Working with SADA Systems

Ryerson has selected a third party system integrator to help us implement Google Apps for Education at Ryerson. SADA Systems Inc. http://www.sadasystems.com/cloud-solutions-google-apps.php is working with Computing and Communications Services (CCS) on project planning, data migration, system integration, and community training.

The SADA team visited Ryerson on the week of April 10 and were able to help CCS validate and refine much of the CCS implementation team’s initial project planning. We are also working on a communications strategy to make sure the Ryerson community knows what to expect and where to go for help.

We are continuing to work on adding more detail to our privacy impact assessment, the financial risk assessment, integration, accessibility and security assessments which are all key pieces as we move ahead with negotiating an acceptable agreement with Google.

Our initial plan is to migrate to Google in three steps:

1. Alpha Testing: move some CCS staff to Google
2. Beta Testing: move early adopters (volunteers) from across the University to Google
3. Migrate faculty, staff, and students to Google in September

This timing is only preliminary! Until an agreement is signed with Google, and we have done more testing, we will not know if we will be able to start the migration process early in the Fall term.

Faculty and Students will have the opportunity to opt in to Google’s Gmail service or continue using Rmail. There is no opt out for Google Calendar or the other services that make up Google Apps for Education. Our current plan is to make a form available later this summer in the my.ryerson.ca portal. Faculty and students will see the form when they log in. The form will ask them to choose between using Rmail or Gmail.

We will post more information as it becomes available on this blog.

Updated April 27 to indicate our current plan is to provide Gmail as an opt-in option rather than an opt out.