Wednesday 10 April 2013

Migration with a syncing feeling!

Today was migration day at work. The company has made the decision to move away from Microsoft's Exchange Server in favour of Google Apps For Business. Lots of people were a little apprehensive about the move but I was behind it from day one so was glad when the chance came to finally migrate.

The email that things were ready came first thing I and I didn't hang about. Archive current email in Outlook, change password, login to Google site and then set up the sync software. Email was a breeze and after about thirty minutes I was able to access my newly migrated email on both the Google website and also in Outlook. Contacts were instant with no problems.

The calendar migration however was not so good! First pass manged to sync up a couple of calendar items but with errors. I was told a second sync would fix this. Sadly this was not the case. After the second run I had most of my calendar items but somehow it had managed to lose three scheduled meetings and still some errors. Our IT department had no idea how to resolve this so I tried get invited to them again. Sadly this was no good as the sync still threw up errors and then deleted the items.

In a last ditch attempt I went for the clear and start again route and I managed to get all my calendar minus the three meetings syncing without any errors. This time round another set of invites was successful and suddenly I was all synced up and fully migrated to Google Apps. We have the option to continue to use Outlook for email and calendars but I went straight to the web interface as I am very used to them and find them easier to use.

The only thing left was to get my iPhone syncing up to pick up my calendar and emails but after a number of failed attempts even though I had the correct settings I decided to put that little bit off until tomorrow.

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