Communications

1/31/18 Subject: Ready, Set... Gmail! (Where's that important contract I stored in my trash can)

As reported in the Grapevine (or you may have heard through the proverbial grapevine) the district is moving its email system to Gmail. If you haven’t read the Grapevine article there’s a link to it at the bottom of this email. Please read it to get an overview of what’s happening

In an effort to prepare for this huge upcoming project the Technology Department will be sending out regular emails with helpful info, tips, tricks and instructions, like the one below. Please watch for emails with the subject “Ready, Set,… Gmail!” and take a few minutes to read and talk about them with your peers.

A smooth transition to Gmail will require everyone to do their part. One of the first things everyone can do now (and yes I mean everyone and yes I mean now) is to cleanup his or her mailbox. Remove as many messages as you can that you don’t need. Clear out those folders that you put newsletters and group messages in that you really never look at again. Empty your Deleted Items folder. For those people that think their “Deleted Items” folder is a good place to store messages long term, find a new place to put them. The “Deleted Items” folder won’t be migrated to Gmail but even though it won’t be migrated, a “Deleted Items” folder with thousands of items will slow down the process of moving your email to the new platform. So clean out those folders and keep them clean. With that said, if you have folders with 10,000 “must have” emails they will all be migrated. No one is going to look at your folder and ask you if you REALLY need that “Thank You email” from 2004. If you need it, keep it. Just don’t keep it in the “Deleted Items” folder.

For those of you that are thinking, “I know how I can help. I’ll move all my emails offline to a personal PST file.” Thanks, but you are better off leaving them in the cloud. More on PST files in the upcoming days.

Ready, Set… Gmail! Start this cleanup process now.

2/1/2018 Subject: Ready, Set... Gmail! (Who am I now?)

Another question I suspect many of you have is, “will my district email address now be myname@gmail.com?”. That’s an easy answer, NO. Our email addresses will not change. However the move to Google will give us some flexibility in creating new email addresses. We will no longer be forced to wait for KDE to decide if there needs to be a “2” at the end of our names. Two people with common names, like “James Jones” will no longer have to be james.jones@daviess.kyschools.us and james.jones2@daviess.kyschools.us. I will have the ability to add a middle initial, or use a nickname to help minimize duplicate email addresses.

One confusing part of this is that while you will only have one address that is for email, you will have 2 or 3 accounts in the cloud that are associated with that email address.

1. First - Your Google account - steve.burton@daviess.kyschools.us This will become your email address and its password will stay in sync with your computer login password.
2. Second - Your Office365 account, will still be steve.burton@daviess.kyschools.us because we will still have access to the Microsoft online tools, such as OneDrive, Word, Skype for Business, etc. This account and password will stay in sync with your Google account so if you have a name change your address will change on both platforms.
3. Third - For you long timers that were around back when the state provided our email on Microsoft’s Live.EDU service, you still have an account there that you can login to with your email address and the password you had at that time. This account is now considered by Microsoft as a personal account. If you are using any of Microsoft’s personal services (I use healthvault.com) when you sign into it you are using your old Live.EDU account. Since this is a personal account its password does not sync with your “real” email password, it will be whatever your password was at the time KDE moved us away from Live.EDU. You can change the password (and even the email address associated with this account) by following the directions on Live.com (https://account.live.com). Note: If you are no longer using the old Live.EDU you should log into it one last time and close the account to prevent hackers from taking control of it - (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12412/microsoft-account-how-to-close-account)

Upcoming “Ready, Set… Gmail!” topics:

• Secondary and Shared calendars
• Start getting familiar with Gmail via YouTube tutorials
• Setting up iOS devices with Google mail client (not iOS mail client)
• Determining if I have a PST that needs backing up
• Saving/exporting to PSTs as a backup
• Importing PSTs into Office365 cloud
• Importing PSTs into Gmail

2/2/18 Subject: Ready, Set… Gmail! (What about students?)

Thanks for the question. The quick answer is that student email, contacts and calendars will move just like staff. Our older students probably have personal Microsoft accounts like I mentioned in my earlier email. Since students don’t use Outlook’s desktop client all of their email is already in Microsoft’s Office365 cloud so they won’t have to do anything, and all their messages will be migrated.

