(updated 4/21/21 at 2:30PM)

TSD is transitioning from Outlook to Gmail for email services. Please review the information below to help guide you through this process. Information will be added frequently, so please check back often to see if your question/concern is addressed below.

Critical Information

When: This transition will occur at the close of business (4PM) on Friday, April 23. From that point forward, ALL email messages sent to any tus.k12.pa.us email address will be delivered to a user's Gmail Inbox, NOT to Exchange/Outlook.

Inbox: To check your email after April 23 at 4PM, you will need to log in to your Google email at mail.tusge.org Your log-in will not change from your current tusge.org Google account. For example, if your current Gmail login is rockyb@tusge.org, you will continue to log in with that account/address, but will also see emails sent to rocky.buchanan@tus.k12.pa.us. Everything will be delivered seamlessly to a single inbox.

New Domain: We also have a new domain, tsdrockets.org, that we'd like to establish as our new standard. You will automatically have a new email address at this domain, for example from above, rockyb@tsdrockets.org. This address will match your current tusge.org username. It will also be seamlessly delivered to the same inbox as all other messages. You can use all three (or more) addresses interchangeably as all will arrive in the same inbox. THIS IS THE EMAIL ADDRESS THAT WILL BE SET AS YOUR DEFAULT "SEND-FROM" ADDRESS at the cutover, and this is the only address you should share/publish.

Important Information

Calendars: We will run a process to move ALL calendar events from your Outlook calendar to your Google calendar over the weekend of April 24/25.

Meet vs. Zoom: When you create a calendar event in Google, it automatically adds a Google Meet link to the event. You will not need to add Zoom info or create a Zoom meeting. This will effectively help us transition totally away from Zoom.

Access on Mobile Devices: (This is available now.) If you'd like to access your email on a mobile device, you can download the GMail app from the Apple Store or the Android Play Store. After downloading, you can simply add your tusge.org account to the device/app. If you already have a personal Gmail account on your device, email will NOT mix in the Gmail app. You can switch accounts at the top of the app by clicking on your profile picture or name letter.

Outlook/Exchange access after April 23: We will NOT be turning off Outlook/Exchange for several months. Your current/old messages will continue to to be available in Outlook until a later date. We DO plan to move all old messages from Outlook to your Gmail account, but this will take a while since we have years of data to move for hundreds of users. You can also forward messages from your Outlook account to yourself in your Gmail account if needed. ANY MESSAGES SENT FROM OUTLOOK will receive replies in your Gmail account. Essentially, we are making Outlook an "outbound only" system.

"Short" email addresses coming back: We know many of you have services tied to your former "short" email addresses at tus.k12.pa.us. These addresses matched your computer login username (i.e. John Q. Smith would be jqsmit@tus.k12.pa.us). We are re-activating these addresses and they will be included in your universal inbox.

Email Groups: We will be cleaning up email distribution groups and rebuilding/renaming them in Gmail. Here is a chart of old groups vs new (this is not yet a complete list):

FAQ

Google has an EXCELLENT support website that has many step-by-step instructions for common questions, such as how to organize email, set out-of-office messages, how to use the app, etc. Please check this site FIRST to see if your question can be answered quickly:

https://support.google.com/mail

We know there will be many questions before and after this transition. If you have an question that wasn't answered above, please fill out the form below, and we'll post the answers below for all to see (appropriately redacted if needed).

FAQ Answers:

Q: Will the folders that are set in Outlook (how I organize my email) transfer automatically to categories in Gmail?
A: Yes! Folders in Outlook will transfer to Gmail as labels. Keep in mind it will take a month or two for us to fully move all old messages over from Outlook.

Q: Can I create a signature and the privacy statement in Google like I have in Outlook?
A: Yes, here are step-by-step directions to create a signature in Gmail (you can do this now to get ahead of the game). You DO NOT need to include a privacy/compliance footer in your signature as we are adding district-approved language to all outbound emails automatically.

Q: Can I put in an "out of office" message like I can in Outlook?
A: Yes, here are step-by-step directions to do so.

Q: Can I get notifications on my desktop (bottom right corner) for new emails or calendar reminders?
A: Yes, here are directions to turn on desktop notifications.

Q: Can you pin the icon for Gmail to the task bar like Outlook is?
A: UPDATE (thanks, Hannah!). Yes, just go to to Gmail, click the three dots in the Chrome browser, then more “More Tools” and click “Create Shortcut”. It adds the shortcut to Gmail on your desktop. Then, just drag the icon to your taskbar.

Q: I have software/accounts that use my tus.k12.pa.us as a username. Will this user name no longer be valid and or will it be valid through the end of the school year and then change it for future software releases??
A: Your tus.k12.pa.us address will be valid forever. It would be wise, however, to update your accounts to your tsdrockets.org address as you remember/have need. But, it is not required.

Q: Do you anticipate that any of these email addresses will eventually be eliminated? In other words, is there one address that would be best to switch all of our accounts to? When we lost our "short email" I had many accounts that I had a hard time accessing. I'd like to avoid that in the future.
A: After Friday, you should ONLY share/publish your @tsdrockets.org address. While all of the others, including your old "short email" addresses will still work essentially forever, we are standardizing on your tsdrockets.org address. A reminder, the first part of your address is whatever your current tusge.org address starts with.

Q: When will the tsdrockets.org address be active?
A: It is active right now. You can receive emails sent to that address now. On Friday, will will run a process that changes your default "send from" address to your tsdrockets.org address instead of your tusge.org address. REMEMBER, you will ALWAYS still have to log in using your tusge.org address, as that is what our Google domain was established with.

Q: Will there be a district address list in Gmail (similar to the Global Address List in Outlook) to find and select district staff's tusge.org email addresses?
A: Yes! In Gmail, you simply start typing the user's name (first or last) or userID in the To box, and Gmail automatically searches for them for you to select. You can also click the word "To" in the compose window to search the global address list.

Q: What address should we provide when we ask for people to share files with us? The tusge.org address is currently the one attached to our Drive. Will that change?
A: No, it won't change. It doesn't matter to Google what address is used... so they any/all will work. Your alias addresses (such as tsdrockets.org, tusk.12.pa.us, etc) are all just "pointers" to your one and only Google account, and files shared with any of them will all appear together in the same place.

Additional Resources

Google has many excellent resources to help you get familiar with Workspace tools. Here are some to help you get started:

• Switching to Gmail from Outlook

• Integrated Gmail Video (2:33) - highly recommended viewing