Summary of changes related to bMail migration

  1. Existing CalMail accounts @berkeley.edu will be moved to bMail, which is hosted by Google. (Graduate students’ @berkeley.edu mail is handled differently; see http://bconnected-project.berkeley.edu/test-page.)
  2. People who do not have a CalMail account @berkeley.edu will get bMail one before the move.
  3. Existing CalMail (subdomain) accounts @econ.berkeley.edu will be merged with ones @berkeley.edu. Both @berkeley.edu and @econ.berkeley.edu addresses will stay valid but will point to the same (bMail) mail box.
  4. The storage quota will increase from 10 to 25 GB.
  5. The web interface of bMail will look quite different from CalMail SquirrelMail and RoundCube. However, it is designed for best user experience and is recommended by campus IT team as a preferred email application. SquirrelMail and RoundCube will remain available for a period of time in read-only mode, but will not receive messages.
  6. The IMAP desktop and mobile access (via Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, alpine, mutt, pine, etc.) to bMail will require a separate password (a.k.a. bConnected key) that has to be setup via https://idc.berkeley.edu/mmk/. The incoming mail server should be set to imap.google.com. In addition, you must configure your bMail account to permit IMAP connections; see https://kb.berkeley.edu/campus-shared-services/page.php?id=27610.
  7. Some CalMail settings will not be migrated. Most notable setting that will get dropped is CalMail forwarding. You will have to reconfigure the forwarding after the move via https://calmail.berkeley.edu/manage/account. Other settings that need to be re-established may include filters, vacation message, and authorization (mail delegation).
  8. Personal address books will not be migrated to Google contacts as well. This is because a personal address book is not part of CalMail system, but rather a part of email client — each application (Thunderbird, alpine, SquirrelMail, etc.) may have its own address book. However, in bMail web interface, typing a name, a portion of name, even a single letter in the address field will bring up a list of campus email addresses. Recently used addresses will be at the top of the list.
  9. Existing CalMail (IMAP) folders will be translated to so-called Gmail labels. The main difference between label and folder is that a message can be tagged by several labels and, thus, can appear in multiple "folders" (without being duplicated) in contrast to CalMail in which a message may belong to only one folder. You cannot actually copy a message. What this means is that if you delete a message filed under several labels, it will be deleted everywhere.
  10. bMail comes with a couple of predefined labels, namely "All Mail" and "Important", which may confuse a beginner and cause troubles for IMAP users. "All Mail" is an archive place for all the mail one's ever sent or received, but has not deleted. It is not recommended to "subscribe" to this "folder" from a desktop/mobile IMAP client. "Important" label is automatically assigned to incoming messages based on Google importance ranking. Such messages are marked by a small yellow "sticker" in Gmail interface. Of course, not every message marked as "important" is really important, and vice versa.
  11. If you send a message a message to a mailing list (such as econstaff@lists.berkeley.edu), you will not receive a copy of your message; this is because there is a copy automatically saved in your Sent Mail and bMail does not allow more than one copy of any message.
  12. Messages in Trash are automatically deleted after 30 days. This is not configurable. If you use the bMail web interface, you may wish to use the Archive feature.
  13. The spam filtering on bMail will likely move some legitimate email from @berkeley.edu addresses into the Spam folder. The contents of the spam folder are automatically deleted after 30 days. Regardless of whether you use an email client such as Thunderbird or Outlook, it is important you check the Spam folder using the bMail web interface to train it to recognize legitimate mail.
  14. The bMail web interface has a feature called Conversation View. Conversation View is turned on by default; if you do not want to use, you can turn in off in settings. If you use Conversation View, it is important to remember that if you delete a Conversation, you will be deleting multiple messages. Note also that bMail does not provide an easy way to determine if you have forwarded or replied to a message unless you use Conversation View.