Students in classes where their teacher utilizes Google Classroom will benefit from the tighter integration of Classroom, email and calendar.

As for this year’s seniors, Google makes it very easy to move all their email, documents and other files stored on Google’s servers using a service called “Google Takeout”. We will be getting instructions out to everyone on how use this tool to move their information whether they are a graduating senior or a retiring teacher.

2/5/18 Ready, Set… Gmail! (Now that I know who I am, will I know who everybody else is? Part 1)

In the next 2 emails we’re going to tackle subjects that I haven’t had any questions about, yet. Contacts, Distribution Lists and everyone’s favorite, the Global Address list.

First - Contacts - If you’re one of those people that uses Contacts in Outlook you’ll be pleased to know that all your individual contact entries will migrate. And if you follow the instructions on setting up your mobile device that we’ll publish soon, they will also sync to your phone from your new Google account. There may be a brief time when they are missing from your phone during the migration but they will soon show up again. This was not expected by the districts that did the first moves to Gmail and caused a short panic. You can thank them that we will all be prepared for contacts to go missing and for information on a lot of other things we’re doing behind the scenes based on their experience. Notice I said individual contacts, watch for tomorrow's message for more info.

One more thing, if you are like me and you’ve stored contacts on your phone, in Outlook, in Gmail and who knows where else. Your contacts are a mess. Mine are; if I had as many kids as I have entries for my kids in my contacts they would write a poem about Becki and me. “There was an old couple who lived in a shoe…” The point here is the exact opposite of my earlier message about cleaning up messages in your mailbox. Don’t bother cleaning up your contacts until after the migration is complete and the dust has settled. Contacts are a small part of the data to be moved and won’t affect the time it takes to migrate. However, removing 2 of 3 duplicate contacts to find out later that the one of the ones you removed was actually the one that would have migrated is not a good thing. I would suggest not doing any contacts cleanup beforehand. My expectation is that once everything is in the Google cloud and Outlook and the iOS mail and contacts apps are out of the way it will be much easier to keep our contacts nice and orderly.

2/6/18 Ready, Set… Gmail! (Now that I know who I am, will I know who everybody else is? Part 2)

Distribution lists - They are called by lots of names, Distribution Lists (DLs), Distribution Groups (DGs), Contact groups or just Groups. Typically, DLs or DGs (which are the same thing), are stored on the server or in the cloud, are shared by everyone in the organization and managed by the tech team. Examples are “Daviess Co AHS Teachers” or “Daviess Co Counselors”. These will all be migrated. A few schools have DGs that they manage, they will not be migrated but we will work with the schools to get them recreated. The real rub will be those contact groups you’ve created in and only live in Outlook. Groups like “TES 4th Grade Teachers” or “CVMS Leadership Team” or “My Favorite Techs”. Those will have to be recreated by you under the Google Contacts app. It’s not hard to do and in the coming weeks we’ll get you instructions on how to list the members of your existing Outlook groups so that you can easily add them to Google Contacts.

Last - THE GAL - The Global Address list that contains every staff and student in the state is going away, well not so much going away as shrinking to a more reasonable size. I think this is a good thing since it seemed to be abused more than used. But for those of you that use it, here’s how it will work after the migration. We will be able to see every staff person and student in our district that has an email account. We will be able to see a select set of people from other districts based on each district’s decisions. Every district will be allowed to include about 20% of their staff in the new, better, smaller GAL. This will be people that need to be seen by other districts. People such as central office staff, principals, counselors, office staff, etc. This doesn’t mean we can’t email anyone in the state, it just means we can’t pick them from the GAL. If I need to email my technical counterpart in Barren County and his district (or he) decided it wasn’t necessary for him to be listed in the new GAL then I would just have to know his email address. If I didn’t, I might go to the Barren County Schools website and look it up, contact someone else that might know it or even email someone that their CO that could get it for me. Once I had it, I could add it to my Google Contacts if I wanted. And remember, nobody’s email address is changing, even in other districts, so if your Contacts already has email addresses for your counterparts in other districts, you will already have their email addresses and you won’t even need the GAL.

