new email system :/

[Smee]

Morning

Had a letter plonked on my desk this morning. We currently use Easymail for all of the schools email accounts (the head has never wanted to change). RM have just sent out a letter saying they are stopping providing Easymail and suggesting we go with either Office 365 or Google apps for education. I am sure a lot of you are ahead of the game and was wondering if anyone could offer suggestions/recommendations for either as I know this is going to end up being my issue to sort :/

thanks and sorry if this is in the wrong place.

[elsiegee40]

We moved from EasyMail to GAfE. It was such a relief when we moved. EasyMail was such a pain.

 

Really you need to decide what features of O365 and GAfE you're likely to want and move from there - every school is different.

 

We were already heavy users of Google Calendars because we desperately needed online diaries for the head, bursar and school. Moving to GAfE meant least training for staff!

[mats]

We did easymail -> gafe. So much better and the complaints stopped. Braver members of staff use google apps every now and then.

 

I migrated some accounts with imapsync, great little tool.

[Oaktech]

My the primary school in the MAT I used to work for went easymail -> secondary domain added to in house exchange server as an emergency stopgap -> Azure AD Office 365 with their own tenant. I looked at GAFE with them but there were features of exchange they decided they couldn't live without.

[Daryn]

Can anyone help with the Easymail settings required by GAFE during setup (just looking/testing at present). It's asking for the connection protocol for the role account. I have tried every Easymail setting I can think of/find from imap.ourdomain.... to mail.etc tried various : ports on the end as found online.

Any help appreciated

Cheers

Edited June 13, 2016 by Daryn

[Smee]

just to update you a little, I've been in touch with RM and apparently Easymail is finishing in December and the letters that are going out at the moment regarding "you have 60 days until the end of the world" are so that they know what you intend to do and can try to sell you their RMUnify system with either officer365 or GaFE!

Causing unnecessary panic which is just Rude!

[supawat1]

I am not sure whether Easymail can be exported to PST file format, if it does, then Office 365 has got a Data Migration function, which you can upload your current PST to Office 365 mail server.

[snagrat]

Both Office 365 and GAFE can be migrated without exporting to PST

[RM_Broadband]

It is RM's intention to begin closing down the RM Easymail service from December 2016. By this point, we expect all schools to have migrated onto a new service. RM are currently writing to schools notifying them of the need to opt-in or out of our recommended replacement service, and providing 60 days by which to do so. At the end of the 60 days, we will begin a process of writing to those who opted out (and those who did not reply), to outline what the close down timescales will look like for them. Schools who opt-in to the new RM service will be moved across well in advance of any close down activity.

 

RM are actively engaging with all RM Easymail schools offering the opportunity to migrate their data over to Office 365 or Google Apps for Education, free of charge.

 

For us to do the migration itself is free. To ensure a seamless transition with all of your support needs taken care of (and to make use of a wide range of complementary educational applications), we recommend a one year subscription to RM Unify, for £245. We would encourage schools that have any questions to find out more at www.rm.com/upgrade or contact out dedicated team on 01235 854576

Edited June 21, 2016 by RM_Broadband

[snagrat]

 

For us to do the migration itself is free. To ensure a seamless transition with all of your support needs taken care of (and to make use of a wide range of complementary educational applications), we recommend a one year subscription to RM Unify, for £245. We would encourage schools that have any questions to find out more at www.rm.com/upgrade or contact out dedicated team on 01235 854576

 

I've yet to see a letter sent to a school that has offered it for free.....

[Smee]

When I contacted RM regarding this I was told that the team covering it were busy and would get back to me, that was last week and I didn't hear anything. I've since contacted my sales adviser and all they have offered is a quote for RMUnify. The letter that was posted out advising us of the "sixty days from now" does not say anything out the free migration option.

[paulellam]

Our Easymail to Office 365 just completed by RM, migaration of mail was easy, the AD sync works and all I had to do was check over a spreadsheet to verify it was correct. Once nearly ready I logged into 5 random accounts to have a nosy if all was looking o.k then they completed the migration. We are using Unify and the staff really like it so far, it works for us and the migration was worth every penny it did not cost us.

[Dennisl]

We started the migration from Easymail to O365 in June. Our understanding was that the migration was free. On returning to school in September I was presented with an invoice £245+VAT for SWGFL Cloud email services. This, it transpires, is for RM Unify support which I don't want. RM are making it difficult for us to de-federate from RM Unify and avoid this expense. I was interested to read RM Broadband's post saying they recommend a year's subscription to Unify. At present I'm not being given the option.

[nathan]

If you are moving to Office 365, can't you just use the inbuilt tools to migrate from RM IMAP

[sparkeh]

If you are moving to Office 365, can't you just use the inbuilt tools to migrate from RM IMAP

 

Should be able to. 365's migration tool is dead easy to use.

[FN-GM]

If you are moving to Office 365, can't you just use the inbuilt tools to migrate from RM IMAP

 

Doesn't migrate contacts and calendar items though.

[Dennisl]

I know I could have done myself but when someone offers to do something for me for free I'm inclined to accept. With the benefit of hindsight perhaps I should have worked the "no such thing as a free lunch" principle. You live and learn...

[witch]

Moved to Office 365 - by myself. One school was a nightmare, one was fine. Best thing of all - HT in this school made the decision to only migrate the SLT emails and the rest started from scratch again. (they were given time to download any emails they wanted to keep)

[nathan]

Moved to Office 365 - by myself. One school was a nightmare, one was fine. Best thing of all - HT in this school made the decision to only migrate the SLT emails and the rest started from scratch again. (they were given time to download any emails they wanted to keep)

 

wish that was the same for us - 850 accounts

[forkies]

We moved from our LA email to on site exchange a number radio ago and eventually managed to get a command line like application to migrate inboxes using imap but that was my Christmas holidays on a 10mb LA fibre line syncing 150 mailboxes averaging 8Gb each. Next time I would pay for the "premium" option having the LA migrate them for us, total waste of my time.

 

Issue is a lot of staff have emails they need to keep any number of reasons.