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.

= 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

VT Email (Google to Exchange)

Configuring Exchange Route

1. Navigate to mycat.ccs.vt.edu, log in with your vt credentials
2. Scroll down to Email
3. Check to see if you have an Exchange Mailbox
4. Next to Exchange it should say active
   1. If it says No account and has a create button out from it
      1. Click Create
      2. This can take up to 30 minutes to initialize.
      3. Check back later to make sure it says Active before continuing.
5. Select ‘exchange’ from the routing drop down
6. Click set
7. When the page refreshes you should start receiving email in Exchange
8. You can check this by sending yourself a test email. Or send me a request and I will send you a test email.

This is the minimum you will need to do to start using Exchange. After you get this configured you can log into outlook.office.com and start sending & receiving emails, or to configure your preferred client to point at the exchange server. Originally CCS configured most gmail users to have their exchange forward to gmail…you may want to check your exchange forwarding and make sure it is configured the way you want it.

Configuring Forwarding (Remove Forwarding)

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 is a check in the checkbox in forwarding, remove the check

Configuring Forwarding (Adding to CS)

**Do not configure this until after you have established your route in the mycat tool**

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

Backing up Google Email - Windows

In my experience the best way is the following:

1. Setting up the Outlook client to Gmail
2. Import all your Gmail and Folders
3. Use the Outlook client to export the mailbox to a backup .pst file
4. Add your Exchange account to Outlook
5. Remove the Gmail Account
6. Import the backup into your Exchange account through the client.

This method runs into a small problem on windows right now where if the user wasn’t already using gmail through the outlook client they are unable to log in currently. I have a ticket into CCS who has a ticket in with Microsoft currently.

Backing up Google Email – Mac

1. This method uses the Mac Outlook client, if it isn’t installed, install Office
2. Under the Outlook menu on the top bar, if there is a check mark beside new office – Uncheck it. To do an export you need to use the old version of outlook.
3. Set up your gmail account into outlook
4. Click file, click export, select what you want to export (primarily your email)
5. Click continue
6. Name the file, pick where you want it to be saved. Click save
7. Go to import, select .OLM, navigate to your file and import it into your client

Unfortunately this method just imports it into a sub folder on your local machine. To back it up to the outlook exchange server you will need to Log into the exchange account and drag the email from the folders in the local folder to a corresponding folder in the exchange account.

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

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]