While University of Miami Department of Information Technology statistics view the transition as a success on paper, for some students, changing to Gmail has caused unnecessary headaches.
Outlook emails did not reappear in Gmail as a consequence of the transition. Students either have to forward past emails to their new Gmail inbox or flip between the two programs.
This became an inconvenience to some students, including Celeste Gomez, a sophomore triple majoring in accounting, finance and sports administration. As the treasurer for Hurricane Productions, she was in the middle of planning events for orientation taking place a few weeks after the change.
“Having to go back and forth between Outlook and Gmail just to get to previous information was challenging, especially contacting vendors for our events,” said Gomez. “Overall, it was an unnecessary hassle.”
Despite this, the University of Miami Department of Information Technology saw the majority of students active on Gmail after the transition.
“From a technical perspective, the launch of Gmail has been successful,” UMIT told The Hurricane. “While change can present challenges, students have largely embraced the transition to Gmail.”
UMIT recorded that almost 98% of students accessed their new Gmail accounts before the start of the fall semester. There have been 12,500 students who have sent emails using Gmail, and over 2 million emails sent to students’ new Gmail accounts.
“I’m excited about the transition,” said Adelaide Doman, a senior studying public relations and marketing. “I think Gmail is much easier to use than Outlook.”
The transition reached a major setback with a spam protection issue within the first week. An email was sent to students by UMIT on Friday, Aug. 9, alerting them that there were several legitimate emails that were being incorrectly marked as spam.
This issue specifically affected some automated, system-generated emails, causing a delay in delivery between Aug. 7 and Aug. 9.
After working with their spam protection service provider, the issue was resolved and all legitimate emails were released to inboxes between the evening of Aug. 9 and the morning of Aug. 10.
The Student Technology Help Desk and IT Service Desk are available to students having individual issues with Gmail, and have already assisted users with login, email forwarding and general issues.
UMIT asks students to fill out an online feedback survey regarding the Gmail transition.
“We invite students to share their comments, concerns, questions and/or suggestions,” UMIT said of their online feedback survey. “Student feedback is an important input for our overall IT strategy.”
At the end of the form, users can choose to share their name, email address and phone number for potential follow-up on their responses.
The Gmail feedback survey can be found at www.it.miami.edu/gmail-feedback.