Where are we now?

• HS Students:

  • If you hear students saying that they can't get to their email, please tell them to log in to office.com and click on mail there. 

  • They can also update their outlook to get the new email by following this kb article (Migrate to Office365 Mail (Create a new Outlook Profile)) found on the main kb homepage under "Microsoft Outlook"

  • Some haven't  been migrated yet. We're hoping to get those finished soon. "Most" HS Students have been migrated. 

• MS Students:

  • If you hear students saying that they can't get to their email, please tell them to log in to office.com and click on mail there. 

  • Some haven't  been migrated yet. We're hoping to get those finished soon. "Most" Students have been migrated. 

  • For middle school students we will be pushing out a fix for their mail app that should get that working again. We will most likely wait until all MS students have been migrated before we do this. 

• Teachers:

  • We haven't touched teacher emails yet. (except for Holly Leblanc and Jonathan White) 

  • We most likely won't get to that this week. We might even be able to hold off until Mardi-Gras. 
  • However, you may find that you get emails bounced back when you try to send to students that have been migrated. There are two ways to fix that.
    • Short term:
      • Type the complete email address "joseph.hancock@pbstudents.com" without letting the computer autofill the rest and without clicking on the suggestion that comes up.
         Note: This 'usually' works
    • Long Term: (this is the 'right way' to fix the issues)
      • "Update your Outlook Global Address Book"  (click that link and follow the kb there)
      • Empty Your Auto Complete List   (this will prevent the autocomplete from coming up)
        (Note both of these steps may take several minutes to actually sync after you complete the steps)

• All

  • As always if you get stuck, come see us we'll gladly help you get past this transition. 

Partial Success:

Short Version:

So, we had a few issues with the migration. Those issues are resolved, but not in time to finish the rest of the student email accounts. A little less than half of the Student accounts have been migrated. The plan is to do the rest this coming weekend. So, faculty is saved till next weekend (2/11). Now that we've found those issues, things have run pretty smoothly. 

"But, I like knowing why" version

This process is never simple. You are migrating huge chunks of data from an old dying machine to 'the cloud' all the while trying to keep the system from crashing down. That's one of the reasons we were trying to hold off till summer. (We'd hoped to actually shut down email for a day or two and do it all at one time without worrying about up-time. 

In addition, we have a bit of a spaghetti monster when it comes to emails. Most of our high school students have at least two email accounts (first.last AND first.last.gradyear). Some students have even more... (first.last, nickname.last, nickname.last.gradyear...). This was causing some issues with the script that we were running to migrate students over. In addition, some of those were actually showing up as separate accounts, effectively doubling (or worse) the amount of data we are having to move. That, of course, is one of the reasons we are waiting till the weekends. We do have much better bandwidth than we did in the fall, but this would still bog us down during the school day. 

As usual, if you have questions, feel free to ask. 

Email Migration is moving forward. 

• Migrating students

  • We have begun migrating students to office.com email. (from webmail.parkviewbaptist.com email) So far we have about 50 done and they seem to be going smoothly. 

  • This weekend we plan to push the rest of the students. PLEASE NOTE that this weekend will be unreliable (at best) for emailing to/from students. Please don't have any emails due before school Monday morning. 
  • After students are migrated they will have to get their mail on a different website 

    • Students can go to office.com, click 'sign-in', select 'work or school', and log in by entering you school email and password. Once you've logged in, click on 'mail'.
      (note: This is the same website that Onedrive, Word online, Excel online, etc live on)

    • HIGH SCHOOL students who wish to use Outlook may recreate their profile in outlook and continue to use outlook. This kb shows you how to do that Migrate to Office365 Mail (Create a new Outlook Profile).

    • MIDDLE SCHOOL students can also get their mail on office.com after being migrated. However, we will be pushing new email settings to those students email apps. After that the student should be prompted for a password and be setup. 

• Teacher migration:

  • If all goes as planned for students we will start teacher migration next weekend. 
  • Teacher computer settings will be similar to that of the students.
  • Teacher iPad settings will have to input manually. We'll update the kb to show how to do that. 

• Note on sending mail through Renweb:

  • Renweb is sending mail fine. This means that email to parents should function normally. 

  • We  are confident that we have convinced the spam filter that Renweb is safe so students and teachers should also get their emails (although they may not know where to get them.... office.com or webmai.parkviewbaptist.com) 

• Note on sending email to students office.com accounts from your webmail.parkviewbaptist.com account.

  • There seems to be a little hangup on typing addresses to students in Outlook. 
  • It is best to avoid 'autofill' and type the address completely. EG instead of typing sha... and letting it fill in shawn.liner@parkviewbaptist.com. Type the whole email address. 
  • If you have emails bounce back from students please let us know. We are trying to resolve that now. (It seems to be related to the switch from first.last.gradyear....

At this point we think we have the filter issue worked out. Renweb emails should now be going through. We will have to continue to tweak this new filter some. If there is something that is not going through, first check your 'junk email folder' then let us know if it's not there. We are having to set it to allow things that look like spam in. (for example quizlet was getting marked as spam and quarantined. Because I'm also a teacher, I know it needs to go through. But it 'looks like spam' to the filter. 

This is to alert you that there are significant email issues and that we are working on it. 

What are the issues?

• Students and teachers are not receiving their emails, or the emails are received but delayed. 

• Why is this happening?

  There are two big reasons that this is happening. 

1. 1. We are being forced to migrate to another mail service early.
      1. We figured out at the beginning of the school year that we were going to have to do something else about our email as our current system was going to fail. We had a plan in place, but were trying to hold off till summer to pull that trigger.  The email issues we've been having have forced to do that early.  (Thank goodness there was a plan in place.)
      2. As a result some crazy things are happening while we make the move. (some emails are going to old account, some are going to new account, etc)
   2. We've been forced to use a different email filter program
      1. Because our email is far from cryptic. (eg. shawn.liner instead of sliner3753 or similiar) it is really easy for someone to send us spam. So we have to have some sort of filter in place. We were using Nuvotera. You may remember the warnings that it was ending. 
      2. We had a replacement in mind early, but ran into a snag when we figured out that we had been getting education pricing from nuvotera and only paying for the teacher accounts. The new companies  were not willing to do that (an increase of $20k/yr).  
      3. So we had to move to another service later that originally expected. The good news is we have found a reliable service that will not break the budget. However, we are having to make this transition at the same time as the email migration
      4. as a result some emails are being 'quarantined' that shouldn't be. For example it was discovered that renweb was being blocked despite a setting that should have allowed them through. We were able to release some of them in the wee hours this morning (1/24) so you may see some come through. 

• When will it get fixed ?!!!

  • I wish i had a solid answer to that. We have our consultant company working on this as fast as they can. 

  • There is a chance it could be resolved today. 

  • Realistically, I think a couple of days at least before everything is smooth again

• Give me some good news

  • After this email migration is over, we will have enhanced functionality of our email. 
  • For example you'll be able to create a calendar event for you entire class
  • We'll have access to an easier way to send files and receive assignments from students (that won't involve email)

I wish i had a quick solution. Trust me if this was a flip of the switch that switch would have been flipped a long time ago. I rely on email for just about everything i do. 

We are doing everything we can to get it fixed. 

Shawn Liner