FAQs - staff

Some users are reporting missing emails in Google. There are a number of reasons why this may be, which are listed in the "I can’t find some of my emails - where are they?" page.

You can log into gmail via the link at bristol.ac.uk/email. Once in Gmail the other Google applications can then be accessed via the toolbar shown at the top of the page.

We are recommending that staff access Gmail, and other Google services, online via the Google Chrome web browser, which will be available on all UoB computers (and can be downloaded for home use and can, if you wish, synchronise accounts to show your work bookmarks and browser extensions). This provides the best and most integrated experience of using the full range of Google services. 

Access to both new incoming and old emails will be available over that weekend, however we are advising staff to avoid using the email system if possible. This is to prevent potential confusion whilst the migration completes.

Late on the evening of Thursday 28 March two things will happen:

• Your legacy email account, eg Mulberry, will become read only
• All new emails from that point will go to your new Google account.

Over the bank holiday weekend you will be able to see and respond to old emails in the legacy system, but if you send a message it will not save a copy. Therefore if you need to access and respond to particular previous emails over the weekend and those emails have not yet been migrated to Gmail, we recommend you log on to the old email system and forward these messages to yourself. They will then appear immediately in the new system and you can access them there.

Within the new Gmail system you can read and send email, and sent messages will be correctly saved. You will notice your old emails gradually appearing over the course of the weekend. You can access you Gmail via the login at www.bristol.ac.uk/email.

NB: some people have forwarding rules set up in the legacy email system which forward their UoB email on to an alternative address. These forwarding rules will not be migrated to Google automatically, but they can be recreated in Gmail.

Do not create a forwarding rule in Gmail before Wednesday 3rd April. If you do then copies of all your old emails will be forwarded as they migrate into Google, which is almost certainly not what you want.

By Wednesday all your old emails will be in Gmail, along with new emails received over the Easter weekend. During the process no emails will be lost. At this point it is safe to set up a forwarding rule if you need to.

No.

Yes. One of the main aims of this project is to have a significant quota increase for everyone (25GB). This is about 100 times more than most staff have at the moment, so it's a substantial increase! The goal is that you won't have to spend time filing and deleting mail just to free up space, a big waste of time at the moment.

Yes. All old email stored in central University servers will be transferred across. A few people have email stored in local folders or local servers rather than on a central University server. Those with email stored on local servers will be contacted about arrangements to transfer their email. Email stored in local folders on a computer will need to be transferred by you, but we'll provide tools and information via your Zonal IT teams to help you with this.

If you are using Mulberry version 4 (the vast majority of people are) then you do not have local folders. To check which version of Mulberry you are using, in Mulberry, click "Help" in  the menus along the top and then "About Mulberry"). The new window should list which version you are using. If you are not using Mulberry 4, there is no easy way to check whether you have local folders and this will need to be picked up after the general migration.

Please note that the following elements will not be automatically migrated to Gmail:

Address books, Flags,  Identities,  Filter and Email Rules,   Designate rights to personal mailboxes, Locally stored emails and Redirections/forwarding.

No emails will be lost as part of the migration. If you find that any emails or folders are missing when you use Gmail please contact the IT Service Desk and IT Services will investigate and assist with the recovery/migration of that email.

You can ask to have Outlook set up to manage your Gmail account on your work PC, but please be aware that there are problems with using Outlook. Please contact the IT Service Desk to make the request. 

If you use Outlook you will not have access to the full functionality of Gmail. You will also not be able to benefit from other, integrated Google Apps that are being supplied to staff along with Gmail. Further details can be found on the University Gmail support website.

We are recommending that staff access Gmail, and other Google services, online via the Google Chrome web browser, which provides the best and most integrated experience of using the full range of Google services. 

From 3 April 2013 you can get started with Google by logging into gmail via the link at bristol.ac.uk/email. Once in Gmail the other Google applications can then be accessed via the toolbar shown at the top of the page.

We are recommending that staff access Gmail, and other Google services, online via the Google Chrome web browser, which will be available on all UoB computers (and can be downloaded for home use and can, if you wish, synchronise accounts to show your work bookmarks and browser extensions). This provides the best and most integrated experience of using the full range of Google services.

Some people use desktop clients to access their emails offline, which you can do in Chrome.

The University does not support use of Thunderbird and can only assist by giving access to generic configuration settings and assistance with username/password issues (you will need to change your password before you can use Thunderbird).

We will fully replicate your folder structure in Mulberry, into Gmail. We'll also copy across any emails held on our central servers - this includes both your 'inbox' and your 'archive'.