2/8/18 Ready, Set… Gmail! (Can you spell PST?)

I’ve mentioned PST files several times in my RSG! emails and received lots of questions about what PSTs are and what to do with them. The easy answer it that if you don’t know what a PST file is or if you do know and aren’t purposefully using them then you don’t need to read any further.

But before you stop reading let me also add a BIG PLUG for Aaron Yeiser and Annette Sapp. While I’ve been writing these cute emails each day and working with KDE to get all the behind-the-scenes techy stuff ready for the move to Gmail, they have been working hard creating resources that all of you can use to help make your move to Gmail as smooth as possible. Watch for tomorrow’s RSG! email where we will reveal this exciting new website.

Now, if you are not sure or if you in the group of staff that use PST files (also known as personal folders), then you will want to pay attention to this email.

PST files are a way to store email on your local computer and not in the cloud. If you want to keep those emails you will need to import your PST file(s) into the Office365 cloud so they will be migrated over to Google when the time comes. Aaron has created an easy to follow video that helps you determine if you have PSTs and then how to import them into Microsoft’s cloud so they are ready to be migrated. The process is painless but may take time depending on how many messages you have in your PSTs. It’s best to start the process late in the day and leave it running all night. Don’t wait to do this, do it now. If for any reason you think it didn’t work you can run it again, just be sure to click the button that says do not import duplicates. And as always, we’re here to help. Click here to watch the video.

2/9/18 Ready, Set… Gmail! (The website)

You’ve read all my emails. Right? You’ve cleaned up your mailbox. Right? You’re looking forward to the big switch. Right? But you still have questions. Who you gonna call? Where do you get training? Where do you get answers to your other questions? Where can you go to get all of the information you need to make the jump to Gmail? Well, we’ve got a website for that,http://readysetgmail.dcps.net.

On this website you will find who to contact in your building. You will have links to videos on all the aspects of moving to and using Gmail. Many of these videos, along with the rest of the site are a product of Aaron and Annette’s hard work. But we’ve also “borrowed” videos from districts that have already gone through the process. There’s also an archive of all my RSG! emails as well as a FAQ page. This website will grow as more information becomes available so be sure to check the site often.

If you have a question or think of something that needs to be covered please send Aaron, Annette and myself an email and we’ll make sure these subjects and questions get covered.

So now, Ready… Set… Gmail!

2/12/18 Subject: Ready, Set… Gmail! (In the year 2525)

(Most of you are too young to get that reference. Google it.)

Calendars. We’ve not talked much about calendars other than to say they will be migrated. Let’s deep dive into exactly what will be migrated automatically and what will have to be migrated manually. If you don’t use the calendar function in Outlook or Office365, you can stop reading now. You are good to go.

If you use calendars, then please read the rest of this email and then come back up and fill out the Secondary Calendar Survey to help capture a list of the staff that are using Secondary and/or Shared calendars. Please fill out the form for each secondary and/or shared calendar you have.

Secondary Calendar Survey

First, the easy one: Your primary calendar. This is what the majority of Outlook Calendar users use. This calendar is your personal, private calendar. No one else sees it. It will be migrated.

Next, is a secondary calendar. This may be a personal calendar that you keep birthday days in or where you keep personal appointments because you don’t want them mixed in with your work calendar. This is NOT a school calendar that the principal may have shared with staff. We’ll deal with them below. Secondary personal calendars will not be migrated automatically on the first day we move to Gmail but can be migrated afterwards. We will send instructions on how you can do this and we will available to assist you.

Then there are shared calendars. Shared calendars come in two types. The most widely used is the shared calendar that schedules school events, lab time, department meetings, etc. These are secondary calendars “owned” by someone, such as the Principal, AD or Lab Aide and are shared with a lot of people. Some of these may allow other users to add to the calendar, but for the purpose of moving them to Google we will need to identify a single person as the owner. These calendars will be migrated after we make the switch and have to be shared again with the appropriate users.

The last and probably least used is the shared personal calendar. This may be used by an administrator to share his/her calendar with an administrative assistant or even sharing a calendar with a spouse. Since these are primary calendars that have been shared, they will be migrated for the owner, but the owner will then have to issue invitations to others to see and/or edit the calendar again using Google’s sharing rules.

