Firstclass to Google

[joe du fore]

Anyone out there have experience moving from FirstClass (an obvious misnomer) to Google/Gmail?

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Joseph D. Du Fore
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CEO - Newline Education 
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[Melissa Benson]

Yep! I was the project manager for our switch from FC to Gmail. We switched on March 17th and it's gone tremendously well. Email me directly if you'd like any info. I do know some others around the community have given me advice as well from their experiences.

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[Joel Lowsky]

We did the move about a year ago.  Big project, many users (teachers and students alike) were functionally, organizationally, and emotionally attached to FirstClass.  Here are some resources I made.  Feel free to use.  Note that we called FirstClass SWIS .

Joel

For users:

Move Files and Folders from FC to Google

Move Contacts from FC to Google

Getting Stuff into your Google Drive

Customize your Gmail with Folders/Labels and Filters to make it behave more like FC 

For IT Dept/Internal Use

Export from FC to Google - Internal Version (for IT Dept)

A checklist I found for moving from FC to Gmail.  I did not make this, I think the author was someone named David Boxer (owns the file), from a school called Blake.  I found it online some time ago and didn't use it, but it might help you.

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[Brian Gray]

On Wednesday, March 25, 2015 at 11:56:05 AM UTC-5, du4com wrote:

Anyone out there have experience moving from FirstClass (an obvious misnomer) to Google/Gmail?

You used the wrong verb in your question - "escaping" is more appropriate.

Our resources from two years ago are here - http://apache.sstx.org/google/

The  pages for exporting calendars and contacts may or may not work with your version of First Class.  They're written in PHP.  If you want to use the version on my site, you are welcome to use it.  If you want a copy of it to modify, email me (bg...@sstx.org).

bkg

[Marion Bates]

Escaping indeed! 

My old tech notes from our transition are here:

http://dev.dresden.us/howtos/fc-google-transition-admin-notes

In retrospect, I would advise AGAINST enabling dual-delivery. All it did was confuse users. 

It's tragic that Shay Smith's site is down (link at bottom of my notes), AND I can't pull it up in the Wayback Machine. Most of what I did, came from his notes. 

GOOD LUCK! 

-- MB

[Jaymon Lefebvre]

I would advise against trying to migrate users mail from FirstClass.  FirstClass (specifically folders) do not cleanly migrate out and you end up with a pretty ugly situation for the end user to look at when they enter their spanky GAFE account.

I would however, advise that dual delivery can be very helpful.  For us, I had GAFE operational months in advance of pulling the plug on FirstClass.  I sync'd all the user accounts into GAFE to match FirstClass from AD, and then enabled dual delivery.  Users had no idea things were going into their GAFE account, but both their inbound and outbound were being pushed into their Google account ahead of time.  

When we did pull the plug, users went into GAFE to find their last ~6 months of communications already in their GAFE account.  It really eliminated the need to bother migrating their FC contents as after a few months, while many people think they need all sorts of things, they rarely did (and thats not me just assuming that, it was based on the logs from FirstClass)

After moving to GAFE, we killed dual delivery and pulled the gateway connection from the Firstclass server so it could no longer send or receive, but it was online and available for people to go in and retrieve their contents as they saw fit (we had a single allow rule that would let them email ONLY themselves from FirstClass to GAFE, just to make content retrieval simple).  We did the migration in June 2011 for central services and officially flipped the switch to GAFE July 2012 for all staff.  In December 2012, I only had 1 user (from ~700 staff) who logged into FirstClass (maintenance manager looking for old contract details).

Basically, we just left FirstClass running until the logs no longer showed anyone needing it.  Though it screamed and wailed, I did turn it off in the summer of 2013.  We did not have a single helpdesk service request to retrieve anything from that point on.

cheers,

Jaymon

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[Marion Bates]

That was initially our idea too (the dual-delivery, "keep using FC for now but Google will have a copy too" thing that Jaymon described.) BUT where it derailed was, when FC users sent email to each other within FC -- therefore, the messages stayed internal (never traversed the FC gateway), and therefore they never got picked up by Google. Odds are that this could've been mitigated with some extra level of creativity with MX records and mail routing, but there was no amount of "dear users, please be careful to send your messages to otherint...@newdomain.org from now on" because as soon as they start typing "otherinternaluser" and it autocompletes with the old internal name, they just mash the send button and that's that. 

So, after it went sour with my pilot group, I just aborted the whole idea and left the old FC server up and running as an archive for a year after we went to Google. No one accessed it after the first two or three months, and eventually I pulled the plug (with no announcement/reminder) and waited for the wailing, but none came. I would've liked to do a "retirement ceremony" involving fire and perhaps a wooden stake, but we needed the server for something else. 

-- MB

On Wednesday, March 25, 2015 at 12:56:05 PM UTC-4, du4com wrote:

[Jaymon Lefebvre]

We created a secondary domain in GAFE and auto-aliased all users.  In FirstClass, using FirstClass scripting I simply added a blind carbon copy to each user's alias.  Was operational in less than a morning.

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[Steven Diver]

I'd agree on migrating user's emails over...that did not work well, at all. We tried it on a few accounts, and it was a mixed bag. We eventually, just told our users FirstClass wouldn't go anywhere for a while, and they could always forward stuff to their Google Apps account if they really needed to keep it...by forwarding it to a Google Apps domain alias we setup. That appeased everyone, until we coudl finally shut it down.

We went the dual-delivery route though, and did a gradual migration of users from FirstClass to Google, and really had very little issue with it. Overcoming the issue of emails staying within the FirstClass ecosystem took a bit of thinking through, but was pretty easy in the end...we just setup a domain alias in Google Apps, eg. gafe.domain.org, and made sure that domain only accepted email from our FirstClass server.

Then, as users were migrated over to Google Apps, they came for a 1-hour (or so) training session. During that training session, we had them setup a rule on their FirstClass mailbox to automatically redirect any emails over to their Google Apps alias email address. So once a user went through that training, they really had no reason to ever go back into FirstClass (unless they had old emails they wanted to access or forward on).

We could also then do the same thing to get messages from FirstClass conferences over to the corresponding Google Group, and vice-versa.

The whole thing was actually pretty slick, and worked flawlessly, and having users be able to stick in the Google Apps environment was a good thing...as none of them had much desire to go back anyway.

Steve

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Steven Diver
Network Manager  //  Adlai E. Stevenson High School, District 125

Email: sdi...@d125.org  //  Phone: 847.415.4304

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[Melissa Benson]

We contracted through a third party to migrate FC email to Gmail. However, we gave users the option to do this and about 2/3 decided to "start fresh". The migration was pretty good (we knew the issues that could happen). Not migrating email and instead letting users have access to FC for awhile would be fine.

Key things

• We did a 3 phased approach: Core IT, Early Adopters, Everyone else. Early Adopters were key.
• Having Early Adopters (support) in every building and at every program is key.
• Provide tons of opportunity for trainings (getting help from E.A.s).
• Communication/project management. No matter how you choose to do it, make sure someone is in charge. Migrate/no migrate, dual delivery/no dual delivery.
• Provide an online resource: here's ours.

I have never heard of anyone saying moving to Gmail was a "disaster". Whatever route you take just make sure to plan, train and support at each program/building.