Migration

Steps of migration that I present here are dedicated to those who have a Thunderbird client.

• If you use Thunderbird, and you have the directories:
  • for those use IMAP : click on the bulb at the bottom right, it will put you offline and recover all local directories. Be carrefful you should declared as Synchronized for offline use in Account settings in the  Offline and Disk Space and click on Select folders for offline use then select the folders you want to recover.
  • download the migration tool, install and run it
  • select the folders to migrate, initially it is empty, a link on the right « add Thunderbird directory » allows you to select folders, navigate to your Thunderbird home directory:
    • For XP: C: / Documents and Settings / <user> / Application Data / Thunderbird / Profiles / …
    • For Vista: C: / Users / <user> / AppData / Roaming / Thunderbird / Profiles / …
    • POP in: … / mail
    • IMAP in: … / ImapMail
  • select the files to the directory name that you want to recover (NB: not those of the same name with the .msf extension). Normally not need to get the subdirectories, these will be automatically detected, no need either to retrieve the trash and spam. Please note it may take time, the tool used to evaluate the loading time, you can perform this operation several times, the tool remembers the place where you left off.
• If you use Thunderbird or webmail and you have no folders, there’s nothing to do special for migration. If you using webmail and you have online directories it’s more complex, the only way I found is to install Thunderbird to retrieve all your data over IMAP and apply first step

Note: Even if GMail offers retrieve mail from another account (see paragraph below), this system uses POP and therefore does not recover the tree.

Before switching to GMail, until everyone has made her migration, it is possible to redirect his mail to GMail, go to Settings (top right), then go into Accounts and click on Add a mail account
WARNING for those IMAP: POP will retrieve all the messages you’ve already recovered in first step, you need to empty your inbox and destroy all the directories.

To reconfigure Thunderbird with GMail account here are some tips that will help you save time.

• GMail provides assistance to configure your account.
• To manage the offline, go to « Account Settings » menu « Offline and disk space » and check the boxes and select the directory, so you can also access your mails on the train via Thunderbird
• The plugin indispensable Nostalgy: keyboard shortcut to sort your mails
• Other:
• Lightning calendar (synced with google calendar), this plugin is good but can quickly become problematic if you share too much time because the requests update to Google Calendar slow sometimes use Thunderbird
• Google Contact or Zindus : sync of contact

Setting up your mobile phone

Go to http://mobile.google.fr/ from your mobile, it works with all smartphones that can go on the Web and it’s very useful

Mailing lists

For mailing lists, standard version’s GoogleApps features are very limited, the distribution list is simply a contact group. There is no rights management and even external users can send e-mails on this list. For this you must upgrade to premium version where you have groups management. You can also not store this list in a common area but there is a trick with google-groups: for this you must create a group that simply archive your mailling list and will be accessible on the Web, simply by adding a special receiver to your distribution list.

Limitations

Note to manage spam, GMail limit the sending of mail per user per day. This it is not possible to use a GMail account to send notifications for an application.

Options

To take advantage of other features on GMail (transform mail document multiple inbox …) know that when you set your GMail in your language you  neither acces to the tab « Labs » containing all these options. You must switch to « English U.S. » to make this selection appear and then come back in your language.

Conclusion

Very positive! Although migration has been slow because the migration tool is not simple to use, the concept of directory disappears in the Gmail web interface and makes use of labels, some mails were lost. Few people are complaining and everyone saw the benefits of a collaboration tool that works. Some use the web interface, it is true, is very well thought out and offers the same benefits that a classic mail client (especially since the offline mode). In the end we do not regret this first step in the cloud that we save time and money.

Note that Appcelerator offer to deploy their applications (in Python) on this platform.