A few people have email stored in local folders or local servers rather than on a central University server. Those with email stored on local servers will be contacted about arrangements to transfer their email. Email stored in local folders on a computer will need to be transferred by you, but we'll provide tools to help you with this. If you are using Mulberry version 4 (the vast majority of people are) then you do not have local folders. To check which version of Mulberry you are using, in Mulberry, click "Help" in  the menus along the top and then "About Mulberry"). The new window should list which version you are using. If you are not using Mulberry 4, there is no easy way to check whether you have local folders and this will need to be picked up after the general migration.

Personal address books in Mulberry won't be migrated directly, but we will send each user a file containing their contacts, which can be easily imported into Gmail contacts. This will not include any contact groups, which you will need to re-create in Gmail.

Identities will not be migrated. Instructions on creating identities in Google and Outlook are available on the email support page. Please note, limitations to Outlook functionality include the handling of identities.

These will not be migrated, we will give you a copy of your existing rules for reference and you can set them up in Google manually if you wish.

Over the Easter weekend your UoB email account will be moved to Google. All your prior emails stored in your legacy UoB account will be copied across to your new Google account.

All forwarding and redirection rules set up on the old system will stop on the evening of Thursday 28 March. It is possible to log into your new UoB Google account and set up a new forwarding rule from that to an alternative address (see instructions).

Do not create a forwarding rule in Gmail until the migration has completed.

If you do then copies of all your old emails will be forwarded as they migrate into Google, which is almost certainly not what you want. We’ll let you know at the end of the weekend when migration has completed, and it is safe to turn forwarding back on.

Good occasions to use forwarding

If you are an associate of the University, and have a UoB email address through being registered as honorary staff, then you can use forwarding to redirect email to your actual employer.

Some staff of the University have both a ‘role-based’ email account and an ‘individual’ email account. Eg school-head@bristol.ac.uk and my.name@bristol.ac.uk. In this case you might also want to set up forwarding from one to another (or keep them separate, it’s up to you).

Occasions when there are better alternatives to forwarding

Some staff work in teams with shared responsibilities, and currently set up forwarding eg when on leave to forward to a colleague at Bristol. However in these circumstances consider using a delegated account instead, so you both have access to the emails in one place without having to turn forwarding on and off.

In the past many staff have forwarded email to their own personal email account (eg @hotmail.com, @yahoo.com or @gmail.com). This was understandable due to the limitations the old system/webmail. But now please try this opportunity to separate the two by not forwarding to a personal account. There are three advantages in doing so:

• It will make collaboration with colleagues at Bristol easier: the contact directory is populated with staff details, calendar appointments can be shared with colleagues, and (coming a little after the launch) teaching commitments from Syllabus+ will appear.
• It makes it easier to separate your work and personal lives. Email can be a significant source of stress, and it is good to be able to switch off from work email at times when you are on holiday.
• It keeps the data 'inside' the University. It is a requirement of the recently adopted University Information Security Policy that University business must be conducted using UoB email accounts, not personal accounts. Data stored in our instance of Google is owned by the University, and access to it is strictly limited. The same may not be true of your personal email account.

Gmail offers an out-of-office feature, which allows you to set a start and end date. Instructions are available on the email support page. Please note, if you are using Outlook, its out-of-office should not be used, because it will only work if your computer is switched on. Visit the email support pages for more information about limitations in Outlook functionality.

Please note, out-of-office will not work over the Easter week-end for users being migrated - see our blog post about this for further details.

When using the Google web interface, you can look up other staff details in a built in contact directory for Bristol staff within the Google interface. This contact directory doesn't include students. Therefore if you type a student name within Google their email address doesn't come up automatically.

To contact students you can look up an email address in the Contact Directory or in SITS. You can contact students via Blackboard, via MyStudents in the portal, or use a Sympa mailing list. If you have a small group of students you contact regularly you can add them to your address book within Google.

This was originally a design decision during the project. A common problem in the old email system was that it was easy to accidentally send email to the wrong person. This happened surprisingly often. There are many people with the same name in the University, and when typing in a name it could autocomplete to the wrong email address.

However we've had multiple requests from people who would like to see students in the contact directory, so we will review this again after the Google launch and find out which the majority of staff would prefer.

It is not possible in Gmail to allow access to parts of your inbox or archive. You can only allow full access to both your email inbox and archive. Information on how to grant this access can be found here.

Alternatively, you can request the creation of a new delegated account and ask us to move the emails you want to share into there. You can then grant delegate access to this account to whoever needs it. If you would like to do this, we need to know the following:

1. The email address you would like for the new account.
2. The specific location of the sub-folder(s) you want to be transferred.
3. The usernames of people who you wish to have access.

