Migrating Student E-mail to Cardinal Mail

Student e-mail service has moved from the CUA Webmail (Microsoft Exchange Outlook Web Acccess (OWA)) environment to Cardinal Mail, CUA's implementation of Google Apps Education Edition. This document describes the three phases of the transition.

Summary

Phase	Description	When
Phase 1	Testing. Cardinal Mail account available for all students for pilot use. Student mail is still delivered to CUA Webmail. Cardinal Station campus address for students is still username@cua.edu.	April 15
Phase 2	Transition. Cardinal Mail is in production. Cardinal Station campus address for students becomes username@cardinalmail.cua.edu. Student e-mail delivered only to Cardinal Mail. New students have Cardinal Mail account only. Existing students can still access old mail in OWA. During this phase, existing students should complete moving any data from CUA Webmail to Cardinal Mail, and should inform all interested parties of their new address.	Jun 3
Phase 3	Final cutover. Cardinal Mail becomes the only e-mail service for all students. Students may not log onto CUA Webmail. Data in CUA Webmail is no longer available.	Oct 19

Phase 1 - Test Use of Cardinal Mail

In mid-April, a Cardinal Mail account was created for each student who has an active Microsoft Exchange OWA account. Students were able to log onto Cardinal Station and navigate to a page that lists their initial Cardinal Mail password.

Students could use their initial password to log onto Cardinal Mail. They were prompted to change the password to one of their own liking. Cardinal Mail passwords must be at least eight characters long. Students should be sure to select a strong password.

During this phase, students could change their Cardinal Mail settings and gain familiarity with the features and interface, which is very similar to Google's Gmail. For students who were comfortable with the interface, if they were eager to start using Cardinal Mail as their main account for CUA e-mail before Phase 2, they could configure Cardinal Mail to transfer their CUA Webmail mail on a regular basis.

As graduation neared, students were encouraged to place an "out of office" message on their CUA Webmail account to tell people with whom they correspond that their address was changing to cardinalmail.cua.edu.

What Should Students Have Done during Phase 1?

1. Log onto your new Cardinal Mail account and set a password of your choice.
   
   
2. Use the Settings link to change your account settings as you like.
   
   
3. If you want to start using Cardinal Mail full-time before Phase 2, configure your Cardinal Mail account to use POP to transfer your messages from CUA Webmail to Cardinal Mail (see "Transferring E-mail Messages into Cardinal Mail").
   
   
4. Use CUA Webmail (Options, Out of Office Assistant) to place an automated message on your cua.edu e-mail telling people about your new cardinalmail.cua.edu address.  It is important to do this now, because the out of office message will not work in Phase 2.
   

Phase 2 - Transition to Cardinal Mail

After graduations in May, the university began delivering all student mail to Cardinal Mail rather than to CUA Webmail. That meant that students needed to log onto their Cardinal Mail account to read official e-mail from the univerity. (The Cardinal Station campus address changed to cardinalmail.cua.edu automatically in this phase.)

New students had Cardinal Mail accounts only created from Phase 2 onward.

For students with existing CUA Webmail accounts, messages sent to their CUA Webmail cua.edu address were forwarded to their Cardinal Mail account during this transition phase. Students could still log onto their CUA Webmail mailbox to review the messages stored there, but no new mail was delivered to that account. New messages instead were delivered to the Cardinal Mail account.

During this phase, students were told to unsubscribe from mailing lists they received at their cua.edu address, and resubscribe using their cardinalmail.cua.edu address. They were also told change their settings to use their cardinalmail.cua.edu address on any web sites on which they had an account associated with their cua.edu address, such as Facebook.

If students wanted to do a bulk transfer of messages that they had in their CUA Webmail account to their Cardinal Mail account, instructions were provided on how to configure Cardinal Mail to do that. They were told that once they had finished transferring their messages, they could remove that configuration in Cardinal Mail, as new mail was no longer being delivered to their CUA Webmail account.

Students were informed via e-mail, the CUA Webmail (OWA) logon page, the Cardinal Station logon page and this site that it was very important that they transfer anything they wanted to save from their CUA Webmail account during this phase, as that data would be permanently removed in Phase 3.

New students matriculating during Phase 2 had only a Cardinal Mail account and did not need to worry about any of these transition issues.

What Were Students to Do during Phase 2?

1. Use your Cardinal Mail account as your primary account for receiving CUA e-mail.
   
   
2. If you were subscribed to mailing lists using your cua.edu address, unsubscribe from them using your CUA Webmail account, and re-subscribe using your Cardinal Mail account.
   
   
3. Update your e-mail address on any web site registrations (such as Facebook, LinkedIn) to use your cardinalmail.cua.edu address.
   
   
4. Decide whether you want to transfer messages from CUA Webmail to Cardinal Mail. If you do,
   
   
   1. Make sure these messages are in your OWA Inbox folder.
      
      
   2. Configure your Cardinal Mail account to use POP to transfer your messages from CUA Webmail to Cardinal Mail.
      
      
   3. Keep the setting active until all messages have been transferred from CUA Webmail to Cardinal Mail.
      
      
5. Modify your Cardinal Mail settings to remove the POP setting for your CUA Webmail account, if present, since no new mail is being received at your OWA account.

Students were told initially to complete their migration by Friday, September 18, 2009.  The Phase 3 date was later extended to Monday, October 19, 2009.

Phase 3 - Student cua.edu E-Mail Accounts Removed

Students were informed by e-mail, the CUA Webmail (OWA) logon page, the Cardinal Station logon page, and this web site that in late September 2009, all student e-mail accounts would be permanently removed from the CUA Webmail (OWA) servers and that CUA would be unable to restore any data for these accounts once they are removed. Any messages delivered to their @cua.edu address would be returned to the sender as undeliverable, and that all of their correpondents would need to know their @cardinalmail.cua.edu address. The Phase 3 implementation date was later extended to October 19, 2009; students were informed of this change by updated postings on the CUA Webmail and Cardinal Station logon pages and this web site.

Students were informed that when Phase 3 was implemented, Cardinal Mail became the sole CUA e-mail service for students.

Students retain their Cardinal Mail account indefinitely after they graduate.

What should Students do in Phase 3?

1. Use Cardinal Mail and your @cardinalmail.cua.edu address for all your CUA student e-mail.  If you had a CUA Webmail account, it has been permanently removed.