Interchange Migrations

Background

The Interchange Email Service provides Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, Emeriti and others with access to email and mailing lists. This service has historically provided a funded mailbox to qualified UBC Faculty, Staff, Students and Emeriti. All other groups paid for service. The service itself offers only 200MB of mailbox space and a limited set of connection methods (IMAPS, POPS, SMTPS.) There were no advanced features available such as calendaring, a global address list, contacts, tasks, etc... These features were only available to paying customers of the Exchange service. The latter service along with all of its advanced features are now funded for eligible UBC Faculty and Staff.

The Interchange service was last upgraded in 2004 and the platform used is no longer supported by the vendor. With the recent series of system-wide outages of Interchange / Netinfo, a greater degree of urgency has been given to migrating all the Interchange account holders over the next 3 months. The Interchange service was last upgraded in 2004 and is no longer supported by the vendor. Going forward, it will continue to become increasingly difficult to support. During this transition, we will continue to support our Interchange customers.

The UBC IT Email Migration team has now migrated over 4,000 Faculty and Staff Interchange accounts to FASmail. We will be contacting Interchange users that were not identified by departmental IT administrators to confirm if they still require their Interchange mailbox. This process will be complete by early 2012. We will then close down all Faculty and Staff Interchange accounts.

Departments are currently being migrated on a department-by-department basis. If your department has already been on-boarded to FASmail and your mailbox hasn't yet been moved, please contact your departmental IT administrator. If you also have an Exchange 2007 mailbox, there will be a different migration process. The team is currently identifying users with both an Interchange and an Exchange 2007 mailbox and will send out a notice shortly outlining the steps required to migrate.

Migration Process

The UBC IT Client Services team has been actively communicating with each Faculty starting with the Deans, Associate Deans and the Faculty and / or department IT managers. We have formulated the following high level process for accelerating our Interchange/NetInfo migration for all users on a department-by-department basis. The successful migration will require the joint effort of the Faculty / Department IT Manager and Team, UBC IT Client Services and the UBC IT Email Migration Teams.

There are a number of departments who have already been underway with their Interchange migrations prior to March, and their migrations will continue using their pre-defined Interchange migration processes.

  1. The UBC IT Client Service Managers contact each Faculty Dean, Associate Dean, Department IT manager.
  2. In the Department IT manager meetings, the UBC IT Client Service Managers will confirm known information and confirm new details required for the upcoming Interchange migration.
  3. The UBC IT Email Migration Team may be brought into the discussion to refine the required migration details for each department.
  4. The UBC IT Client Service Managers will offer migration scheduling options to each department and migrations will be booked with the UBC IT Email Migration Team.
  5. The UBC IT Email Migration Team will provide the Department IT Managers with a detailed migration checklist for both parties to perform, prior-to, during and after a successful Interchange migration.
  6. If during the department’s migration, there are support questions, please contact your Department IT group. We are also setting up a UBC IT Service Desk to support your Department IT group.

For Department IT Administrators: Interchange Migration checklist

Things To Know

  • The Interchange migration process will redirect all email from the Interchange account to the new Exchange account.
  • Email stored on the Interchange server will be copied to the new FASmail mailbox on the agreed upon migration date.
  • After the migration, the staff/faculty member will no longer be able to send/receive emails from their Interchange mailbox.
  • Messages will remain in the Interchange account as a backup for a several months.
  • If the user does not already have an EAD account, the username and password should be the same.
  • myUBC Webmail has a new feature that allows users to export their address book from myUBC Webmail to Outlook or Entourage.
  • Setup and reconfiguration documents for many varieties of supported and unsupported email applications are available on the setup documents page and the migration guides page.

Interchange Migration Limitations

  • Interchange-for-All (IFA)m Emeriti and Generic/Shared Interchange accounts will be given first priority and will be migrated first.
  • Student, Alumni and Commercial (paid) accounts will not be moved to FASmail unless deemed necessary by the department being migrated.
  • External contacts are no longer allowed in FASmail to ensure compliance with FIPPA (the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.)
  • Although the username and password will be the same as the Interchange credentials, the user must log in to the CWL myAccount page and refresh their CWL password to activate the EAD account. Failure to do so will result in no access to the new mailbox.
  • A user cannot maintain an Interchange and FASmail account at the same time. Email forwarding from Interchange will be enabled and access to Majordomo mailing lists will continue to function if still in use.
  • Anyone with an Interchange account and an Exchange 2007 account will not be migrated until the Exchange 2007 migration is underway. It is critical that the Exchange 2007 mailbox is migrated first. The team is investigating available options to get these users off Interchange as soon as possible.
  • If a user POPs their email or removes it from the server, the email migration script will only be able to copy over data that existed on the server at the time of the migration.

Requesting Migrations 

If you have not been contacted about the Interchange migration project and your department has already moved to FASmail, it is possible that the departmental IT Administrator may not be aware of your account or you may have moved departments or faculties. Please contact your departmental IT administrator to determine the status of your account.

Departments are currently being migrated on a department-by-department basis. If you have an Interchange and an Exchange 2007 mailbox, there will be a different migration process. The team is currently identifying users with both an Interchange and an Exchange 2007 mailbox and will send out a notice shortly outlining the steps required to migrate.