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I once recommended a 12 person company move from a self-hosted, internal exchange server to Google for email. They ignored me until a truck hit a telephone pole

I once recommended a 12 person company move from a self-hosted, internal exchange server to Google for email. They ignored me until a truck hit a telephone pole and we lost email for 2 days.

ghaff 13y ago
I worked for a similarly sized firm a few years ago and we also moved from Exchange to Gmail, partly because we had had a few severe outages with Exchange for various reasons. From a technical perspective, the migration went pretty smoothly. But there were at least a couple non-technical people on the business side who always hated the new system, partly because Gmail didn't have the hierarchical folder system they were used to. (And I don't think Gmail had sublabels at the time.)
- jrpt 13y ago
  I feel you, nested labels is the easy answer to this. However, the better answer is teaching people about archiving and search. People used to folder their emails because searching was terrible. Gmail's search is pretty good, so the best workflow in my opinion is to archive email once you're done with it, and search if you need something specific. I do use labels too, especially auto-labels, but I've found search to be more useful. Still, some people are reluctant to change, and just want to do things the way they've always done it. So that's why nested labels exist.
  - graeme 13y ago
    My issue with gmail search is that it's incomplete, and I don't know how incomplete. I've downloaded my mail to mac's mail app. With identical search strings, the Mail app finds more messages. This includes searching by sender email, which yields incomplete results in gmail. There have been many occasions where I've only sent someone one email, or vice versa. Gmail often misses these. So for anything I must find (e.g. tax documents) I label them.
    - wlesieutre 13y ago
      Are you sure that isn't due to duplicates in Apple Mail? If I'm remembering right, things with labels (including "Inbox") will have copies in All Mail as well as each of their label "folders." IMAP and POP use hierarchical folders and don't understand that a tax email might be marked as both "Government" and "Finances", or whatever your filing system happens to be.
      - graeme 13y ago
        I'm sure that could be an issue as well, but it's not causing the problem in my case. I've found 1-2 emails in mail from a particular sender, where gmail was unable to find any results, even with their exact address. I've likewise found perhaps 7/10 of a set of emails in gmail, and found the remaining 3 in mail (while confirming they had unique information not listed in gmail).
  - WayneDB 13y ago
    No, the better answer is a simple hierarchical folder system. People only use search exclusively in Gmail because they don't have folders.
    - rbanffy 13y ago
      Actually, it has. You can nest labels. With the extra benefit a message can be in more than one folder if it pertains to two different subjects. Very powerful.
      - WayneDB 13y ago
        "...a message can be in more than one folder if it pertains to two different subjects" That's not a benefit. It complicates things. Folders are simpler - one location, one parent, one place to go and find it. Average users can understand folders. Heck, expert users can use folders immediately without having to figure anything else out. If nested tags are better than straight hierarchies for storing and finding things...where are all of the nested tag file systems? In a nested tag file system - would I have to go all the way to a settings dialog to create a new label like in Gmail? Also, look at this guy's post about how "Gmail sucks when you have lots of mail" - and his response to someone recommending nested tags (Apparently, you can't just drag an email to nested tag.) - https://plus.google.com/105059362788808645801/posts/3amd9ZMiq3k https://plus.google.com/105059362788808645801/posts/3amd9ZMi... All the web-app loving hipsters jump on his case for not "knowing the tool". I love it. How about just give us a tool that works like we expect? Who wants to invest time figuring out a new email client that has very questionable benefits?
MichaelApproved 13y ago
I don't know how long ago that happened but if it happened today, I'd resolve that by going to Verizon and picking up a hotspot device. Connect the mail server to the hotspot and you have it working again.
- tonfa 13y ago
  Do you easily get a fixed IP on mobile?
  - MichaelApproved 13y ago
    I believe my mobile IP tends to remain the same for long periods of time but I was assuming they had a mail server off site which was relaying the mail to their exchange server which is how I do it. I wouldn't trust changing DNS settings to the mobile IP. I use a remote data center email server because office/residential network connections tend to be unreliable. Even without the telephone getting knocked down, I get intermittent outages. I'd prefer to have mission critical services (like email receipt) working at a data center. This way the message is received and doesn't bounce back. Then, my local exchange server can pull the data when it's online. So, I guess the mobile option wouldn't really work in this case unless you were sure the IP address won't change.
  - dublinben 13y ago
    I believe Verizon's LTE network assigns a publicly routable, persistent IPv6 address.
    - MichaelApproved 13y ago
      I think you can also request an individual IPv4 address as well but I don't know if it's persistent.
deno 13y ago
Just get a backup MX. http://dyn.com/email/dyn-email-backup-mx/ http://dyn.com/email/dyn-email-backup-mx/

