Whether employees have retired, left to start their own companies, found other opportunities, or were fired or terminated, these scenarios leave you as the IT Admin with a lot of work to off-board users. We have seen many instances where these user accounts pile up and there’s not an easy and cost-effective way to export users email data from Google Apps in bulk.
We work with many clients who have a backlog of accounts that need to be off-boarded while still keeping the email data per the company’s retention policy. This backlog is typically associated with two types of accounts:
- Suspended: Accounts that are suspended and still being paid for.
- Abandoned: Accounts that have yet to be suspended, but have not been used (for some predefined time) and are still being paid for.
We work with clients who have anywhere between 10% – 20% (and some who have upwards of 40%) suspended or abandoned accounts that are often overlooked and continue to add up.
Our Solution
ShuttleCloud is developing an employee cloud data management product built on top of our data processing and migration infrastructure and we’re currently offering free consulting around data management. We’re including our best practice for exporting data for suspensed or abandoned accounts and running the export process for our clients.
Our Process
We first set up a consultative call with both a ShuttleCloud Project Manager and Migration Engineer to discuss how to best retain data while minimizing your costs for Google Apps. Once you’re ready to begin the process is as follows:
1. Sign up with ShuttleCloud.
- ShuttleCloud will authenticate using the Google-recommended 2-legged oauth authentication method.
2. A ShuttleCloud Project Manager will pull a report showing the list of your suspended and abandoned accounts.
- Abandoned accounts are based on a date you define (for example: six months with no activity).
3. ShuttleCloud’s Project Manager will provide you the export report for your review.
- This report will contain the list of both suspended and abandoned accounts.
4. You will confirm that the address listed on the report are ready for export.
- At this time you will have the option to identify any users that you do not want exported at this time.
5. ShuttleCloud will unsuspended the users.
- We must unsuspened the users in order to export the data.
6. ShuttleCloud will export the data.
- The data is exported in MBOX format and the file can be opened with an email program and is searchable.
- ShuttleCloud will encrypt all IMAP using the SSL standard to fetch the email data. No other protocols will be used to transfer the email data.
7. ShuttleCloud will provide you with the data.
- There are many storage options (such as Drive, Amazon S3, ftp transfer to your server, and more) and we will discuss with you to identify the solution that works best for you based on your use case (the number of suspended users and email quota for those users).
8. ShuttleCloud will re-suspend the users.
- We recommend keeping the suspended accounts in Google Apps for a few days for review prior to deleting from Google Apps.
9. Once you have had a chance to review the export, the accounts may be deleted from Google Apps for Business.
The Benefits
-
Save $$$ on Google Apps licenses.
-
Our process is quick and easy with no internal resources required to export the data.
-
The learning-curve is basically non-existent. We manage the entire export process for you.
-
No need to spin up servers, no hardware to upgrade, no need to babysit and root cause any data export issues. We run, monitor and resolve any export issues.
This process frees up internal IT resources. Resources that can focus on higher-value, strategic projects that support your core business.
Get Started
We’re offering this solution for FREE for Google Apps clients who make ShuttleCloud their Authorized Google Apps Reseller. Partnering with ShuttleCloud as your Reseller does not increase the price you pay for your Google Apps licenses. Google Apps licenses will always cost what Google provides on their pricing page or cheaper. Instead, you’ll get free email bulk export as well as Google Apps advice and support from a ShuttleCloud Project Manager.
We’d love for you to be one of our early customers. If you’re interested, just send us an email at info@shuttlecloud.com and we’ll schedule a consultative call with both a ShuttleCloud Project Manager and a Migration Engineer.