Remember to go back to the Secondary Calendar Survey link now if you use a Secondary or Shared Calendar.

2/13/18 Subject: Ready, Set… Gmail! (In the year 2525)

Calendars. We’ve not talked much about calendars other than to say they will be migrated. Let’s deep dive into exactly what will be migrated automatically and what will have to be migrated manually. If you don’t use the calendar function in Outlook or Office365, you can stop reading now. You are good to go.

If you use calendars, then please read the rest of this email and then come back up and fill out the Secondary Calendar Survey to help capture a list of the staff that are using Secondary and/or Shared calendars. Please fill out the form for each secondary and/or shared calendar you have.

Secondary Calendar Survey

First, the easy one: Your primary calendar. This is what the majority of Outlook Calendar users use. This calendar is your personal, private calendar. No one else sees it. It will be migrated.

Next, is a secondary calendar. This may be a personal calendar that you keep birthday days in or where you keep personal appointments because you don’t want them mixed in with your work calendar. This is NOT a school calendar that the principal may have shared with staff. We’ll deal with them below. Secondary personal calendars will not be migrated automatically on the first day we move to Gmail but can be migrated afterwards. We will send instructions on how you can do this and we will available to assist you.

Then there are shared calendars. Shared calendars come in two types. The most widely used is the shared calendar that schedules school events, lab time, department meetings, etc. These are secondary calendars “owned” by someone, such as the Principal, AD or Lab Aide and are shared with a lot of people. Some of these may allow other users to add to the calendar, but for the purpose of moving them to Google we will need to identify a single person as the owner. These calendars will be migrated after we make the switch and have to be shared again with the appropriate users.

The last and probably least used is the shared personal calendar. This may be used by an administrator to share his/her calendar with an administrative assistant or even sharing a calendar with a spouse. Since these are primary calendars that have been shared, they will be migrated for the owner, but the owner will then have to issue invitations to others to see and/or edit the calendar again using Google’s sharing rules.

Remember to go back to the Secondary Calendar Survey link now if you use a Secondary or Shared Calendar.

Grapevine Article - 2/14/18 - Ready, Set, Gmail! We have a date!

We have set our date with KDE to throw the “big switch” to Gmail. Thursday, March 22, 2018 is G-Day! The switch will start at the end of the workday (4:30pm). Of course lots of preliminary work will take place the weeks before G-Day and there will be plenty to do in the days after G-Day, but when you get to school/work Friday morning, 3/23/18, you will log into https://gmail.com to get your email.

Interestingly, I‘m hearing from more of you that are anxiously anticipating the move as I am from people who are anxiously worrying about the move. Let me remind you that many districts have or will make the move before 3/22/18 and we’ll watch and learn from every one of them.

Luckily we had a district close to us that was one of the first to jump to Gmail to learn from. Here’s what they have to say about moving to Gmail.

“When we saw how many teachers and students were taking advantage of the Google Tools, and learned how many already were familiar with Gmail personally, it made sense to more seamlessly integrate the mail service. Our migration went extremely smoothly, with less than 1% issue on recovery of items (and even those we were able to recover later). As with any change our end users are learning about features and functionalities and have questions. But, we have no regrets on the move and welcome the versatility and feature set Gmail has to offer.” - Dr. Matthew Constant, Chief Academic Officer, Owensboro Public Schools

DCPS is in the same situation. More and more of our staff and students are using Google’s tools in instructional and well as office settings.

We have created a website to house all the information and training resources to help you make the transition. Visit http://readysetgmail.dcps.net often to stay up to date on the project.

Here is the timeline:

• February 1 - Begin testing migration processes for individual accounts.
• February 1 - Announce move to Gmail with “first steps” for users. “Ready, Set… Gmail!”
• February 13 - STC Train the trainer session.
• February 15 - Begin testing migration on a larger set of accounts.
• February 19 - Begin faculty meetings to introduce training resources.
• March 1 - Determine heavy Microsoft OneNote users and verify their migration plans.
• March 1 - Determine owners of shared calendars.
• March 9 - Begin email/calendar migration for email from 7/1/17 forward for all users (students and staff).
• March 22 - Throw switch to make Gmail live.
• March 24 - Migrate users email for older than 7/1/17 months.

