SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. -- It should be no surprise to Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command employees that the command is migrating to the new Department of Defense-wide Enterprise E-mail platform Nov. 29-30.
For months, Hq. SDDC's G6 Communications Directorate has been sending out command-wide e-mail messages and Portal announcements informing SDDC personnel of the looming migration. Additionally, the directorate posted to the SDDC Portal an extensive library of documents and how-to papers detailing many aspects of the migration.
The SDDC CONUS migration will include Hq. SDDC at Scott AFB; the 597th Transportation Brigade at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va.; and SDDC battalions and detachments at Beaumont, Texas; Charleston, S.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Seattle, Wash.; Military Ocean Terminal - Sunny Point, N.C.; Military Ocean Terminal -- Concord, Calif.; Topeka, Kan.; and Atlanta, Ga.
SDDC's overseas units -- including to 595th, 598th and 599th Transportation Brigades -- migrated to the new e-mail platform in September and October.
During the past year, U.S. Army installations and units around the globe began transitioning to the new, DOD e-mail service, managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency. Instead of accessing e-mail through local, installation e-mail servers, all U.S. Army e-mail users will access e-mail services from centralized DOD data centers; what DISA has dubbed the "DOD Cloud."
As the SDDC migration date approaches, the G6 is ensuring several, critical pre-migration steps are completed.
On Nov. 8, G6 released a command-wide e-mail message asking e-mail users (CONUS only) to minimize their e-mail mailbox storage to no more than 50 megabytes. The 50MB limit includes mail, calendar, deleted items, sent items, and to-do items.
William Evans, the command's Active Directory and Office Information
Systems administrator, said the 50MB limit will help ensure a smoother migration to the Enterprise E-mail platform.
SDDC users who don't know how to reduce their mailbox size only need to look as far as the "How-To Documents" folder, located in the Enterprise E-mail Community of Practice on the SDDC Portal. In addition to nearly a dozen how-to documents, the COP includes news articles, leadership messages, migration guides, briefings, and more.
According to Evans, browsing through the COP will provide SDDC personnel with all the information they need to ensure a successful migration for themselves and the command.
He said in addition to knowing the actual command migration date (Nov. 29-30), it's important SDDC e-mail users participate in the migration process and understand how the migration will affect them.
Once the migration is complete, Evans said SDDC personnel will have a new e-mail address that will now contain their middle initial and their persona, or status, whether military, civilian or contractor. Evans said e-mail addresses will change to something similar to FirstName.MiddleInitial.LastName.Status@Mail.Mil. For example, John.Z.Smith.Civ@Mail.Mil. Much like current e-mail standards, numbers will be added in the case of similar names (i.e., John.D.Smith123.Civ@Mail.Mil).
Evans said although e-mail addresses will change, users will continue to receive e-mails addressed to their old address for at least a year and possibly longer.
Also said in addition to the @Mail.Mil extension, SDDC's uniformed service members will receive a second e-mail address with the "@us.army.mil" extension.
The address change is a small price to pay for a new e-mail platform that will offer Army e-mail users several significant benefits, including:
• 4 gigabytes of on-line email storage -- 40 times the current 100 megabyte limit.
• 500 megabyte webmail accounts for those who don't normally use Army email to perform their duties.
• Better webmail interface with the look and feel of Microsoft Outlook.
• Access to email from anywhere, at any time, from any authorized device.
• Share individual, organizational and resource calendars with other DOD users.
• Find e-mail addresses and contact information for Army and other e-mail users at other locations across the DOD.
• Users' e-mail accounts remain active during PCS moves and unit relocations.
For more details concerning SDDC's migration to Enterprise E-mail, visit the "Army Enterprise Email Implementation" Communities of Practice on the SDDC Portal.
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