection!)

Google Calendar
An online calendar that’s available wherever you are, whenever you need it. We are investigating providing iCal feeds for student timetabling via the MyBristol portal, so you will also be able to add your UoB timetable information to your Google Calendar and use the reminder features Google provide.

Google Talk
A instant messaging tool that supports text, voice and video – for free. Use Google Talk to keep in touch with your family and friends back home.

Google Chrome Sync
The University will soon be rolling out the Google Chrome web browser to all UoB computers. With Chrome Sync you can save your bookmarks, extensions, apps, theme, and browser preferences to your Google Account so that they are available on any computer you’re using. That way, you can have the same web experience everywhere.

Please send any feedback to new-email@bristol.ac.uk

Further information on the Gmail project at the University can be found on the IT Services website


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Thu 8 Mar 2012

Staff Gmail implementation timeline

Posted by Mally Mclane under email, google, launch, migration, staff
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Following extensive discussions with our Zonal IT colleagues and others, we  have developed a proposed timeline for the implementation of Gmail for staff across the University. We will be phasing implementation based on the IT zones  and  you can see the full timeline in the image below:

 

 

 

 

(click to enlarge)

 

 

 

The timeline includes rollout plans for Office 2010.  This is necessary as Outlook 2010 will be the supported client on your University desktop along with the standard Gmail web client, accessible everywhere.   We chose Outlook 2010 over other possible clients (such as Thunderbird) because of the user experience and support from Google for integration with their products.

This activity also supports the aim to standardise the version of Microsoft Office throughout the University to create efficiencies and aid collaboration.  In addition, Google Chrome will be installed alongside Internet Explorer.  This activity is part of the desktop upgrade programme in 2012-13.

What will happen in my migration period?

During each phase of the project communications will be sent to staff explaining the process.  When your zone is due for migration you will be sent a link that takes you to our migration application. When you are ready you can use that link to login to start the migration process for you.

Will I be able to use my new Google account immediately?

Yes – once you begin migration all new email will be delivered to your Gmail account.

Please note:  your existing mail won’t appear there immediately. The migration of your email will begin in the evening of the day that you select to migrate. In the majority of cases all email should be migrated overnight.  Mail is migrated starting with newest first. Until migration is complete you can still access old email through Outlook, but in a read-only mode.

What will be migrated?

We will migrate email kept on our central servers and we’ll migrate your address books (though this includes a simple one step process for this for the user too).

We’re not able to migrate your rules/filters or mail folders stored on your computer (C drive) but can provide you with help and support to set them up again in Gmail.

A list of all FAQs for the Gmail and Google Calendar project can be found on the project website.

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Tue 14 Feb 2012

Supporting Gmail and User Feedback

Posted by Mally Mclane under email, google, support
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As we begin to move more and more users on to our Google Mail platforms, it’s important to reflect on lessons learned and how users are finding the service. In particular is the new service helping reduce reported incidents to the Service Desk.We log all calls that come into Service Desk, either via email or telephone and this allows to see trends aross the first term:






From the graph above, we can see the usual spikes in support calls at the beginning of term (usually related to password issues), then for Google Mail, the support calls drop to a constant low. During the same period, support calls for our legacy webmail fluctuate quite significantly, but are only at the same level as Google Mail on January 1st!


To illustrate it more accurately, since the end of October there have been 10.6 incidents/requests per 1000 students on the old email service and 4.3 incidents/requests per 1000 students on Google Mail. Why is this happening? Google Mail is more intuitive, easier to use, featureful and massively more reliable. We are giving people a modern email experience fit for 2012 and beyond.




We’ve also been running a survey for those on our Google Mail, in order to understand better what we’re doing right and what we can improve. There were 3 key questions we asked:


Creating your Gmail account during registration – 76% rated this Very Good or Excellent

- Accessing your Gmail account – 73% rated this Very Good or Excellent

- Using your Gmail account – 81% rated this Very Good or Excellent


And we asked users how we could improve their Google Mail experience. 3 key questions were asked:


“Enable Calendar and other Google Apps”

This is something we’re keen to do, but it’s something we want to do right. We’re talking internally about enabling other services for both students and staff and will hopefully have more news later in the year.


“Want desktop client”

We realise this is desired by lots of people and later this year we will be rolling out Outlook 2010 across the University.


“Better links through from MyBristol”

This is one of the major problems that harm the experience users get – i.e. they have to sign into MyBristol and also Google Mail. We were unable to get this working as we wanted before we went live as it depended on  a major upgrade to a core piece of an internal system. We are currently midway through this upgrade and hope to release it over the summer break.





