Moving to Connect

This document will cover the migration of CS users from their existing mail servers to the IST Exchange server

Background

In 2010, it was decided that CS mail users would be migrated over time to IST's Exchange server over the next two years in a staged approach. For more information on this decision, see:

• https://sharepoint.uwaterloo.ca/sites/cs/committees/CSCF_Advisory/Documents/CSCF_email_sub_July6.pdf
• https://sharepoint.uwaterloo.ca/sites/cs/committees/CSCF_Advisory/Documents/June_23_CSCF_minutes.txt

IST's information pages

IST has setup notes to help users:

• http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/exchange/
• http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/exchange/get.html

Gather background info

Determine where mail is currently being directed

• userinfo userid (on cscf.cs) will show the actual email address forwarding for @uwaterloo.ca email
• on mail.cs as root:
  • cd /u/userid
  • cat .forward (could be email address(es) or a call to procmail, or both)
  • cat .procmailrc (redirects/copy are usually at the end)
• depending on the above, there may be other places to look (eg: softbase, etc.)

Determine whether the user already has an existing Connect account

• Probably the easiest way to do that is to open OWA, login as yourself, Start sending a new email, click on "To:" and search for the name. If it is there, then they already have an account. If not, then you will need to request one (see below). Note: many people got a Connect account if they previously had a BookIt account. Their mail would be redirected to the email address in WatIam.

Requesting a Connect account

• A couple of days before the planned move, send email to "request@ist" to request the account. Give the name of the user, their userid and whether they will need a BES Account for their Blackberry, if they have one. You will also need to say whether the email should be redirected to their WatIam account address. I usually have them do that and then remove it on the day we do the changeover. Otherwise, they will start gathering email in Connect before they're configured to read it.
• IST provides further details about requesting an account on their Get an Exchange (Connect) account page

Changing email forwards

There are several places where we will need to consider where a user's email is redirected:

• Automatic redirects on an existing Connect Calendar account ( http://connect.uwaterloo.ca/owa )
• WatIam - check and/or change the email forward address
• CS core - the .forward file and/or .procmailrc
• Many research servers (eg: softbase, ds1, plg2, ai0, bcr, mud, and others) run email services and will need to be considered
• CS Teaching environment

Update any mail rules in OWA

• login to: http://connect.uwaterloo.ca/owa
• Mail -> Options -> Create an Inbox Rule ...
• for Calendar-only accounts, there will have been two rules created - one to redirect all email to WatIam and the other to delete all email other than calendar mail. Both of those should be unchecked if they exist

Change the WatIam redirect

• As per IST's migration information page, set the redirect to "userid@connect.uwaterloo.ca"

Change local account redirects

• wherever the user has local accounts, a forward should be set to "userid@uwaterloo.ca". If the user has several accounts that all redirect to, say, userid@cs.uwaterloo.ca, then it should be sufficient to change the redirect on mail.cs to "userid@uwaterloo.ca"
• if the user has a .forward that copies email to an off-campus account, then you can append ",userid@uwaterloo.ca"

Configuring a user's email client

• IST's configuring Thunderbird page
• IST's configuring Outlook page
• IST's configuring Mac Mail page

Note: as of July 2012, IST's instructions do not reflect the 2012 move to the 'nexus' domain. If there are problems authenticating, try 'NEXUS\username' in place of 'username' - DanielAllen

Thunderbird Configuration - needed to work with CONNECT

• Note: this is also described in IST's configuring Thunderbird page
• See also: ThunderbirdTuning - Mike's notes on turning off Global Indexing, etc.
• Open Preferences -> General -> Configure Editor
  • In the search box type: mail.server.default.fetch.by.chunks
    • set to false
  • In the search box type: mail.server
    • increase timeouts to 100

Migrating email from one server to another

• See: MaildirToConnect for notes on migrating email from maildir.cs to Connect
• See: ImapSync for notes on the email migration tool

Dealing with Contacts

• In ST#74959 we explored how to export contacts from Thunderbird and import them into Outloook.
  • MigrateThunderbirdAddressBookToOutlook - here are some notes we creating for migrating a Thunderbird Address Book to Outlook 2010

Dealing with Client-side and Server-side filtering

Integration with Exchange Calendar