Tag Archives: Google Apps

Google Mail decides I’m a spammer and cuts off my email sending. # Googlefail

Posted on by
Reply

For years I’ve used and recommended Google Apps and Gmail to others, and have found them extremely reliable.

The last week I’ve run repeatedly into the same problem, and I’m sure that some other users must come across.  The problem occurred when I wanted to send an email to a group of science coordinators across the county.

I even have a list of emails set up in my contacts address book (on Google) for this purpose.  I emailed the group with an update and a link to a Google form for them to complete (only 8 users in the To: field).

The email bounced with the following message (Message rejected.  See http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=69585 for more information):

The solution in the past was to split the users between the To: and CC: fields.  I tried this again as my tried and trusted method of getting my email sent (in the absence of any useful advice from Google).  The email wasn’t sent and I received the following message instead (the error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.4.5 Daily sending quota exceeded):

It now transpires that I am unable to send any email, at least for the rest of the day (at least) because google think I’m a spammer.  Nice one Google.

My email had a Word attachment and a link.  It was sent to a group of 8 people (all in my contact book).  It seems that this makes me a spammer.  Is it not within the realms of possibility that there are users out there who may want to send a link to a group of contacts.  Directing me to use Google Groups is not a workable solution Google – since most of the people I am trying to contact have barely mastered email.

I would advise Google to tweak their spam detecting algorithms.  If you have lots of people opening accounts to send spam, perhaps you need to look at the meagre amount of information you need to give to get a google account rather than cutting off your loyal users who merely want to email a link to a list of contacts.

Google touts its apps suite as a dependable and reliable system, and yet it has gaping holes like this, and yet it has published very little information for users telling them what to happen if this happens.  Google sort your act out if you want to see more people who have #gonegoogle.

Moving mail from one GMail account to another with tags intact.

Posted on by
Reply

I recently had to move my mail between a GMail account and a Google Apps GMail account. It is possible to move mail from one to the other with all tags intact, however there are several steps (the exact number depends on the number of tags you have) but the process consists mostly of repeating the same step.

Enable IMAP on both Gmail accounts and configure your mail client for both.  I used Windows Live Mail since it has a “Copy to folder …” option (and of course is free and readily available for Windows 7).

Replicate the tags structure for your destination GMail account so that it has all the tags of the source GMail account.  You can do this from inside the GMail web interface (while you enabling IMAP support).

Configure and sync both accounts in your mail client so you have a full list of tags (folders in your mail client) for both.

Your mail client sees the GMail tags as folders.  Go to the first folder you want to transfer – in the image I am copying my sent mail.  Select all the mail you want to copy.

Right click on your selected mail and select “Copy to folder” and then select the same mail folder of the GMail account you are copying to.

Click OK and you will see a progress bar as your mail client copies the mail from account to account.

You must repeat this for every folder/tag you want to transfer including the all mail folder (if you want to move everything or untagged email).  Keeping copying them to their corresponding folder on the destination account.

When you have finished the tagging/folder structure should be identical for both accounts.

You may also want to move your incoming mail filters and contacts from account to account as well.  Google provides a Google Labs feature for moving your filters, and you can export your contacts in a Google friendly format for moving from one account to another.

That’s it.  If you have a few hundred Mb of mail the transfer doesn’t take too long (depending on your connection speed).  You might want to do this at a quiet time of the day so that Google’s servers are under less load.

Update: I’ve just found an excellent piece of software that does automatically what I was doing manually.  It is called GMail Backup and is available from here.   Download the email from the account you are moving from, then change the settings and restore to the email account you are moving to.  The software takes care of labels etc (I’ve tested it with Google Apps and Gmail and have used it to move email in both directions).

Setting up Postini filtering to use with Google Apps (Education Edition)

Posted on by
Reply

Last year we started to get to grips with Google Apps, managing to use some of the collaborative tools for entering experiment data, and writing reports as a team.  We hadn’t enabled the email because of the lack of filtering.  With Google now offering free Postini message filtering to education edition customers, I decided to sign up and see what it had to offer.

