UF Is Migrating to GatorMail

GatorMail Logo UF Faculty and Staff are joining students in the cloud version of Microsoft Exchange, which UFIT is branding as GatorMail.

WHEN will this be happening? 

UFIT will complete the migration of mailboxes for the entire University by October 15th. We have scheduled migration dates for the HWCOE on June 30th, July 28th, August 25th, and Sept 29th. All HWCOE mailboxes will be migrated on Sept 29th unless DDDs choose to migrate their faculty and staff on one of these earlier dates. Several departments have already decided to migrate earlier to avoid scheduling during the start of the Fall term. IT is continuing to work with DDDs to determine appropriate migration dates.

Your local Engineering IT Support will be communicating with you as your migration is scheduled. Additionally, as part of this migration, an email will be sent to mailboxes being migrated one week ahead of its migration date. An additional email reminder will be sent the day before a mailboxes migration date.

WHAT will NOT change?  

There will be no change to your e-mail addresses, and all of your mailboxes content (email, calendar items, tasks, rules/alerts etc.) will be automatically moved to the new email service.

WHAT WILL change? 

For the most part, Microsoft Outlook for Windows will simply need to be restarted after your mailbox is migrated. Once restarted, Outlook should automatically connect to your cloud mailbox and begin taking advantage of the new features of Exchange Online. So, for many users it won’t look like anything changed. However, people using other email clients (including Outlook on a Mac) and most mobile devices, will, unfortunately, have to manually reconnect to their mailbox.  Instructions for this will be included in the emails sent prior to your migration date.

There are a few other additional changes to mention:

  • when logging in, your username will be [GatorLink]@ufl.edu (i.e. albert@ufl.edu) (even in Outlook)
  • there are new procedures for people accustomed to managing distribution group membership through the Global Address List
  • the online web client address (previously https://mail.ufl.edu/owa ) will change to https://outlook.com/ufl.edu
  • sending an eFax by email will use [FAX#]@fax.local (e.g. 21234@fax.local) instead of the [] format
  • removing and adding your email account information will be necessary on email clients that don’t automatically recognize this change (particularly on mobile devices)

WHAT needs to be done before migrating? 

You do not need to make any changes yourself but please be aware of this change and pay attention to the information provided. Engineering IT Support may reach out to you to verify information about the resources you use. We will not ask you to verify your account or ask you for any login information but may ask about shared resources you use.

WHERE is there more information?

UFIT’s documentation for the GatorMail Migration project can be found at https://www.mail.ufl.edu/migration/ (link is now invalid) and https://info.mail.ufl.edu/office-365/office-365-migration/ (link is now invalid). These website include:

  • client migration experiences (what to expect for various email clients when a mailbox is migrated)
  • email client configuration / device setup instructions
  • known issues
  • FAQs

We will not be duplicating this information on www.it.eng.ufl.edu.

Your local IT support should be able answer any of your questions as well. HWCOE IT workers were migrated to GatorMail in early May in order to become familiar with the process and service.