	

													
	


			

		
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Wed 14 Dec 2011



	
Plans for 2012

	
Posted by Mally Mclane under email, google	

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In September we successfully provided email with Google to over 6700 students who started this autumn. They get a new email address for life, which will keep working after they graduate, to help their future employability. From early next year, existing students will be able to register their interest in getting an email address for life with Google, and they will then be migrated in groups after that.


After Christmas we are starting pilots of Google Mail for staff in some support service units and academic departments. Staff keep the same email address they have now (they don’t get the email address for life). The first to be migrated will be a few staff in IT Services to make sure the technicalities work. Then we move on to other departments for users to test acceptability, so the project can react to feedback and make any changes before the main rollout.


We’ve had some strong feedback from staff that they would like their email and calendar rollout to take place at the same time, or at least very close together. Unfortunately we can’t do them both quite simultaneously. Calendar needs to rolled out to all staff on the same day (so we can all book meetings with each other), while the huge volume of email is such that we need to migrate it in batches. We don’t want to take on too much too quickly, but we are looking into what additional resources we’d need to bring the email and calendar rollouts closer together.


As ever – we would love to hear from you about our plans – get in touch here: new-email@bristol.ac.uk

	

													
	


			

		
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Thu 8 Dec 2011



	
Going live and 2 months in…

	
Posted by Mally Mclane under email, google, launch, student event	

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You may remember that back in our last post we commented how we were working hard to get Gmail ready and launched for our 11/12 intake of undergraduate students. Well, in record time, we did it! Gmail was given to every new student who registered after September 6th – giving them access to an email address for life, a 25GB mailbox, a clean and modern interface and the famed search power that Google offers.


As of today, (December 8th), we have a total of 6,759 accounts on our my.bristol.ac.uk service. Apart from some minor hiccups, the overall launch was successful and since then we’ve been seeing on average 4722 users logging into Gmail and checking their email at least once within 7 days.




We’ve also been interested in which email client our students have chosen to use. We’ve not pushed anything onto them, we’ve let them make their own choices and simply given them the information they needed to connect software to Gmail. The graph above shows from 1st October to 30th November the activity we’ve been seeing from our Students on the Gmail service. The blue line is our total number of accounts, the green line is those using Gmail’s web interface to access their email and the red line is those accessing their account. As you can see, the red and green lines match, showing that the vast majority of our students are happy to use the web interface.


One amusing trend in the access we see is the dips on the green/red lines – they directly correlate to weekends in the 2 months, showing our students have a rest from email on weekends :-D 


 


Now that we have such large mailboxes (everyone by default gets 25GB), it’s interesting to see how quickly people are using up their quota, rather than trying to fit themselves into the small quotas that we’ve previously been able to offer:


 


 




 


 


 


Our students are using on average only a small fraction of the quota available to them, but are already close to what would have been the limits had they been given email on current UoB systems – apart from the one student in the middle who has already taken 1/5 of the quota available to them! This is good to see, we want users to use their email and not worry about quotas or limits.


But we don’t stop here – we still have the remainder of our student base to migrate, all of our staff to migrate, Google Calendar to launch – all coming in 2012.


 


As always, we are keen to hear from you – if you have any queries about the new Gmail service, or our plans for 2012, please get in touch: new-email@bristol.ac.uk


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

	

													
	


			

		
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Thu 11 Aug 2011



	
Update on project progress – August 11th

	
Posted by uobnewemail under email, google	

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The project team and colleagues across IT Services are working hard to get Google mail launched for the new intake of students arriving this autumn. These students will be the first to receive email addresses on the new email for life service @my.bristol.ac.uk. The two key dates are 7th Sept, when an application for students to choose a mailname is due to launch, and 15th Sept, when the bulk of students carry out online registration. We have a series of check points between now and then to assess progress and make sure we are on course.


Following that, we will move on to the first pilot deployment of Google mail for staff. We already have lots of departments wanting to pilot the service, and were speaking with one of them this morning. We will be piloting with at least two 2 but no more than 4 departments, including at least one academic department and one support service unit. The rough timetable for this is November to January, but we’ll decide the full timetable only when we’re good and ready.


There are lots of other exciting areas, including calendar, mailing lists, and shared mailboxes, but this is a very large project and we have to resist the temptation to do everything at once. So we are doing some early planning on those but the major work won’t start until summer 2012.

	

													
	


			

		
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