Update regarding faculty/staff access to W&M Gmail and Google Calendar

Summary

Faculty and staff access to Gmail and Google Calendar will be removed on October 29th.

Full Description

IT is in the final phase of William & Mary’s transition from Gmail and Google Calendar to Microsoft Office 365. Student accounts have already been retired. Faculty and staff access to Gmail and Calendar will be removed on October 29th.

What does this mean?

Following this change, you will no longer be able to access your university-issued Gmail inbox and Google Calendar.
Access to Google Workspace apps (Google Docs, Google Sheets, etc.) will not be impacted by this change. All your current content outside your Gmail inbox will remain accessible from your university Google account.
To access your Google apps moving forward, you will use your @wm.edu email address and NOT @email.wm.edu address.
To collaborate with students, you will do so by using their @wm.edu email address.
After the account is turned off, email sent to your @email.wm.edu account will automatically get forwarded to your W&M email address (username@wm.edu). Any forwards you created on your @email.wm.edu account will no longer work once the inbox is turned off.
Any email communication to you should go to your W&M email address (e.g. username@wm.edu). We recommend creating an autoreply on your Gmail account now, notifying senders that your mailbox is being retired soon and they should direct future communication to your @wm.edu email address. You may want to include that the autoreply is temporary and that it will expire with the account on October 29th.

Notifications

Moving forward, you will use the recipient’s W&M email address (e.g. username@wm.edu) to share documents in Google Workspace.
Notifications will come to your Outlook email inbox.
If you try to access the document and get a prompt to log into Google, use your @wm.edu email address and you should get redirected to single-sign on.
You can access Google Workspace files by logging into my.wm.edu and clicking on the Google Workspace icon or directly at workspace.wm.edu.

Timeline

November 2021 - W&M IT announced the university would be transitioning from Gmail and Google Calendar to Microsoft Office 365.
January 2022 - Gmail accounts were copied over to O365.
December 2022 - The forward put in place from Gmail to Outlook was turned off.
August 2024 - Gmail and Google Calendar turned off for students.
October 2024 - Gmail and Google Calendar turned off for faculty and staff.

Helpful tips

Need to move content from Gmail to your Office 365 account? Follow the instructions on Microsoft's website. Note: You will need to use the desktop application for the classic version of Outlook to do this.
As a reminder, your W&M email serves as your primary email address for official university business. We strongly urge you to use a personal email address for personal things like resumes, bank accounts, streaming services and more. That way you won't have your email account tied to anything when you graduate.

If you have any questions, please contact the Technology Support Center at support@wm.edu or (757) 221-4357.

We appreciate your cooperation and understanding as we make this important transition.