Update on Mail Service Upgrade

As announced on Wednesday, we’re going to be completing the migration to the new mail server on Saturday, April 26th during the building-wide power outage.  It’s my intention over the next week to send out the occasional update on important issues you need to be aware of in an effort to make this transition go as smoothly as possible.  There’s a lot of good information in here for everyone, so if you could read the whole message, there’ll be fewer surprises ahead.We’ve been going over the pieces involved with this transition for some time, and have covered a lot of the issues.  But, I won’t lie to you, there are things we’re discovering or just now considering as we get further along.  I say this a lot… it’s not the problems you can think of that get you, it’s the ones you don’t think of.The big thing we need to tackle before the 26th is mapping your MCS identity to your Argonne identity.  We’re in the process right now of populating our user database (affectionately known as userbase) with the Argonne domain usernames of all the employees in the divisions we support (CELS, MCS, and ALCF).  But we’ve got 500 e-mail accounts, so that’s not going to cover all of them.  Some of you, for example, don’t even have an Argonne domain account yet.  That’s what this mail is going to address.If you’re an employee in MCS, ALCF, or CELS, we’ve got you covered.  If you’re not, we’re going to need a little help from you to get things lined up for a smooth transition on the 26th.Consider these criteria:

• Do you have an Argonne domain account?
• Do you know what the username for that account is?
• Do you know the password?

If you think the answer to all of the above questions are “Yes”, there’s a quick way to test it.  Argonne has a credentials site that lets you find out the status of your account.  It’s a common phishing tactic to get you to click a link in e-mail that results in a login page, so I’m not going to make a clickable hyperlink here.  You should open your browser and visit the credentials.anl.gov site.  If you’re not onsite, you’ll need to put https:// in front of that URL.The left side of that page has a Username/Password test.  Try it out.  If it works, great!Do you have an Argonne domain account?If you work onsite at the Laboratory, you almost assuredly do, since it’s required for the various training being on-site requires.But, if you don’t, and you want or have an MCS e-mail account, you need to get one, and you can do that via the Cyber Gatepass system.Begin by visiting webapps.anl.gov/collaborator (putting the https:// in there if you’re offsite), and follow the instructions on that page to begin the process.  I apologize for the duplication of effort in terms of collecting this information — we’re in the process of making this new database our central store for identity such that this shouldn’t be an issue anymore.You’ll get a username that starts with “ac.” followed by something related to your name.  The “ac” stands for Argonne Collaborator, in case you were wondering.  After your account is approved, you’ll be given instructions on how to change your temporary password into something meaningful.Important note for Sponsors: You’re going to get an e-mail from the Cyber GatePass system requesting you visit the webapps.inside.anl.gov/cgp site to approve requests.  It’s a quick process, but I wanted to give you a heads up on this since you’ve not likely seen these messages before.If you don’t know your domain account username or password, contact the Help Desk ([email protected]) for help. By this point, you have an Argonne domain account, and you know the username and password.  You’re going to want to remember that password, it’s going to be your e-mail password after the 26th.Now, so we can get your account set up, we need you to do one of the following:Login to your MCS account page at accounts.mcs.anl.gov/account.php — this page uses your MCS Workstation username and password, which is also your current e-mail username and password.  Add your Argonne domain username to the page (under Account Information).  Make sure everything else there is up to date as well.-or-Send us an e-mail at [email protected] with your MCS username, and what your Argonne domain username is, and we’ll get your record up to date.  Remember, if you’re an employee in CELS, ALCF, or MCS we have this information and will be taking care of it for you.That covers the big issue for today.  The documentation on using the new system is coming along well, and will be unveiled a day or two before the switchover takes place.  As we write this documentation, we catch other issues on which it would be nice to give some advance notice.  My next update is going to cover some of the changes in how you do things like forward your mail, use server-side filtering, and set an auto-reply or Out of Office message.