home > migration > email

Migrating from Biology to IU email

Introduction
The Department of Biology has decided to close Biology email accounts, and to migrate to the IU Email system instead.  Although biology email accounts will eventually be deleted, biology email addresses will still exist, and any incoming mail to your user@bio.indiana.edu email address will automatically be forwarded to your user@indiana.edu email address once this migration process is complete. Please read the instructions below carefully, and follow these instructions to set up your IU Email account (called Cyrus Mail), begin forwarding your Biology address to your IU address, and copy any old emails that you want to save from your Biology account to your Cyrus Mail account before August 30th.  The checklist below is fairly lengthy, as it's broken up into small steps for clarity's sake. 

If you have questions or get stuck, please contact Biology Computing Support:
  Email help@bio.indiana.edu
  Phone 855-7807 (Jeremy Niemann) or 855-6081 (Dave King)

Migration Checklist

1. Please confirm that your Cyrus account exists and that you can access it by logging in to IU Webmail (webmail.iu.edu; see Figure 1).  If you can log in to webmail, move on to step (2) below.  If you can't log in:

   1. Try resetting your Network ID password at password.iu.edu (Figure 2). Then wait 10 minutes and try logging in to webmail.iu.edu again. If you can log in to webmail, skip to step (2) below.

   2. Make sure your IU email account exists by going to the Account Management website (itaccounts.iu.edu) and clicking the "manage my existing accounts" option (Figure 3). You'll be prompted to log in with your Network ID username and password. After you log in, click "View Your Accounts".  You should see Cyrus Mail in your account list (Figure 4).  If you don't, then create a Cyrus Mail account by clicking the "create more accounts" link and choosing Cyrus Mail from the list (after your Cyrus Mail account is created you should be able to log in to webmail within an hour, sometimes sooner).

   3. If your Cyrus Mail account exists and you still can't log in to webmail, stop here and contact Biology Computing Support for assistance.

2. Make sure that your IU email address is not forwarded to your Biology email address. This is the most important step, because so long as your IU email is forwarded to your biology address you cannot really use your IU email account. If you have any trouble with steps 2a through 2d below, please contact Biology Computing Support (help@bio.indiana.edu).

   1. Send a test message to your username@indiana.edu email address; if your IU account is not forwarded to another address you should see the test email arrive in webmail within 10 minutes.  If it does, proceed to step (3), otherwise ...

   2. Go to the Account Management website (itaccounts.iu.edu) and click the option that in cludes "set e-mail forwarding."  Once logged in, click the "forward your e-mail" link (Figure 5), and on the resulting page select the button that says "set delivery for this address to user's UITS mail account on Cyrus" (Figure 6).  Then click the "Forward e-mail" button on that page.

   3. Next, log in to IU Webmail (webmail.iu.edu) and click the Forwards button.  A "Welcome to IU Cyrus Email Filter" page will open. Log in with your Network ID.  Make sure that your biology address is not listed in the "Addresses to forward to" box (Figure 7).

   4. Send another test message to your username@indiana.edu email address and confirm (using webmail) that it arrives before proceeding to step 3 below.  This will confirm that your indiana email account is not forwarded to another address. If you had to change any settings in steps 2b or 2c above, there may be a delay (up to 24 hours) before the changes take effect, during which time any test emails you send will get forwarded to your old address. Once test emails you send to your username@indiana.edu account arrive via IU webmail instead of being forwarded to your biology account, you are ready to proceed to step 3. If you cannot succesfully send and receive a test email after 24 hours, please contact Biology Computing Support for help in working out the problem.

3. Contact us and say you're ready to finish the migration process.
   Once you are receiving emails in your IU email account, email help@bio.indiana.edu or call x56081 or x57807. We will set up forwarding from your biology address to your IU address.  Please include your IU email address, Biology email address, and specify that you want your Biology email forwarded to your IU email. It typically takes us a few minutes to set up forwarding. Old emails in your biology account will not be automatically moved to your IU account; only new incoming mail will be automatically forwarded to your IU address.