I once recommended a 12 person company move from a self-hosted, internal exchange server to Google for email. They ignored me until a truck hit a telephone pole and we lost email for 2 days.

ghaff 13y ago

I worked for a similarly sized firm a few years ago and we also moved from Exchange to Gmail, partly because we had had a few severe outages with Exchange for various reasons. From a technical perspective, the migration went pretty smoothly. But there were at least a couple non-technical people on the business side who always hated the new system, partly because Gmail didn't have the hierarchical folder system they were used to. (And I don't think Gmail had sublabels at the time.)

jrpt 13y ago
I feel you, nested labels is the easy answer to this. However, the better answer is teaching people about archiving and search. People used to folder their emails because searching was terrible. Gmail's search is pretty good, so the best workflow in my opinion is to archive email once you're done with it, and search if you need something specific. I do use labels too, especially auto-labels, but I've found search to be more useful. Still, some people are reluctant to change, and just want to do things the way they've always done it. So that's why nested labels exist.
- graeme 13y ago
  My issue with gmail search is that it's incomplete, and I don't know how incomplete. I've downloaded my mail to mac's mail app. With identical search strings, the Mail app finds more messages. This includes searching by sender email, which yields incomplete results in gmail. There have been many occasions where I've only sent someone one email, or vice versa. Gmail often misses these. So for anything I must find (e.g. tax documents) I label them.
  - wlesieutre 13y ago
    Are you sure that isn't due to duplicates in Apple Mail? If I'm remembering right, things with labels (including "Inbox") will have copies in All Mail as well as each of their label "folders." IMAP and POP use hierarchical folders and don't understand that a tax email might be marked as both "Government" and "Finances", or whatever your filing system happens to be.
    - graeme 13y ago
      I'm sure that could be an issue as well, but it's not causing the problem in my case. I've found 1-2 emails in mail from a particular sender, where gmail was unable to find any results, even with their exact address. I've likewise found perhaps 7/10 of a set of emails in gmail, and found the remaining 3 in mail (while confirming they had unique information not listed in gmail).
- WayneDB 13y ago
  No, the better answer is a simple hierarchical folder system. People only use search exclusively in Gmail because they don't have folders.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    Actually, it has. You can nest labels. With the extra benefit a message can be in more than one folder if it pertains to two different subjects. Very powerful.
    - WayneDB 13y ago
      "...a message can be in more than one folder if it pertains to two different subjects" That's not a benefit. It complicates things. Folders are simpler - one location, one parent, one place to go and find it. Average users can understand folders. Heck, expert users can use folders immediately without having to figure anything else out. If nested tags are better than straight hierarchies for storing and finding things...where are all of the nested tag file systems? In a nested tag file system - would I have to go all the way to a settings dialog to create a new label like in Gmail? Also, look at this guy's post about how "Gmail sucks when you have lots of mail" - and his response to someone recommending nested tags (Apparently, you can't just drag an email to nested tag.) - https://plus.google.com/105059362788808645801/posts/3amd9ZMiq3k https://plus.google.com/105059362788808645801/posts/3amd9ZMi... All the web-app loving hipsters jump on his case for not "knowing the tool". I love it. How about just give us a tool that works like we expect? Who wants to invest time figuring out a new email client that has very questionable benefits?

MichaelApproved 13y ago

I don't know how long ago that happened but if it happened today, I'd resolve that by going to Verizon and picking up a hotspot device. Connect the mail server to the hotspot and you have it working again.

tonfa 13y ago
Do you easily get a fixed IP on mobile?
- MichaelApproved 13y ago
  I believe my mobile IP tends to remain the same for long periods of time but I was assuming they had a mail server off site which was relaying the mail to their exchange server which is how I do it. I wouldn't trust changing DNS settings to the mobile IP. I use a remote data center email server because office/residential network connections tend to be unreliable. Even without the telephone getting knocked down, I get intermittent outages. I'd prefer to have mission critical services (like email receipt) working at a data center. This way the message is received and doesn't bounce back. Then, my local exchange server can pull the data when it's online. So, I guess the mobile option wouldn't really work in this case unless you were sure the IP address won't change.
- dublinben 13y ago
  I believe Verizon's LTE network assigns a publicly routable, persistent IPv6 address.
  - MichaelApproved 13y ago
    I think you can also request an individual IPv4 address as well but I don't know if it's persistent.

deno 13y ago

Just get a backup MX. http://dyn.com/email/dyn-email-backup-mx/ http://dyn.com/email/dyn-email-backup-mx/