School email switches from Zimbra to Gmail on July 1

Following a thorough review of the current Zimbra email system, it has been decided that the email system will be switched to Gmail for the 2017-18 school year. 

According to Mr. Nadjib Aktouf, director of technology, the review included, “Finding out what the problems of Zimbra were, what the best solution was, and once Gmail was identified as the best solution, we worked together to figure out what was the best way to migrate and transition everybody over to Gmail.” The decision was made by the technology department as a team, led by Mr. Aktouf.

The move from Zimbra to Gmail was decided upon by the technology department for several reasons.  The primary reason for the switch is that the usability of Zimbra presents many problems.  One of the problems is that the calendar is not updating itself onto personal devices. Because of this, people can miss meetings or events that were scheduled a long time in advance.

Another reason for the switch between Zimbra to Gmail was for security reasons. Once the switch has been completed, Gmail uses the security systems of Google, which are better than those of Zimbra.  Also, the Zimbra server is stored on-site at ASL. If there was a flood, power shutdown, or any other major incident, there would be a disruption in the Zimbra email system. Once the switch has been completed, Google will manage the server off site. “There is less risk and less likelihood of disruption to email accounts [when using Gmail],” said Mr. Aktouf.

The feelings of the ASL students and staff vary about Zimbra and what should be done to move forward. The student body did not come forward with many complaints regarding Zimbra. However, a survey was sent out by the technology department to the faculty and staff about how they felt and how satisfied they were concerning Zimbra.  The results of that survey reported that staff were experiencing difficulties with the calendar and also about the speed that Zimbra was functioning at.

All usernames, passwords, and email addresses will stay the same when the transition from Zimbra to Gmail is complete. The only two aspects of Gmail that will be different from Zimbra will be the login screen and the interface. Gmail will be very different to Zimbra, but almost identical to personal Gmail accounts that students or staff may have but with an ASL logo on the top left corner of the screen. 

The change from Zimbra to Gmail will happen on July 1. The technology department is currently hard at work. “What we’re working on now is migrating all the emails and calendars that exist on Zimbra and plugging them into Gmail,” said Mr. Aktouf. “When everybody wakes up on July 1 at some point, and they go to mail.asl.org they’ll be faced with a login screen that’s a Gmail login screen and they’ll see that their inboxes are already populated with all the emails they originally had in Zimbra.”

About Eli Nilson ('21)

News Editor (2016-2017)

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