Moving in the Right Direction: Lessons Learned From Email Transitions

Where: Four Points Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center
1125 Boston Providence Turnpike
Norwood, Massachusetts

When:9:00 am - 3:00 pm

Note: Registration begins at 7:30am

Workshop Organizer: Kara Bilotta of Tufts University

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Institution wide technology projects are huge undertakings regardless of where you work and what specifically you do. Many local institutions have undertaken large scale email transitions in the past few years. Therefore, it is an excellent time to leverage the experiences of peers and gain insights into what our institutions may encounter in the future. Learning from those who have gone before us is always beneficial.

This SIG will consist of presentations from a collection of institutions who have had various experiences throughout their transitions. There will be a strong focus on sharing both the good and the bad in order to give true depictions. Presenters will speak to the importance of communication, process evolution, and how to avoid common pitfalls. We certainly do not know all the answers so we intend for this day to be very interactive in order to capitalize on all of the shared experience in the room.
 

Event Schedule:
7:30am – 9:00am Registration and Coffee

9:00am - 9:30am Welcome, Introductions, & Goals

9:30am - 10:15am Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Selection and Migration to an Outsourced Exchange Email System
Speaker: Ellen Gulachenski, Director of Project Services for Administrative Technology Services, Harvard University

When looking to merge five email and two Meeting Maker systems into a single new Exchange email system, IT in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) examined costs for implementing the system internally as well as receiving quotes from external vendors. This presentation will focus on the process used to determine the right Exchange vendor for FAS, the methods by which the relationship is managed, and the benefits and challenges of an outsourced email system.

10:20am - 11:05am The Technology is the Easy Part: Tufts University's Migration to Exchange 2010
Speaker: Lee Raymond, IT Project Manager, Tufts University

Last year, Tufts undertook the challenge of moving approximately 20,000 accounts to Exchange 2010; consolidating four antiquated mail systems in the process resulting in a single platform for all faculty, staff and students.

Along the way we discovered that technology was one of our smallest hurdles to overcome. Tufts implemented many tools and processes to address the non-technical obstacles including but not limited to: custom web based tools, daily status meetings, surveys, training and feedback mechanisms. There was a focus on repeatedly improving all processes over time. We'll spend much of the time talking about what we hoped would happen, what actually happened, and what we learned along the way that will be of value in your next project endeavor.

11:05am - 11:20am Break

11:20am - 12:05pm Assumption’s Migration from Exchange ‘03 to Exchange ‘10: Key Decisions Along the Way
Speaker: Mimi Royston, Associate Director of Information Technology, Director of User Services, Assumption College

Assumption migrated to Exchange 2010 in January of 2011. During the planning and testing, there were many key decisions points that came up. We had to decide how quickly we needed to move accounts over. We had to choose when to change the campus links in Portal and Web over a 6 week period. We had to upgrade most Mac clients; so how were we going to schedule them? Should we change client software or just upgrade? We had a very key decision about mobile devices and if we should keep the hardcoded names in phones the same or have to reconfigure mobile devices. Did we have unanimous agreement? Did it go smoothly? What were the bumps in the road? What decisions went awry? Would we make the same decisions today?

12:05pm – 1:00pm Lunch

1:00 pm - 1:50pm Exchange to Gmail on a Timeline
Speakers:
Ahmad Khazaee, Instructional Technologist, Colgate University
Dan Sloan, Technology Support Analyst, Colgate University

Colgate University moved from MS Exchange to Google Gmail as part of our Cloud Initiative. We will discuss our processes planning, converting and implementing faculty and staff from our in-house system to the Google cloud. This will include specific difficulties (technical, logistical and political), how we overcame them, and how we could have done better.

1:55pm - 2:30pm Panel Review of Common Challenges
Themes:
• Corralling the cats (oops, we mean clients)
• Providing a Consistent User Experience & Level of Support
• Governance, Policies & Decision Making
• Communication & Training Techniques
• Metrics

2:30pm - 3:00pm Q&A / Wrap-up

3:00pm End

The timing of each topic section may change slightly as we near the date of the SIG and finalize specific content. An updated agenda will be posted as needed.