UAA Student Email Migration Begins

After a year of reviewing alternatives, on Oct. 11 UAA formally began migrating students to a new email service powered by Google.  UAA's aging SunOne Mail system which has supported student email since 2001 is being retired.

Under the new Gmail-based service, UAA's students will be issued new mail addresses that will consist of their UAusername@alaska.edu (e.g., rawhitney@alaska.edu).  To preserve compatibility, their previous UAA email address will be set as a permanent alias allowing them to continue to receive email at either address.  The new email service will give students 7GB of mail storage, built-in spam/virus detection, IMAP/POP support, mobile device support over IMAP, and a full-featured web interface.

UAA's 19,000 student email users will be eased over to the new email system via an opt-in process which will run through the end of December.  All students received an email invitation to create their new email account and move any messages in their old mailboxes and address books last week.  Students simply go to a self-service opt-in portal and follow the prompts.  The entire email migration process takes typically less than 10 minutes.

The graph shows the early progress of the opt-in process.  Beginning on Oct. 26 and continuing every two weeks thereafter until the end of December, students who have not opted-in will receive a reminder invitation.  Our hope is that we can encourage students to voluntarily migrate themselves at their convenience.  Over the Christmas holiday, a mass migration process will take place to move en masse any students who have not already moved to the new email system.  Our goal is to have all students moved from the legacy SunOne Mail system by year-end so that the system and its hardware can be de-commissioned.