When VCU became a Google school, hosting students in a domain separate from faculty and staff was the recommended configuration. As Google has expanded and additional collaboration tools have been added, it is now best practice to host everyone together to allow for efficient collaboration. Also, our students often hold staff or faculty positions while enrolled in classes which until now has required two separate accounts. Some of key benefits our user community will enjoy with the merged domains:
- Dual role students/employees use one Google Workspace account
- Document sharing
- Share with @vcu.edu account
- Change ownership of documents between faculty/staff, and students
- Mail and Calendar delegation and calendar invitations
- Delegate access to departmental generic accounts to students
- Secondary calendar delegation and management allowed between faculty, staff and students.
- Easier integration of Google tools with third party applications such as Canvas
- Google Chat and Chat rooms
- Search and find faculty, staff and student contacts to add to chat
- Add students to existing faculty/staff Chat rooms and vice versa
Sharing with students becomes much easier following the domain merge. Sharing is now all in one domain using the student's eID@vcu.edu address. Share with Virginia Commonwealth University now shares with all current faculty, staff and students. Visit this page for further details.
I'm missing some documents shared from former students - how can I regain access?
Please contact Doctor Gee, drgee@vcu.edu, and provide details such as student who shared and document names.
Will email addressed to the student @mymail.vcu.edu address continue to be delivered?
Yes, steps will be taken to assure continued email delivery.
Should I update all of my contacts to remove the mymail.vcu.edu addresses?
It is not necessary to do this, we'll take steps to associate the mymail.vcu.edu alias with students and email will continue to be delivered. If you'd like to remove all the contacts with @mymail.vcu.edu you may, current students will also be in the global directory.
Which address do I use for a calendar invitation?
Calendar invitations should now be sent using the eID@vcu.edu address.
How do I share documents now in Google Drive - with @mymail.vcu.edu or with @vcu.edu?
Faculty, staff, and students will now all use an eID@vcu.edu account for document sharing.
When I share in Google Drive with Virginia Commonwealth University, does this now include students?
Yes, this has been misleading in the past when faculty assumed that setting shared to all students. This share now includes all current students since accounts are in the same Google domain.
My Google Groups have students with their @mymail.vcu.edu addresses, do I have to change these?
Google Groups have automatically been updated to remove the mymail portion of the address.
What if I hire a student to work for me, do they still need a student worker account?
That depends. Student worker accounts have often been created to delegate access to a departmental generic account the student worker needed to access. These generic accounts may be directly delegated now. We do recommend continued use of departmental generic accounts so the data remains with the department as student workers change.
Why am I finding duplicates in my Shared with me in Google Drive
To complete this project with the least amount of disruption, we are migrating data in the background while current students continue to work in their student mymail accounts. Students have been advised not to sign in or use their new accounts to allow for data to correctly migrate. Their most up to date data should be in their student accounts until the migration and merge completes the week of May 17. Once the final data migration sweep completes, the duplicates will no longer appear. This is all part of the migration and merge process.