2/14/18 Ready, Set… Gmail! (Sign your life away)

Let’s go with a lightweight tip today.

Signatures, you know, all the information some people (like me) put at the bottom of every email to make them look important (wait, is that me too?). Well signatures are one small item that will not be migrated. But fear not, you can re-create your signature in Gmail. In fact you can open up an old email that has your signature and copy & paste it into Google’s signature setup. There’s already a video up on http://readysetgmail.dcps.net on how to setup your signature.

While we’re talking about adding information to emails. Gmail also gives us some tools to quickly respond to simple emails with canned responses. Anyone who has emailed me to do something has probably got my verbose response “Done”. With Gmail, I won’t have to type all 4 of those characters, I can just click a button and Google will put Done in the message for me. Seriously, most people will respond to an email with a quick confirmation or thanks. The time using shortcuts like canned response will add up. We’ll get some instructions up on this feature soon.

2/15/18 Ready, Set… Gmail! (Dirty Little Secret)

So, has anybody discovered our dirty little secret? You can log into Gmail with your district email address and password, now!

Of course, the mailbox will be empty and none of your calendar or contact items will there until we start migrating. But what a you can do is start learning about Gmail. You can follow along with the videos on http://readysetgmail.dcps.net in your very own account. You can start customizing the way Gmail looks and feels. You can go ahead and add your all-important email signature. You can even send from that account, just remember that any replies will go to your normal email account until G-day. You can also go ahead and set up your phone or tablet. So go ahead; Explore, Learn and Play.

And while you’re trying out your new Gmail account if you come across a question you’d like answered or a topic you think we need to cover, please submit it on our Q&A page.

2/21/18 Subject: Ready, Set… Gmail! (These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.)

Android phone users, we all know you are techier than IPhone users so we need your help. There are so many different Android phones and versions out there we can NOT create Gmail instructions for them all. If you have an Android phone or tablet and have the ability to record the steps you take to set it up for your new district Gmail account we want to hear from you.

Please capture the steps. You can use screenshots, a video taken with another phone or just write out the steps. Then email them (sorry, mind control won’t work) to Aaron, Annette and/or me along with the phone make, model and Android version and we’ll compile them and post them on http://readysetgmail.dcps.net for everyone to use. Thanks in advance for your help.

May the Google be with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE03lYoVpFg

2/26/18 Subject: Ready, Set… Gmail! (Life moves pretty fast)

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and [clean out your mailbox] once in a while, you could miss it. – Ferris Bueller

We now have less than 4 weeks until G-Day, that means you have less than 2 weeks to get your mailbox cleaned up. I know that most of you reading these emails have already started cleaning up your mailboxes but what about your colleagues who haven’t. Just like Cameron, it takes a little encouragement to get some people to clean up their mailbox and it takes a whole district singing “Danke Schoen” to make a smooth move to Gmail. Everyone needs to clean up their mailbox. It’s time to apply some good ‘ol adolescent peer pressure, so inspire, cajole, pressure and remind your fellow co-workers to get their mailbox cleaned up before Friday March 9.

Here are a few tips you can give to your peers to help them clean up their mailbox:

• Right click on your Junk folder and pick “Empty” or “Delete All”. While we are not migrating the Junk folder, the system will still have to look at every piece of email so getting rid of those messages ahead of time will help.
• Don’t forget to look at your Sent items folder. This folder can be very handy when you need to find a copy of that spreadsheet you sent your principal, but it can also be full of messages that just say “Thanks” or “See you later” so be sure and look through it and get rid of any messages you can.
• Newsletters. I get newsletters from several different tech groups daily. I read them when I can but many of them I file away to read later only to never look at them again. Do a search on the email address of the newsletter and you can quickly find and delete those.
• Empty your Deleted items folder. Just like the Junk folder we aren’t going to migrate Deleted items. This means two things. If you keep important messages in Deleted items file them someplace else and then empty the Deleted items folder so the system does not have to look at all those messages during the migration.
• http://readysetgmail.dcps.net. Remember to visit the Training/Premigration page for more tips.

