Upgrading an entire campus to enterprise and calendar with GroupWise Betsy Black and E. Axel Larsson Drew University ACM SIGUCCS ’06

Agenda Background Motivations behind the switch A successful pilot Formation of a task force A phased approach to a migration Incentives and support resources Results and lessons learned

Some background… Drew University  Located in northern New Jersey  Consists of a College of Liberal Arts, Theological, and Graduate school  Approximately 2,500 student FTEs  Largely residential  Standard laptop program for all CLA students

Some background… Drew has provided basic service to all students, faculty, and staff since  DEC All-In-One (OpenVMS) through 1998  PMDF IMAP w/ Netscape Communicator 4.x + IMP Webmail (1998 – 2002)  Novell NetMail IMAP w/ Mozilla Mail + NetMail WebAccess (2002 – 2006)  Today: Novell GroupWise 7 w/ Windows and Cross-Platform clients + WebAccess

Why switch away from standards-based IMAP? New administrative staff not satisfied with basic IMAP  No calendar support.  No PDA/wireless support.  Most often cited technology need. Continued support issues using non- integrated client and mail system:  Mozilla address books vs. WebAccess address books.  Mozilla rules vs. NetMail rules.

Pilot project (Fall 2005) Moved all technology staff to GroupWise. President’s Office migrated.  Most pressing need was getting the presidential calendar in GW with appropriate proxy access for his staff. BlackBerry Enterprise Server rollout.  Technology staff.  President.  Selected cabinet-level staff.

Moving forward – Formation of a GroupWise task-force. Representatives from all technology areas:  Computing and Network Services Systems Administration Enterprise Applications User Support / Helpdesk  Instructional Technology Services Training Documentation  Administrative Computing

Objectives Use this as an opportunity to improve service levels.  Implement clustering for fault-tolerance Streamline the migration process  Self-service tools.  Copious training and support resources Give people a reason to switch  Greater enterprise feature set, calendars, etc.  More space

GroupWise System Overview NetWare 6.5 SP5 cluster (4 servers)  Clustered POs, WebAccess, and GWIA Four post offices  University Technology (migrated from standalone server – 50GB)  Employee (150GB)  Student PO1 and 2 (150GB each) GWGuardian spam/virus filtering BlackBerry Enterprise Server GW Mobile Server Linux-based list server (Mailman)

A Phased Deployment Phase 1 – Early Adopters  March 1, 2006 – May 1, 2006  New users were still set up on NetMail by default.  Users could “opt-in” through a self-service web site. Faculty/staff only.  Migration tools available: Transend Migrator (third-party) for moving IMAP mail and Mozilla address books.  University Technology student employees moved to GW for training and support purposes.

A Phased Deployment Phase 2 – Full Deployment  May 1, 2006 – November 1, 2006  New users created on GroupWise.  New computers come with GW client preinstalled – all existing images updated.  Self-service tools available, GW now available for students. Enhanced migration tools available: Home-grown server-side IMAP copier Home-grown Mozilla address book converter.

A Phased Deployment Phase 3 – Compulsory Migration  All remaining GW accounts turned on November 1,  Old NetMail system remains available for migration of old messages only.  Users have until March 1, 2007 to retrieve old messages. Phase 4 – NetMail discontinued  March 1, 2007 – Old server decommissioned.

Targeted groups Residential Hall Assistants (RAs) Orientation Committee members Athletics Department and athletes (returned early) Public Safety officers Students studying abroad during the fall semester

Increased Support Resources CNS Helpdesk chat room using GroupWise Messenger “Satellite” helpdesk location at the start of the semester Building sweeps by university technology staff GroupWise “kiosks” near the main dining hall in weeks before and after compulsory migration phase

Tools to help with the Migration Self-service account activation  Web-based “wizard” points user to docs, client install instructions, etc. and allows for one-click account activation.  Sets up forwarding on the old NetMail system.  Creates GW account. Self-service address book converter  Converts exported Mozilla address books into a.vcf format which can be imported into GW.  Web-based  Developed by a student employee in PHP

Tools to help with the Migration Self-service mail copy utility.  Moves users mail from NetMail to GroupWise using IMAP  Web-based Users are presented with a list of folders to migrate Actual migration is submitted and performed as a background task.  Users don’t need to keep browser open or wait while migration proceeds.  Developed by a student employee in PHP

Incentives (and nags) The 1,000 th user to migrate was taken to lunch by university technology Bigger mail quotas (1GB for fac/staff, 200MB for students vs. 60MB/40MB on NetMail) Weekly reminders targeted at netmail users Default welcome screen in Mozilla Mail Tool to import class schedules into GroupWise calendar Flyers posted at key campus locations

Some results.. By the numbers…  92 users before Phase 1 started...  623 users by the end of Phase 1 (early adopters)…  Phase 2 (full deployment): May 1 – 623 users July 1 – 1,387 users September 1 – 2,211 users October 1 – 2,956 users  599 users hadn’t switched by November 1 (3314 total switched by October 31) Almost exclusively part-time grad students

Aftermath… Customers who were asking for the GW featureset have been very pleased with the results Surprised that compulsory migration (Nov. 1 st ) did not trigger a substantial increase in Helpdesk calls. Some complaints about performance of the Mac client.  Hopeful this will be addressed in GW 7 SP2 Unanticipated demand for automatic mail forwarding Client install issues on machines with older releases of the ZENWorks tools

For more information… depts.drew.edu/cns/groupwise Betsy Black E. Axel Larsson