You should send this request, ensuring you have included the above information, to service-desk@bristol.ac.uk.

PLEASE NOTE: We can only start processing these requests after the rollout of Google to all staff members on 3rd April 2013.

Google offers some new powerful ways of managing your email. The way you use Gmail is very much down to what suits you. We recommend you spend some time exploring the options.  You might be interested in reading some project blog posts about organising your emails or a staff members experience of getting started with Gmail.

There are a number of sophisticated phishing scams currently going to staff asking for their username and password to set up their email of Google account.  Please note that you will never be asked by the University to provide your username and password by email.  See the news item for details.

Shared mailboxes will be moved along with email. Shared mailboxes will become Google delegate accounts. A shared mailbox survey has been sent to all shared mailboxes eligible for migration. The survey will help identify any issues in advance of the move.

Details of delegate accounts can be found on the IT Services' support website.

We plan to continue using the existing Sympa software for mailing lists for the foreseeable future. In the long term we will use Google Groups, which has mailing list features.

Sympa mailing lists will work as before, except that Gmail will not send a copy to the sender even if they are a member of the list - a copy will be in their Sent folder.

A description of the main difference can be found on our support web pages.

Please contact the IT Service Desk providing details of the shared mailbox name.

Please see our delegated accounts support website.

• Combining our email and calendar into one product enables us to provide you with an integrated suite of tools, one of the requests made by staff. The integration with Gmail means you can add events directly from an email you are composing.
• Google calendar makes it possible to easily invite, and to share your whole calendar, with external collaborators.
• Google calendar is accessible from wherever you are, including most mobile devices.
• Google enables you to set up text message reminders for events (be aware that mobile operators may charge for this service).
•  Oracle Calendar is now an out-of-date system and is no longer supported by the supplier.  

No new events should be added to Oracle Calendar after 5pm on Thursday 11 April. At that point new events can be created in Google calendar (but check Oracle calendar for potential clashes). On Monday 15th  April, 2013, the migration of data from Oracle Calendar will be completed and it will become read only and Google calendar should be used from that date.

While you can view your Google calendar before the 15 April we strongly advise that you do not add content until the evening of Thursday 11 April. Ideally, you should avoid the following until migration is complete on 15 April:

• Changing settings
• Sharing / linking to other Google calendars
• Deleting duplicate events
• Adding any missing events

All staff are expected to use it for booking University events, including meetings. From 15 April, the University will use Google calendar for booking all events.  

We recommend using the Chrome web browser to view your Google calendar, as this provides the most integrated experience for staff.

You can log in directly through your Google account in any browser (once in Google you will see a Calendar link in the toolbar across the top of your screen). Accessing your Gmail account will take you there.

You will also be able to log in directly to Google calendar from the IT Services Google calendar support site. If you wish to log in to Google Calendar directly from Google, you will need to submit your password to Google.

The use of the Oracle Connector and Outlook together have been discontinued. In future the primary access route to Gmail and Google Calendar will be through the web using Google Chrome. 

If you have arranged to access Gmail through Outlook, Google calendar will also be synchronised.

Undergraduate and taught postgraduate students are on a separate domain and do not automatically have access to staff calendars. If you choose to, you can make your calendar available to specific students, or enable them to book specific appointment slots with you. See the Google Calendar support pages for information on how to do this.  

The aim is to show information form Syllabus+ in Google calendar. We are currently working on this. This integration will not be available by the launch date for Google Calendar.  

 See the Google calendar support pages for information.

Events from 1st August 2012 onwards will be migrated to Google calendar for all staff by 15 April 20013. This includes all future events that you have already created in Oracle Calendar. Oracle Calendar will remain available as read-only until August 2013. 

We will automatically migrate:

• Meeting titles
• Details in the details tab
• Times
• Invitees
• Ownership
• Daily notes
• Daily events (these will appear in Google calendar as an all day event).  

We are unable to migrate to Google calendar:

• Attachments
• Tasks
• Personal notes
• Event and Project Calendars
• Contacts/Address book
• Groups (you can set up groups in Google that can be used in both Gmail and calendar - See Google's Contacts support.)

Instructions for saving older Oracle entries are available on the calendar support website.

Support and advice will be provided about how to manage the transfer of existing information/processes into Google calendar.

Please note that there are known issues with the migration of all events from Oracle Calendar, please see the known issues on the Google Calendar support website.