4. Sign up for the IU spam quarantine filter.
   The IU spam quarantine filter typically blocks around 70-90% of incoming spam, and sends you one email per day containing a list of what was blocked.  Click here to open the spam filter signup page and log in with your Network ID.  Next to "Filtered address:" select your user@indiana.edu email address, then click "Yes" next to "Send daily quarantine digest" (Figure 8). This is important, as the daily digest allows you to see what's been blocked from delivery so you can spot any false positives.  Finally, click the Submit button to complete the spam filter signup process.

5. Optionally, configure your email software of choice (Apple Mail, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc.) to access your Cyrus Mail account.  See this IU Knowledge Base article for instructions on configuring most email programs to access Cyrus Mail. Also, please note:

   1. Make sure you follow the instructions carefully, especially with respect to incoming IMAP server name (imap.iu.edu), outgoing SMTP server name (mail-relay.iu.edu) and SSL encryption or your email software won't be able to connect to the Cyrus Mail server and may return odd errors such as 'password rejected'.

   2. The Knowledge Base instructions specific to Apple OS X Mail software may not work due to an error with the "IMAP Path Prefix" in Account Preferences.  To resolve this, make sure to leave the IMAP Path Prefix blank (Mail menu -> Preferences -> Accounts -> Advanced).

6. Copy any old messages in your Biology account that you want to keep into other mailboxes before August 30th.  After that time, Biology email accounts will be locked and unavailable over the network.  Old Biology emails will be archived in the Computing Support Office.

   1. An easy way to copy a few messages is to forward each message, one at a time, to your new address.

   2. To copy many messages from the biology server to the IU server, use email software like Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Outlook, etc. to access both accounts (see step 5 above for details). Once both accounts are accessible you can drag-and-drop multiple messages from one server mailbox to another.

   3. Note that you can copy old Biology email messages into either local folders (i.e. on your computer) or into folders in your Cyrus mail account.  Any messages you copy into local folders will not count against your Cyrus Mail quota, but will also not be available from other computers or over webmail.

7. Manage your Cyrus Mail quota effectively by periodically logging into webmail to see what your quota is and how close you are to exceeding it.  Your Cyrus Mail quota is 100 MB by default (faculty and staff are eligible for a quota increase, up to 150 MB maximum quota). Here's some hints on quota management:

   1. Only messages and attachments that are stored on the server count against your quota. You can save space in your server account by moving old messages into local folders or mailboxes on your computer.

   2. Remember that it's not the number of messages that count against your server quota, but the total size of all messages stored in your email account.  Most messages are quite small (typically around 10 kb, or 0.01 MB), while messages with large attachments can be 10 or 20 MB or more (each!). 

   3. You can sort a mail folder by size to find the largest messages, and either delete them or move them to local folders on your computer to free up space on the mail server. To sort a list of messages by size, click on the "Size" column (within webmail or your email software).

8. When you're done copying any messages you want to keep out of your Biology email account, you can delete your Biology email account settings in your email software.

Figures

Figure 1. IU Webmail login requires your IU Network ID username and password. (Click for full-size image)	Figure 2. The Password Maintenance page (password.iu.edu) lets you change or reset your Network ID password (Click for full-size image).

Figure 3. Before you can log in to itaccounts.iu.edu you need to select your status and what you need to do. [click to enlarge]	Figure 4. Once in the AMS you should see your Cyrus account listed under 'View your accounts'

Figure 5. In the AMS, click the "forward your e-mail" option so that you can set your email to be delivered to your Cyrus account. [click for full-size]	Figure 6. Select this option to forward your email to your Cyrus account. This change may take several hours to take effect. [click for full-size]

Figure 7. Back in webmail, you should also check the Forward button and make sure webmail is not forwarding to your biology email address. [click for full-size]	Figure 8. Register for the IU spam quarantine filter, and make sure to select the "Yes" option for "Send Daily Quarantine." [click to enlarge]