RCPS E-Mail Conversion Process

Rockingham County Public Schools

RCPS Highlights

RCPS Explains E-mail Consolidation Process

For more than a dozen years RCPS has had a FirstClass® e-mail network consisting of 22 e-mail servers (one per school including MTC plus Central Office). The time has come to retire these older servers and replace them with a single, division-wide e-mail server. This consolidation will be of great benefit to users in many ways including increased reliability of e-mail, additional user features, and access to shared resources such as mailing lists and documents.

As with most projects, it will not come without some inconvenience to current users. This website describes the process and includes links to video tutorials and handouts describing what current RCPS FirstClass® users will need to do as part of this project. The document contains a timeline and links to handouts and video tutorials you may find useful.

Please note that your e-mail address will not change. As described below, on April 2 (for school-based employees, earlier for other employees) when you sign in to your e-mail you will be signing into the new server. However, the files on your old server will be available to you for three weeks. In that period you will need to print, save, or move any of the following you wish to preserve: current e-mail messages, attachments, home page documents, e-mail address book entries, and personal calendars. You will be responsible for moving all of these personal documents; of course, RCPS Tech Staff will assist you with this task. School-created calendars and conferences will be moved to the new server by the RCPS Tech Staff after April 4.

Drawbacks of the conversion process

The method by which you sign in to FirstClass will need to have a one-time, minor fix. You'll be changing, for example, the name of your e-mail server from pvesfc.rockingham.k12.va.us to rcpsfc.rockingham.k12.va.us. And remember that if you connect to your e-mail from home you'll need to make this change there, too.

Depending on the amount of current e-mail information (messages, attachments, address book entries, personal calendars, and/or home page documents) you want to keep, the process can take you several hours to complete. If you're willing to make a clean jump to the new system, it will take only a couple of minutes. The more files you want to keep, the longer it will take you.

Some information just can't be moved from the old to the new server. You'll have to recreate all your personal mailing lists, for example. However, there will be many new mailing lists created on the new server which all users will have access to.

If you have created a personal website on your FC server, its internet address will change. This means that links on other web pages, such as school web pages, which link to your personal website will have to be changed. RCPS Tech Staff will assist with these changes.

Advantages of having a single e-mail server

The new server will be in an environment in which it should rarely go down. The Central Office server room has a sophisticated backup electric system. Staff will be readily available to tend to any server problems which may arise.

The ability to track histories of messages will be extended to all RCPS e-mails. Right now you can only review the history of a message within your building.

You will have access to many division-wide mailing lists that will be created. Right now, a server-based mailing list is accessible only to those at your site.

RCPS is saving lots of money by buying one, high-end, server instead of replacing 22 older ones. The consolidation process also gives us a large set of unused licenses previously scattered throughout the 22 servers. These licenses will be used for new employees.

The ability to chat will be extended throughout the school system. Right now you can only chat with those at your site.

Instead of being on different servers, FirstClass® users will be put into different groups. This means that only PVES employees, e.g., will see PVES News, Calendars, etc. However, employees who work at more than one site will have an easy way to view folders at all of their work sites. Employees who transfer from one school to another can easily be moved from one group to another.

Project Timeline

Until March 30:

Click to View Tutorial Videos or Download PDF handouts	Recommended Steps to Follow
video \| handout	1. Delete all unwanted e-mails and folders. Try to keep the number of saved e-mails to fewer than a hundred including those in your mailbox plus those in folders. Remember that you can select entire groups of e-mails to delete if you hold down the Shift key while you click to highlight e-mails you want to delete. Or, you can select e-mails one-by-one to delete if you hold down the Apple key on a Mac computer or the Ctrl key on a Windows computer. Once you've got several e-mails highlighted, hit the Delete key on your keyboard. Do the same with folders.
video \| handout	2. Consider summarizing and saving many of your current e-mail messages as a single text file. You select the messages you want to keep and combine them to one file which is saved on your hard drive (not in e-mail). With this method, only the text of your messages, not any attachments, is saved.
video \| handout	3. If you now maintain a personal calendar on FirstClass®, export it so it can be transferred to the new server.. You can follow the steps to export your calendar to your desktop. Your calendar can be imported into your new account after April 2 when your new account is created. This applies only to personal calendars; group calendars will be moved by RCPS Tech Staff.
video \| handout	4. If you have entered any personal addresses in your Address Book, export them so they can be transferred to the new server. You can follow the steps to export your personal address to a single file on your desktop. It can be imported after April 2 when you get your new account.
video \| handout	5. If you have created any mailing lists in your Address Book, make a record of them so you can add them back to the new server. Keep a record of all the mail lists that exist in your old account. You can save these as text files or simply print them. When you get your new account on April 2, you can begin to recreate them.
video \| handout	6. If you have created a personal Home Page on FirstClass®, download your files so they can be transferred to the new server. You'll download the files to your desktop. Once your new account is created on April 2, it's quick and easy to move those files to your new Web Publishing folder.