Despite considerable work on the technical means to migrate our existing data from Oracle Calendar to Google our testing has shown that there are a number of specific circumstances where some data transfers incorrectly. In particular, we have identified the following issues:

• Some meetings have come across as private (and hence show as ‘busy’ when viewed by your colleagues) when they were public or open to a larger group in Oracle. The owner and their designates (eg PAs) can still see the meetings. Attendees can still see the details in their own calendars, just not in the owners.
• Meetings with complex repeating rules: the repeating link may break and some events may be missing, have incorrect details and/or be duplicated.
• Meetings created in Outlook : Some of them will migrate with the word ‘TENTATIVE’ prefixed to the meeting title, even if they were not initially added as tentative and some may be duplicated.
• Some meetings may have duplicate entries, particularly those with lots of attendees. This problem affects some individuals significantly more than others, particularly staff within IT Services & the Strategic Projects Office.

The experience at other universities moving from Oracle Calendar to Google has been similar - a ‘no issue’ migration is not possible due to technical differences between the systems. However, we have built on the work at other universities and believe that our migration is as good as or better than has been achieved elsewhere. We believe that we have done as much as we can to improve the process and additional work will not overcome the remaining issues.

• Oracle calendar will be available to review content until at least the end of August 2013, so staff can check their migrated events.
• Any events that do not get migrated will be identified and the owners of those events informed.
• No events will be lost as the information will be available in Oracle Calendar and staff are able to export their own data going back to August 2008.  

Recommended Actions

• Please wait for the completion of the data migration on Monday 15 April before checking events.
• From 15 April please take some time to check the accuracy of your future meetings.
• Do not delete duplicates unless you are the 'Owner' of the event to avoid any confusion. You can check duplicate event details: in the ‘Calendar’ field keep the one that shows your account name, and delete the ones that shows 'Oracle Migration'. If all refer to 'Oracle Migration' the choice is yours on which one to keep; you can also check the list of invitees to help select the correct duplicates to remove.
• 'Owners', will have been informed that some meetings have not migrated and they should be responsible for recreating those meetings in Google Calendar.

Data going further back (up to August 2012) will be migrated automatically to Google calendar. If you need your previous event data earlier than this you can save it into a spreadsheet (Oracle Calendar provides the option to download data to a spreadsheet), then import it into Google - instructions are available on the calendar support website.. Oracle Calendar will remain available as read-only until at least August 2013.

The default privacy setting for all new calendar data is open within the University for everyone on the staff domain. This is part of the University’s push to reduce the administrative overhead of booking meetings, and has a lot of senior backing. It in no way reduces your control over your diary: see our Guiding Principles.

If your Oracle diary is currently locked down, all data will be migrated as private to preserve current assumed privacy. Privacy settings for new events will depend on your default setting.

Yes they are, all resources will be carried over to Google, with designates, appearing exactly as they do now in Oracle.

Access will be restricted to certain resources, just as it is now in Oracle Calendar.

Work is currently underway to ensure this is the case.

With Google calendar you are no longer able to prevent your designate from viewing your private events (personal events in Oracle Calendar). If you wish to keep your personal appointments private, we suggest you set up a personal Google Calendar within your Google Calendar account and share free/busy times with your designate.

Work is planned to identify existing Calendar Co-ordinators and their potential future role, if any.

The University has developed a set of 5 Guiding Principles which will underpin staff usage of the University Google Calendar.

It allows you to make any file you have, accessible from anywhere with a web browser. Also, if you upload a document in the Microsoft Office format, then you will be able to have real time collaboration with any person that you choose to share the document with.

Drive, unlike Dropbox et al, is covered under the contract the University has signed with Google. This means your data is safe from any form of data mining or advertising and always remains the property of the creator. However, whilst Drive is safe - you should not upload any sensitive or personally identifiable information to Drive - unless it is encrypted and, if suitable, anonymised. The University has extensive data security advice.

You can find out more about Drive on our support website.

Google Talk is the corporate 'instant messaging' product from Google. It allows you to quickly ping a message to your colleagues rather than disturbing them via phone or writing a lengthy email. If you wish, it will also allow you to video chat your colleagues around the world.

You remain in control as people have to ask your permission to chat the first time they try to, and you always have the ability to turn Google Talk off. You can find more information on Google Talk at: https://sites.google.com/a/googleapps.com/google-apps-learning-center-v4/chat

Please note that the University Google Talk does not log conversations in any way. All conversations are automatically off the record as described at: http://support.google.com/talk/answer/29291?hl=en

Within the scope of this project we are only rolling out Google Email, Google Docs, Google Talk and Contacts and Google calendar to staff. This means that other products like Google Sites and Google+ aren't currently available There are several reasons for this:

• This is a big project, we're trying to provide as many benefits as possible, but we do this by rolling services out in manageable chunks,
• For some areas, such as providing websites, the University already has preferred non-Google tools, which we use to provide a consistent service.
• We are not enabling any apps that involve money. If you wish to use services like Google Wallet or the Play Store, we suggest you use a personal Google account.