The filtering I set up is quite basic.  I’ve limited emails to internal emails, and implemented an offensive word filter.  I’ve detailed the steps I followed below because I haven’t found a similar guide on the internet.  Note that the postini interface could do with a little work to make it more user friendly.
Log into the admin dashboard for your domain.  Once you have enabled Postini filtering you need to go to ‘Postini services console’ and then the “System Administration” option.  This brings you to a complicated looking screen.
Click the ‘Orgs and Users’ tab as shown below.
Capture2Locate your domain and find the entry that ends in ‘Users’ and click on ‘Add sub-org’ to add a group called pupils.  This will allow us to apply separate filtering rules for pupils to the staff that use the service.
Next you need to move all the pupils into this group.  If you do not move the pupils into this group, they will not get the specific filtering rules.  To do this click on ‘Orgs and Users’ followed by users.  You then click on the ‘move users’ option.  This should bring up a screen like this:
Capture3
Enter the email addresses of the pupils into the top box (if you have a lot to move you can export the email addresses and then paste them in).  This will move the pupils into their own group so you can apply specific filtering rules.
You could also add another group if you wish for pupils who are barred from using the email service, or pupils who you wish to have different filtering rules.
To apply specific filtering rules click on ‘Orgs and Users’ and then select ‘pupils’ from the ‘choose org’ drop down box.  This should bring up a busy-looking screen that looks like this:
Capture4
You will need to enter some rules for inbound services and outbound services.  You can change attachment rules, message size and add custom footers (e.g. one with a message explaining the email came from a pupil with an admin contact).
You can find a list of swear words here if you don’t know many!
I inserted the following rules (remember to turn them on when you’ve entered the rule!).  In all instances I’ve set the filter to let me know if they are triggered by setting the ‘Copy to quarantine’ option – more on this later.
Inbound services

  • Delete (black hole) email where the sender doesn’t include yourname.org
  • Bounce email where the entire message matches any word in the list of rude words

Outbound services

  • Delete (black hole) email where the recipient doesn’t include yourname.org
  • Bounce email where the entire message matches any word in the list of rude words

I also turned off spam filtering in Postini, preferring to let Google handle it all for ease of use.  I disallowed pupils access to the message centre in the ‘User access’ settings – again for ease of use.
If pupils do send or receive email from outside the domain it disappears into a black hole.  A copy will be sent to the admin quarantine box where the admin gets the chance to deliver the email to its original recipient or delete it.  By using this system it is possible to hold all external email until it has been verified by an adult.
Adding another rule deleting all email to your domain but quarantining it would allow you to vet every piece of email passing through your site if you need this kind of accountability.

You will get a daily email from the system if you have any emails that have been quarantined.  Log into the admin account but this time select the ‘Message Centre’ or just go to the Postini site.  Any quarantined email will be under the junk tab.  From here you can either deliver the email (to where it was originally sent) or delete it.  You can view the email to check suitability and print out a copy if necessary.

Unfortunately none of the filtering options available allow you to copy email to another account, so keeping a record/copy of email sent isn’t possible without paying to upgrade the service from Postini. 

Have you got any useful rules or comments you would like to share?  Leave a comment below.

Using Google Sites (a wiki) for collaborative working between schools

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve managed to set up a joint science group between pupils at my own school and another class at a local mainstream school.  Pupils will be working together on the mainstream site, with team teaching from staff of both schools.

 

Clearly working in this way makes planning hard, since the staff involved are on different sites 2 miles apart.  In the past when we’ve worked in this way we’ve had to meet up and plan in blocks of lessons, emailing resources and materials between sites.  However this time we’ve decided to use technology to make life easier! I chose Google Sites since we already have a Google Apps account for school, and I’ve used it before for personal sites.

 

Capture

 

The site is a little bare at the moment since we haven’t planned much of the course.  However you can see how the site is starting to take shape, with individual modules down the left hand side.

 

pic3

 

Within each topic I’ve added an overview of the topic as a table, and individual sub-pages for each lesson.  Clicking on a lesson brings up an outline lesson plan and all the resources added as attachments.

 

pic4 

 

The real beauty of working this way is that either party can add, delete and edit content, and the site always shows an up-to-date copy of the plans.  Another huge advantage is the ability to subscribe to changes – meaning you can opt to receive an email when changes are made to the site by staff from either school.

 

pic2

As the collaboration develops, we will be using Google Docs to jointly create and edit assessment material, and also to track pupils’ progress.

 

I’ll keep posting through the year and report on our progress.  I’d also be interested to hear from anyone who uses a wiki or similar to manage collaboration of any kind.