UAA transitioning to Google Apps for all email and personal calendaring

Dear colleagues,

On April 14th of this year, UA President Johnsen announced his desire that all UA campuses begin to use Google Apps for Education for email and calendaring within 30 days. Due to the complexities of transitioning an institution as large as UAA, concerns about proper handling of personal health information (PHI) that may transit our information systems, and to ensure that no data would be lost, UAA leadership requested an extension. Since then, IT staff have been diligently researching and planning a path to successfully meet our collective goal.

At this point, we have established what we believe to be the best path forward, while minimizing the disruption to faculty and staff. However, due to the limited time we have available to accomplish the migration, the process demanded that we strike a balance between convenience and expediency. I want to assure everyone that no data (email items, contacts, or calendar items) will be lost or deleted without your consent.

At a high level, here's what you can expect:

• UAA will begin the transition process on June 26.
• When it's your turn to move, you will receive an email when the automated process begins and another email when it ends. The process should take no more than one day.
• During this time, you can still use email as you normally do.
• The migration process will automatically move:
• 90 days of email
• Exception: Gmail will not accept attachments larger than 25MB. We are developing information resources you can use to help you manually move larger attachments to other services.
• One year of calendar items
• All your existing contacts
• Once moved, you will need to use the Google mail (Gmail) system to send and receive email.
• Instructions on how to use Gmail and Google Calendars will be provided through web resources.
• Your new email address will be username@alaska.edu.  Mail sent to your old address (e.g., username@uaa.alaska.edu, username@kpc.alaska.edu, etc.) will be automatically forwarded to your new Gmail account.
• A relative few UAA users will need special handling in order to adequately protect PHI under HIPAA requirements. These users will not be transitioned to Gmail and Google Calendar at this time. As the Google Apps services are altered to meet the HIPAA requirements and specific training is available for affected users, we will revisit the transition of these users.
• Once all accounts have been moved, you will be able to request that all your remaining (older than 90 days) email be moved to your Gmail account. We will provide instructions on how to do so at a later time.
• If you do not request the remaining data to be moved, you can expect to keep access to your old email at least through the end of 2016. We will rely on existing UAA governance to advise us regarding how long and how much legacy email data to retain.
• Office 365 services, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Skype for Business and other messaging and data services will remain in place, even after the change. As we learn more about workarounds or additional steps that are needed, we will update the project web page.
• To stay-up-to-date on the latest migration news, learn more about on the project, or view known issues and workarounds, please visit the email migration project page at uaa.alaska.edu/google-migration.

I recognize the fact that a move of this nature is an unexpected disruption to an already busy summer and fall class preparation season. The plan described above strikes a balance between our need to join the rest of UA in a unified email and calendar system and a sincere desire to minimize any disruption in service or to avoid inadvertent exposure of protected information. UAS has already transitioned their staff and faculty to the Gmail and Google Calendar services. As "early adopters" they discovered a significant number of issues - some of which have been solved and solutions adopted as part of our transition. We are grateful to the people at UAS and OIT who have worked with us over the last month to find an appropriate balance.

If you need assistance or have questions, please contact the UAA Call Center at 786-4646 or toll-free at 1-877-633-3888.

Thank you for your patience as we move through this process.

Pat Shier Chief Information Officer Information Technology Services University of Alaska Anchorage

June Archive