Guidelines/SOP on E-mailing > Email Shifting from a different server
Synopsis: This guideline was framed while shifting of
Email server with consam.in domain from Bigrock to CONSAM On-prem server and the same is issued in the
interest of public and as a matter of SOP/guideline at CONSAM and its
subsidiaries.
Accordingly, the simple SOP/guideline is asunder:
1. Extract all the individual mailboxes [e.g., name@consam.in] and forwarders [e.g., info@consam.in] alongwith the email addresses
that such forwarders do the forwarding to, in an Excel-sheet [Internal-note: format regd.
as CIL-INC-DOC.24.337.01]. This extraction will be required from the
server that has to be closed [e.g., Bigrock] ← Objective:
Quick re-creation/copy & paste etc). While
other cautions to be adhered to will be asunder:
1.1. Do not suspend Login and/or Incoming and/or Outgoing of mailboxes at
the server to be closed so that ongoing work doesn’t compromise.
1.2. Do not inform the service provider so that they do not cause any
misconfiguration.
2. Create same email IDs but with a different domain-name on the fresh
Server [i.e., name@consam.co.in in place of
name@consam.in] and ask users to configure,
freshly created email ID on email client [e.g., Microsoft Outlook] with the
following cautions:
2.1. CAUTION-1: Don’t create email IDs
with old domain [i.e., name@consam.in]
on fresh server because this will cause problem.
2.2. CAUTION-2: The email client should
be configured on IMAP protocol and never POP → Click for configuration guideline.
3. Contact the fresh server service provider [e.g., CONSAM web services]
whereafter the nameserver of your domain [e.g., consam.in] present at existing
server service provider [e.g., Bigrock] will be changed to point to fresh
server service provider [e.g., CONSAM web services] and after the change in
nameserver, it will take 2-3 hours for redirection to complete and in the
meantime, the following exercise will be required to be done:
3.1. Immediately first create general forwarders by referring to the
Excel-sheet as per above clause 1 ← Objective: So that incoming emails don’t miss as emails might be sent
to forwarders instead of individual email IDs. Email to several individuals
will miss in case forwarders are created later.
3.2. Thereafter, create forwarders with the same old email IDs [i.e., name@consam.in] on the fresh server by
referring to the Excel-sheet as per above clause 1 provision the fresh/new
email IDs created [i.e., name@consam.co.in]
to such forwarder on the fresh server ← Objective:
The email IDs with old domain; i.e., name@consam.in is widely advertised, as also
might be regd. with important institutions. Accordingly, creating a forwarder
and redirecting emails will ensure that no incoming emails are missed after 2-3
hours when the nameserver redirection completes.
3.3. Block sending and receiving [Caution: Not login] of all the Email IDs present at the server
to be closed so that users are not able to send emails from old server ← Objective: After change of
nameserver, if a user sends email from old login/server, the email will display
sent but will not be received by the recipients, thereby leading to confusion
that emails were sent but not received.
3.4. Thereafter create a TEST email ID [i.e., name@consam.in]
on the fresh server with the same domain name as it is at the old server.
Thereafter test-check by sending a TEST email from any operational email ID
[e.g., name@yahoo.com/name@gmail.com]
to this newly created TEST email ID in order to ensure that name server change
has taken affect. If the affect has taken place, the email will arrive in the
Inbox of old email ID at fresh server and not the old server.
3.5. Ask users to refer to Customized Folder present at old login and create ← Click for guideline] the same in the fresh Email
Login ← Objective: So
that emails from Customized folders [if any] besides Inbox, Sent etc. from Old
login can be transferred aswell to new login/email IDs.
3.6. Ask users to Drag and drop emails, folder-wise from old-login [email
IDs] to new-login [email IDs] using email client [e.g., Microsoft Outlook]
where the following Cautions should be taken:
3.6.1. CAUTION # 1: In case the number of
emails is many; few emails at a time should be Dragged and dropped in order to
avoid server & sync. error.
3.6.2. CAUTION # 2: In case there is problem in drag & drop e.g., the same going
unresponsive; check disk quota allocation at MY PC. It has been especially seen
when users are on Windows server that since 100% utilization of C:\ drive is
there, the drag & drop goes unresponsive thereby leading to confusion that
Outlook is malfunctioning.
3.7. After the transfer of emails are complete, the users may be advised to
do the following:
3.7.1. Create diverts/filters ← Click for guideline]
3.7.2. Delete old-login [email IDs] from email client [e.g., Microsoft
Outlook].
4. Lastly, the administrator should delete all the mailboxes on the server
that has to be closed [e.g., Bigrock] in order to ensure prevention against
leakeage of important/confidential email data. Additionally, there might be few
non-operations email IDs whose emails might be important for future and in such
case, the above guideline should be followed for transfer of emails from old
server to new server.
End