The Office of Information Technology (OIT) reminds you that all faculty and staff accounts, except accounts affiliated with the Academic Health Center (AHC) and Health Care Component (HCC)-related accounts, are eligible for University of Minnesota Google accounts.

OIT will complete the transition of all University accounts (except AHC and HCC accounts) to Google Apps this summer, and all users who have not yet signed up on their own, with the exception of those affiliated with the Academic Health Center and Health Care Components, will be moved to a Google account automatically.

To make the the transition go as smoothly and quickly as possible, users are strongly encouraged to transition their account on their before their automatic transition is scheduled. Sign up is available on the University's Google Apps website.

Automatic transitions for faculty and staff will begin July 12 on the Duluth campus, with other campuses to be scheduled later in the summer. Users will receive notification via email prior to their automatic transition, once it has been scheduled.

You should expect the following to happen on the day your account is scheduled for its automatic transition:

• The first time you visit mail.umn.edu that day, and attempt to log in to your University email account, you will be directed to another page requiring you to move your account to Google for the University.
• You will be asked to agree to the Google Apps terms of service.
• You will not have access to email until you initiate the migration.
• Those who use a desktop email client such as Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail, will receive the error message "invalid user name or password," and will be directed to log into mail.umn.edu and follow the instructions to proceed. You also may go to www.umn.edu/myaccount and choose Google Account Options.

Alumni and retirees that were eligible BEFORE they became an alumni or retiree, also are eligible.

Google Apps are web-based, state-of-the-art collaboration tools providing increased productivity opportunities available to you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A U of M Google account offers:

• Gmail for University email
• Google Calendar
• Google Docs (Word Processing, Spreadsheets and Presentations Document Sharing)
• Google Chat and Google Talk (Instant Messaging)
• Google Sites (Website Publishing Tools)

For more information or questions, as well as links to training opportunities, visit the Google Apps support site, or contact help@umn.edu.