Google Migration

Overview

As we near the end of our usage of Google as a primary email service coupled with the severe reduction of storage space we felt it prudent to establish a guide to aid in performing basic migration tasks that will be required. If you have any questions feel free to contact techstaff.

Important Dates

Storage Migration Phases

• Phase 1: (Ended September 30th) Remove Personal Data from Google Storage. If it isn't work related please seek other means of personal storage.
• Phase 2: (Ended October 30th) Review and Classify Shared Drives, Remove any data in shared drives no longer needed.
• Phase 3: (Ends December 15th) Finalize your Storage cleanup. This is primarily targeted at Old files no longer needed per Retention policy 2000
• Phase 4: (Ends February 29th) Finalize Shared drive Allocations, Justify additional storage, if needed pay additional storage cost

Key Dates

• Employ Email Migrations - Happening November 2023 through April 2024 by department
• Student Email Migration - Happening over Winter Break
• January 16th, 2024
  • Google Photos service will be turned off
  • 5GB Storage allocation for students and alumni - Over limit accounts will go read-only
  • Non- Departmental Google Shared drives become read-only
  • VT Google accounts held by former employees with no other affiliation will be deleted
• April 3rd, 2024
  • Deletion of non-departmental Google Shared drives managed by students
  • Google accounts over storage allocations are subject to administrative action

Instructions

Google Mail Cleanup **NEW**

Note: This only applies to users who were students or have retired

After the migration, the large majority of users had their Gmail boxes removed cleaning up all the old email that has now been moved to Exchange. There was a smaller number of users who had different account affiliations and were allowed to keep their Gmail boxes but with not storage or limited storage. These accounts will need to focus on manual clean up of their Gmail boxes.

Removal of all Mail

The simplest way to remove all mail is to perform the following steps:

1. At the top of the message list click the check box that selects all mail for the page
2. it should pop up a banner saying that you have selected 50 emails of a number of emails and there should be a link to select all the emails in that folder
3. click that link, with all the email selected, click the trashcan in the options bar above the header
4. This will go though and delete a large number of your emails. It will take some time, and it might not get all of them in the first pass.
5. repeat the previous steps until all mail in the folder has been deleted in all folders.
6. Go to your trash folder and click 'Empty Trash Now'.

Configuring Forwarding (Adding to CS)

1. Once logged into outlook online click the gear icon in the top right corner
2. select forwarding from the list on the left side of the new window
3. If there isn't a check in the checkbox in forwarding, Add the check
4. Enter your CS email address
5. If you want to keep a copy of the emails in your exchange box
   1. Place a check in the keep email box
   2. Otherwise it will only forward emails to your cs account and they will only be visible there

Google Calendar

Back up Google Calendar

1. Navigate to google calendar (calendar.google.com)
2. Hover over the calendar you want to backup
3. Click the three dots on the calendar, click ‘setting and sharing’
4. Click export calendar
   1. This should download a zip file of your calendar in .ics format
   2. Extract this zip to a folder.

Migrate Calendar to Outlook

1. Open outlook.office.com and log in
2. Click the calendar icon on the left side panel
3. Click ‘Add Calender’ from under the calendar panel
4. If you don’t want the calendar to be in the default calendar Click “Create blank calendar
   1. Give your calendar a name, pick a color, pick a charm
   2. Click save
5. Click upload file
6. Select the ics file you backed up above
7. Select which calendar you want the entries to be imported into
8. Click Import. This process may take a while depending on how many entries are being imported.

Google Storage

Limits

Each user will be allocated 5GBs of Google Storage by the University. Any additional storage will need to be allocated by the Department and requires a business justification. You will need to be under the 5GB's by the date marked above or your drive will go read only. This 5 GB should be used only for your Personal Work related files. Anything that needs to be shared with anyone else should be in a shared drive not shared from your personal storage (This makes it so data is not lost when someone leaves the department).

Check your Storage

1. Log into [Google Drive] with your VT credentials
2. In the menu on the left Click Storage
3. This brings up a page which shows how much data is stored in your drive, your gmail, and your photos
   1. Photos Needs to be 0 bytes by January 16th, 2024
      1. There isn't an easy way to delete these either so you will want to start sooner rather than later
      2. They will shut off the service after the 16th and we will lose access to managing those files but the storage will still count against you / the department
   2. Storage shown for Gmail will go to Zero after the Migration and the service is turned off this is less important
   3. Drive needs to be under 5GB

Mark A Shared Drive

**Faculty: Make sure your graduate students check the shared drives that they are managers on as well**

1. Log in at [mycat.css.vt.edu]
2. Scroll down to Google, expand the menu
3. Select shared drives
4. Any Drive that you are a manager on you can make a recommendation for
   1. Click the recommend button
   2. In the new Panel that opens Select either
      1. Keep: Recommend that the Department become the owner of this drive and keep it
      2. Not Owner: Indicating that you are not the manager on this drive
      3. ANYTHING ELSE: Will be viewed as remove and the drive will not be kept. Backup anything you want off the drive
   3. Feel free to leave a note if you think it will be useful
   4. Click Set
5. Repeat this process for all drives you are a manager on

Additional Links

• [Department of IT - Google & Microsoft License Change Overview]
• [Department of IT - Migration Support]
• [College of Engineering - What Qualifies as Personal Data?]
• [MyCat Tool for Managing VT Resources]