March 31-April 1:

RCPS Tech Staff will run a script that weekend that does two tasks:

1) It changes your login on your current (OLD) server by adding the suffix OLD to your login name. (Don't be offended by this!). For example, if you've been logging in as jdoe then after the script is run, should you need to access the OLD server, you will log in as jdoeOLD.
2) It creates a new account for you on the new e-mail server and immediately starts directing all new e-mail to this new account.

April 2 - 20:

Click to View Tutorial Videos or Download PDF handouts

Recommended Steps to Follow

video (step a)
video (step b)
video (step c)

handout

7. Amend FirstClass® application to allow you to log into both old and new accounts.

At this point you will need to know how to log in to both e-mail servers so you can still get to your old mail as well as your new messages.

a. On the new server, you will log in with your current login (jdoe, for example). However, since this is a new account your initial password will be blank and you will be asked to give yourself a new password. Refer to video (step a) at left.

b. On April 2, mail begins to flow to new account but you'll need to get to your old account, too, in order to move the remaining e-mail messages. Refer to video (step b) at left.

c. Need to get back to your old again at a subsequent date? Your old account will still be available to you through April 20. Refer to video (step c) at left.

video | handout

8. Forward remaining messages to new account.

Once you've forwarded the remaining messages in your mailbox to your new account, you are set to move to your new account.

video | handout

This video and handout are the same as those offered in step 3. If you have previously exported your calendar, follow the steps shown beginning at the point when asked to log into NEW account.

9. If you exported a personal calendar from the old server, import the Calendar to the new server.

You'll be importing the calendar file (.vcs) you saved to your desktop in step 3.

video | handout

This video and handout are the same as those offered in steps 4 and 5. If you have previously exported your Address Book entries, follow the steps shown beginning at the point when asked to log into NEW account.

10. If you exported Address Book entries on the old server, import Address Book entries to the new server.

You'll be importing the address book file (.vcf) you saved to your desktop in step 4. Remember to recreate those mail lists you saved or printed in step 5.

video | handout

This video and handout are the same as those offered in step 6. If you have previously exported your Home Page folder, follow the steps shown beginning at the point when asked to log into NEW account.

11. If you downloaded Home Page files from the old server, upload your Home Page files to your new Web Publishing Folder.

This is a simple drag-and-drop of the files you downloaded in step 6. Note that you'll need to make sure that address references to your page (given in newsletters, offered in Portaportals, or on the school home page) are amended to reflect the change in server.

RCPS Tech staff will be in your building at least two of the three days (April 2-4) to assist you with steps 1-11 above. This process will continue until April 20 when the current e-mail server will no longer be in service.

Monday, April 2	Tuesday, April 3	Wednesday, April 4 - Inservice Day
EES - Stephanie Failes FRES - Denell Clem JCMES - Bryan Daniels JWES - Kym Garber LEES - Dennis Durost LSES - Joe Hill MES - Joe Showker EMS - Lynne Pike JFHMS - Obe Hostetter BHS - Liya Shumeyko, Kevin Perkins SHS - Justin Neitzey, Doris Gardner TAHS - Bob Johnson	MVES - Obe Hostetter OES - Dennis Durost PES - Stephanie Failes PKVES - Lynne Pike, Joe Hill PVES - Kym Garber SRES - Denell Clem MMS - Joe Showker WSPMS - Doris Gardner TAHS - Bob Johnson, Kevin Perkins SHS - Justin Neitzey BHS - Liya Shumeyko DLC - Bryan Daniels	AM EES - Stephanie Failes JCMES - Kevin Perkins JWES - Kym Garber LSES - Dennis Durost MVES - Obe Hostetter OES - Bryan Daniels PES - Alice Bair PKVES - Lynne Pike PVES - Doris Gardner SRES - Denell Clem TAHS - Bob Johnson SHS - Justin Neitzey BHS - Liya Shumeyko PM EMS - Lynne Pike JFHMS - Alice Bair, Obe Hostetter BHS - Liya Shumeyko, Kevin Perkins SHS - Justin Neitzey MMS - Joe Showker, Stephanie Failes WSPMS - Doris Gardner, Kym Garber TAHS - Bob Johnson FRES - Bryan Daniels LEES - Dennis Durost MES - Denell Clem

April 20:

Old e-mail servers are retired.

What if I have hundreds of e-mails that I just CANNOT lose?

If you just absolutely cannot live without several hundred of your current e-mails, including those in folders, make an appointment with one of the RCPS Tech Staff. There is a very complicated procedure that can be used to have e-mails redirected from your old mailbox to your new one. This procedure is much more difficult than just forwarding your e-mails one-by-one. The procedure is time-intensive. It will not move items stored in folders. They can be redirected but only after they are moved into the active Mailbox of the old server, redirected to the new server, and re-filed into new folders on the new server. This procedure is only for those few employees who have legal or operational reasons why certain e-mails cannot just be summarized or forwarded.

Every big project should include a big laugh

When you combine 22 servers to a single server, you need a big server to handle the job. Below is a spoofed picture created by L.D. Graham, RCPS Tech Staff, of Craig Gutshall, Coordinator of Network Services, who engineered the e-mail consolidation project. Indeed, the new RCPS e-mail server is a big and powerful one, but it doesn't really look like this:

One big server

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