Microsoft 365

There are a number of reasons why we are making this move, and none of them concern making life more difficult for students, staff or faculty! Recently, Google announced that it will be putting limits on the amount of storage space available in their education workspace. While Gratz is not yet near the limit, we continue to have increased needs for data storage between moving our files to the cloud, maintaining better backups of our multiple systems and our ever expanding digital archives. Add to that the need to unify around a single office platform for document management purposes, Canvas integration purposes and internal security purposes, and the decision to move to Microsoft became much more straightforward.

We know that this may be difficult for some within our Gratz community and we will do our best to mitigate the issues as quickly as possible. If you have questions that are not addressed on this page, please email MoveToMicrosoft@gratz.edu

With terms starting every eight weeks, there is no ideal time for this transition. We chose this time frame in coordination with our consultants taking multiple factors into consideration.

We need an entire month for the transition to ensure that there is time for everyone's information to be transferred over to the Microsoft environment.

During this time, you will continue to use Google email and Google applications as you have been doing. Data will be copied over in the background, starting with the oldest information in your email and Google Drive.

As we approach the final weekend, your more recent emails and documents will be copied over.

On Tuesday morning, June 20th, you will no longer receive email in Google. At that point, we will no longer copy anything over and changes made in the Google environment will not be copied to Microsoft. We will keep the Google environment open for a week as a reference, and then we will be shutting it down.

If you want to make your own download of your information for your own peace of mind, you can use Google's tool, Takeout.

Your email address will not be changing! What will change is how you access your email (see next question).

Pre-migration, you access email through a web browser or an app. Post-migration, you access email through a web browser or an app. The website http://mail.gratz.edu will work either way. Pre-migration, it will point to Google, and then post-migration, it will point to Microsoft. It will look different but function extremely similar to each other.

Pre-migration, you are likely using the Google Mail app on your phone. Post-migration, you will use the Outlook app on your phone. Here are some helpful links:

Outlook Web App (OWA) 

• Accessible through any browser at http://mail.gratz.edu
• Getting Started in OWA

Mobile Application for Android and IOS:

• Android setup
• iOS setup

Full Outlook Client:  

• Windows
• MacOS

• Inbox

• Folders/Labels

• All Email

• Google Contacts

• Google Calendars

• Calendar Notifications

• Chat Messages

• Tasks

• Color coding for folders

All of your files will be copied over to Microsoft OneDrive. Files that are in a Google format will be saved in OneDrive as a Microsoft file. (Google Docs will be copied as Word Docs, Google Sheets as Excel, and Google Slides as PowerPoint. PDFs, text files and other filetypes that are not part of the office suite ill be copied as is.

Google Meet appointment links will not work. You can reset your meeting links using Microsoft Teams. Here is a link for scheduling meetings using Microsoft Teams from Outlook.

Your contact entries will be moved to Microsoft. However, there is a difference between a contact and a suggested contact. A contact is someone that you see an entry for when you go into https://contacts.google.com/. A suggested contact is someone that shows up when you create an email and start typing in the To, CC or BCC fields. Suggested contacts are the people that you email the most or maybe someone that has emailed you in the past. Suggested contacts are "learned" by the application that you use for email and they will not be moving over. However, after a short period of using Outlook, you will start to see suggested contacts starting to show as the new environment learns who you email with.

UPDATE (5/19/2023)

Google stores your contacts under "Other contacts" and has a mechanism for making them into actual contacts. For more information, read this Google help article.

• If you have an email item with more than one label (folder), it will duplicate into each folder as separate items. 

• Any of your files in your Google Drive that have been shared with others will only show in your MS OneDrive. It will need to be shared again.

• If you rename a folder or document during the migration month, there is a chance that the folder or document will be duplicated in the new environment. As a safety measure, try not to rename your email folders or any of your documents that you are storing on Google drive.

If you ignore all communications about this, your items will still be moved, as indicated. You will likely contact our help desk in a panic at the same time as others who have ignored this. This will put added stress on our IT staff. That is not good. The technical term for it is “bad”. Please do not cause badness.
 

Have you read everything here?

Have you really read everything here?

If you were sworn to testify before a judge that you read everything, would you be able to answer "yes" without perjuring yourself?

If the answer to all three questions is yes, then please email MoveToMicrosoft@gratz.edu with your question or concern and someone will get back to you.