Your New Email Platform   On Saturday, October 14, 2006 Saturday, November 11, 2006 (the date has been changed to avoid email interrruptions during preparations for CYM's World Congress) we will transition all email users from CYMnet's current email platform (called Smartermail), to a new system (called Gmail)!
	Who is affected?
		Everyone who has an email address @cym.org
	What do I need to do?  How will the move affect me?
		There are a few important things you need to do: Shortly before the transition, we will send you a personalized email with your password for the new system. For security reasons, when you log on to the new email system for the first time via the CYM home page, you will need to change that password to one that only you know. During the (approximately 24 hour) transition period, you should check both the old and new email systems, since some incoming email may appear in either one or the other. If you use an email client (e.g. Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc.), you will need to reconfigure that client to receive and send email through the new system. Instructions can be found below. It is important to understand that emails will *not* be automatically copied or moved from the old mail system to the new one. Therefore, the old mail system will continue to be available for at least a week after the transition. During that time you will be able to read emails that arrived there in the past, and download them to your PC, if you need to save them.
	What are the benefits of the new system?
		There are a number of changes which will bring benefits to CYM users: Less spam (better spam detection and management) 200 times more space than before for storing emails (each user has 2GB) Choice of Ukrainian language interface, English or one of 40 other languages Powerful new email search capability Chat feature and much more! Details: The new system is called GMail, and is part of a system hosted by Google, called "Google Apps for Your Domain". Spam: A number of users have recently noticed an increase of spam. While our old email system handled spam quite poorly, the new system will automatically send spam emails to a spam folder, without you ever having to see it. Our experience is that the new system correctly recognizes over 95% of incoming spam, so the amount you're lilely to see in your inbox will be very small Space: While our old system limits you to 10MB of space to save your old emails, the new system offers 200 times more - a total of 2GB of storage! Most users will never use anywhere near this amount of storage. Search: An important advantage that the new system provides is a quick and easy way to search over all past emails. Instead of hitting the "Delete" key to remove an email you've already read, you'll wnat to hit the "Archive" key. Doing this removes the email from your inbox, but days, months or years later when you want to perform a search for a long-lost email, it will still be available for the built-in search engine to find. This is perhaps the singly most powerful feature of the new email system. Language: CYM offers email to sumivtsi in 10 or more countries. Recognizing that our l anguage proficiencies vary as much as our geography does, the new email system's interface can easily be customized to appear in Ukrainian, English, or one of 40 other languages. Each user can choose the interface language that best suits his or her needs. Chat: A chat feature is integrated into the mail system and can be used (again, in almost any language) for online chat with your fiends.
	What do I need to do during the transition period?
		On Saturday, November 11 we will change over to the new Gmail-hosted email system. Because of the way the Internet works, there will be a transition time during which some incoming email will still arrive at old email system, and some will be routed to the new. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid this. For around 24 hours during the transition, if it's important for you not to miss any emails during this time, you should check both places for incoming mail to avoid missing any incoming emails. If you happen to be away and don't check at all during the transition, that's fine -- afterward, just make a point of checking the old system one last time to find any straggling emails that might have arrived there since the last time you logged in. From then on, you'll only need to log into the new system.   If you use a web browser to read mail        (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.): During the transition (and for a while afterward), two links will be visible on the CYM home page - one to the old mail system, and one to the new. You'll be able to check both places for incoming mail. To send emails, you should use the new system (although sending should work from both places throughought the transition).   If you use an email client to read mail        (e.g. Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc.): When you first started using CYM email, you configured your email client to receive email from (and send out email through) our CYMnet mail servers. You will now have to reconfigure the client to use the new CYMnet mail servers. Log into the new mail server by clicking on the link from the CYMnet home page (and using the password emailed to you). Then click on "Settings" in the upper right corner, and click on the "Forwarding and POP" tab (POP is the method you'll use to download incoming mail to your email client). You'll want to click the option "Enable POP for all mail", and choose an appropriate selection for the "When messages are accessed with POP:" option (we recommend "archive CYMmail's copy"). Then configure your email client - instructions can be found by clicking on the link "Configuration instructions". When following the instructions, use your full email address (e.g. myname@cym.org, instead of just myname). Use these servers, when prompted for them: POP3:   pop.gmail.com SMTP:   smtp.gmail.com Important: your email client won't be able to connect to the new servers until some point during the transition period. For some users, this may be 20 minutes into the transition period, while for others it might be 24 hours. Unfortunately, we have no way to control this, so you may have to try it a few times until it works for you. In the meantime, you can continue to access the old and new systems through the CYM home page interface!
	How can I customize the new system to suit my own needs?
		Once you log into the new system, using the password that has been emailed to you, look for a link called "Settings" in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The first setting you'll see is the ability to change interface language. Choose the language of your choice and click on "Save Changes", and you're ready to customize your email environment to best suit your neeeds. There is a variety of settings that you can control - click on "Help" in the upper right corner of the screen for help with settings or practically any other issue with this email system.
	What about existing mailing lists?
		Mailing lists will continue to function as before. If you are experiencing problems with a mailing list, please let us know at cym.email@gmail.com. If you need to create new or additional mailing lists, please let us know that as well. We are not pleased with the fact that the new system does not allow us to control who can send email to a mailing list (unlike the old system). Therefore, it's possible that suscribers to mailing lists will receive emails from individuals outside of the subscriber list - for this reason, it's important to not advertise the names of mailing lists. We are continuing to search for a resolution to this problem, and will keep list maintainers informed of developments.
	Help, I'm having problems. Whom can I contact?
		For most users, the transition should be easy. If you experience any problems that you can't solve after reading this page (and the on-line Help pages on the new email system), write to us at cym.email@gmail.com and we'll try to help!