Over the next several weeks, campus users may notice changes in the Google Apps @ NC State environment as OIT prepares to move from Postini to Google Vault for email retention services. This year, Google will retire Postini, which has been providing the university’s email security and archiving services.

What you should know about this transition

• OIT enabled Vault in its domain on Feb. 11. You may begin to see Vault-related icons in Gmail, but they will not become active until OIT completes the transition to Vault.
• During the transition, OIT will freeze some of its mail infrastructure so that items cannot be added, deleted or changed. This behind-the-scenes action will not have a direct impact on most campus users. 
• You will be able to add a new employee or get a new account, but aliasing (firstname_lastname) tools will be offline. Please see OIT News – January 2015 for information on aliases. Stay abreast of downtime for Mail Manager tools via SysNews.
• If you are a Postini customer who uses the “approved sender” list, please be aware that this functionality will not be available after the transition is complete. As an alternative, you can create filters to ensure your email is never marked as spam and is delivered to your Inbox. See Using Filters.
• Once the Vault transition is complete, you may notice some changes in your email delivery. OIT encourages you to monitor your Inbox and Spam folder for a few days. If your messages are not delivered correctly, then:
• select them to “never mark as spam” or
• create filters to ensure they are delivered to your Inbox.

Also, as a reminder:

• Be sure to check your current aliases and make any changes or deletions now. Don’t be caught by surprise when the Mail Manager tool goes offline.
• If you are still using an IMAP client (e.g., Thunderbird, Outlook):
• consider switching to the Gmail Web client.
• make sure you are using smtp.gmail.com (NOT smtp.ncsu.edu) for your outgoing mail.

The transition to Vault should be relatively seamless for campus email users. You can keep abreast of the transition by checking the Central Email Archiving and Retention Services Web page regularly, reading OIT News and monitoring SysNews. Direct your questions to help@ncsu.edu.