Occasionally, you may see links to services we haven't enabled within Google. Sorry for this - please ignore such links.

If you would like to investigate the use of Google tools for an area outside the scope of the project, please contact the project team (new-email@bristol.ac.uk). We may be able to help you set up a separate test accounts or a test Google domain. You can of course also sign up to other Google services as an individual consumer for your personal use.

The install of Google Chrome that we are rolling out includes Gmail Offline. You need to enable it first (in your Gmail settings), but then it works by syncing your email to your computer – meaning that if you lose a network connection (e.g. you turn your laptop off and go take a train), then you will still be able to send new email and read synced mail. The interface is slightly different, but should be familiar to Gmail users.

In Chrome, Google calendar is also available offline for it’s major features. This means you can read your current schedule and RSVP to any invitations - all without a network connection. Any changes you make are then automatically synced back next time you’re online. You again need to consciously turn it on by clicking the ‘cog’ icon and choosing offline, but then it will always be available offline to you. 

For Google Docs/Drive, if you lose network connection, you don’t lose the ability to edit or read documents, you carry on as normal. As with Gmail, you need to make a conscious decision to turn it on (as it syncs data to your local PC, this is to stop it syncing data to PCs you don’t normally use), but any changes you make offline will be synced back as soon as your network connection comes back. 

The best and easiest way is to use the web version of Google, which will work from anywhere; just go to www.bristol.ac.uk/email/

You can set up your home computer to access email using any software you wish (see instructions on the IT services website).

Instructions will be provided in the mobile support section of the IT Services website on how you can configure iPhones and iPads to access your University email. This is quite straightforward (easier than the current system). The Calendar migration will also be straightforward, as it will work with the built-in calendar app for iPhone and iPad (no need to buy and configure the separate app currently required).

Answers to questions of privacy and security in Google email and calendar are available on our 'Privacy and security' web page.

Google have no scheduled downtime - when the supplier does maintenance in one location the service is run from another. Our mail is provided from six different data centres, so there's a lot of redundancy in the system.

In 2010, Google Mail was available 99.984% of the time - that means that on average it *wasn't* available for a total of seven minutes per month. This is typically a cumulative total of a few seconds here and there across the month.

The Google Apps web interface offers accessibility features in Gmail, Google calendar, and Google Docs, including keyboard shortcuts and screen reader support. Your email & calendar within Google can also be accessed using third-party software and devices (eg on smartphones & tablets or within Outlook or other software on the PC). The best solution for you may depend on your individual accessibility requirements.

The following information may be useful:

• Accessibility and Google Apps (Stanford University)

• Accessibility features in Google Apps (Google Support)

If you encounter any difficulties or have questions about using your assistive technologies with the Google Apps platform, please let us know by contacting the IT Service Desk or emailing the project team at new-email@bristol.ac.uk.

There's a long list of universities in the UK and US who have switched their student email to Google. Some have been running this way for many years. In recent years universities have started switching their staff email too. Comparable institutions in the UK include:

• Sheffield (have used Google Mail for their students and staff for the last two years, and recently adopted Google Calendar);

• Cambridge (provide Google Calendar for their staff)

See Google's full list of educational institutions.

For more information about how to use Gmail, see the IT Services email support website.

The University has support website for Google calendar on the IT Services' website.

The University has a support website for Google Drive on the IT Services' website.

In addition to the optional top tips training sessions available via the Staff Development website we have a series of  Roadshows which we encorage you to attend.  We also have a range of support information available on the University Google applications website.

In addition to the optional top tips training sessions available via the Staff Development website and the Roadshows, we have a range of support documentation including a Guide to Gmail and Guide to Google Calendar which will be available to all staff and Postgraduate Research students.

During the change to Gmail and Google calendar information points will be available across the University to speak to staff to get advice. In addition staff can contact the IT Service Desk for support.

Additional online support is available via the University Google support website including access to Google documentation on getting started using their services.  There will also be optional top tips sessions and the IT Service Desk will also be available to help.

• Google and UoB Contract (This is a confidential document and should not be distributed outside of the University)

• Google Apps For Education

For more information on the project, see www.bristol.ac.uk/new-email/.

You can get in touch with the project team by emailing new-email@bristol.ac.uk.