3/7/18 Subject: Ready, Set… Gmail! (It’s Friday!)

Sorry, I don’t mean today is Friday, I mean Friday is the day you need to have your mailboxes cleaned up. I will begin migrating staff email Saturday morning so if you’re one of those “last minute” kind of people, that minute is here.

Remember, if you need help, start with http://readysetgmail.dcps.net. It has all the info you need as well as who to contact in your building if you need that personal touch.

3/13/18 Subject: Ready, Set… Gmail! (Movin’ along)

Status update: As of this morning, we’ve migrated all contacts, 6 months worth of calendar items and are 88% through with migrating 6 months worth of email messages for all staff. Don’t panic, we’re migrating all email, no matter how old it is, I’m just starting with the current school year. If you like numbers and charts, so far we’ve migrated about 2 million messages with less than an .09% failure. Most of you guys and gals did a great job of cleaning up your mailboxes (and the rest… I know who you are...).

Now that the migration has started you can start logging into Gmail and checking it out but remember new messages will still be delivered to your Office365 account until late March 22. You can also start checking out and even using Google’s Calendar and Contacts features. If you are a big calendar person you can start putting new calendar events and meetings in Google now, you don’t have to wait.

10 days ‘til G-Day - http://readysetgmail.dcps.net

3/14/18 Subject: Ready, Set… Gmail! (Copy that)

I think I need to step back and clarify something. There appears to be some confusion when we, the Gmail Migration Team, say “migration”. In our situation “migration” just means “copying”. So the process I started last weekend and continues today (and will continue all through next week) is the process of copying your emails, calendar events and contacts over to Google. Millions and millions of items. And they are exactly that a copy. The originals still reside on Office365.com. You still go to Outlook for email and events. Nothing has changed and won’t change until the wee-hours of March 22nd. Then on March 23rd you will start using http://gmail.com. Then even after March 23rd I will still have access to your old emails, calendar events and contacts just in case.

Have you noticed a new icon on your desktop? In a continuing effort to make the change to Gmail as easy as possible, we’ve started pushing out a new shortcut to everyone’s desktop. If you double-click on it right now it will take you to our current webmail page https://outlook.office365.com but on March 23rd, when we go live with Gmail, this same shortcut will take you to https://gmail.com. We will also change the Staff Email link on the district webpage to go to https://gmail.com on March 23rd. What other things can we be doing to help?

8 days ‘til G-Day - http://readysetgmail.dcps.net

3/16/18 Subject: Ready, Set… Gmail! (Last chance for seconds)

When you open Outlook on your computer or on the web, do you see more than one calendar? If you do, have you gone to the Secondary Calendar Survey and filled out the form? I will start migrating the secondary calendars on this form this weekend, don’t be left out.

3/19/18 Subject: Ready, Set… Gmail! (Gmail’s comin’...)

Gmail’s comin’ (but we don’t have to hide a thing) - Becki and I went to see Three Dog Night last week so I had to find some way to reference at least one of their songs. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8SRD0FK2EE)

We’re getting ever closer to G-Day, March 23rd. Things are looking good. We're ready. Students are migrated. Six months worth mail/calendars/contacts for staff, all migrated. Shared secondary calendars have been migrated for the calendar owners. 18 years worth of staff email is now migrating. This process will continue through the coming weekend, migrating everyone’s old email as well as any new messages that come in between now and Thursday night.

Watch for the next “Ready, Set… Gmail” where I’ll answer the question on how to get support Friday if your email isn’t working. And no, the answer isn’t “email me”.

3/21/18 Subject: Ready, Set… Gmail! (Help!... I need somebody!)

On Friday the Office365 days will be gone and we will have opened up the door to Google. Don’t feel down. Here’s what to do to get HELP! I’ve created a giant Google Chat Room for the whole district just for Gmail support. Friday morning if you are having problems check http://readysetgmail.dcps.net first and if that doesn’t have the answer you need then just log into https://chat.google.com with your district email address and password and click on the chat room named “Gmail Support”. All the techs will be in the “room” as well as lots of other very smart people that can answer your questions. Be patient, I expect there will be lots of conversations flowing in the chat room, but this method will allow us to help the most amount of people.