Welcome!

The deadline for transitioning to VT Google Apps Mail is Nov. 12. If you have not moved, you will receive an email informing you that you still need to move.

If you're an Exchange user (meaning you have an email address of [Your PID]@exchange.vt.edu), click here. If not, keep reading.

Virginia Tech is retiring our current VT email servers and moving to the new Google Apps for Education suite. As a result, WebMail will eventually be unavailable, so everyone at Virginia Tech must create a VT Google Apps account before the upcoming deadline. This applies to you whether you check WebMail through the web interface or through an email client (such as Outlook, Mac Mail, Entourage, etc.—you will know that you are checking WebMail because the incoming mail server for your current account will use "pop.vt.edu").

If you participate in research that is ITAR compliant, do not switch to Google yet.  Please contact the Office of Export and Secure Research Compliance for further instructions at http://www.oesrc.researchcompliance.vt.edu/.

If you're unsure whether you need to move, then try and log in to webmail.vt.edu with your PID and PID password. If you successfully log in, then you have a VT Mail account and will need to transition.


A Quick Overview

The VT Google Apps suite is a collection of web-based tools including Mail, Calendar, Docs, Sites, and more. Please note, this is not the commercial Google Mail, Docs, etc: these are separate enterprise services licensed from Google and protected by privacy policies negotiated by the commonwealth.

Here you will find resources to keep you up-to-date on the transition to Google's servers, to explain how to migrate to VT Google Apps, and to answer any questions or problems related to the migration process. For more information on what Google Apps is and how to use it, see Google's Google Apps Learning Center page.

If you find something that isn't covered that you have questions about, we welcome your comments. Please visit the Contact Us page to send us a message.


“With Google Apps for Education, we hope to improve the flexibility of electronic communications, while increasing the ability for faculty, staff, and students to collaborate with one another at Virginia Tech.”

- William Dougherty,
Executive Director for Network Infrastructure & Services


Features and Tools

VT Google Apps Mail Service Features
What is staying the same? What is changing?
Your e-mail address, [Your PID]@vt.edu No more expiration of emails; Google provides over 25GB of storage space for each customer
Use of My VT to set your aliases and change your passwords A second password that is different from your PID password is required for accessing your VT Google Apps account (Mail, Calendar, Docs, Sites, Contacts) and can be set up in My VT
  Email forwarding is set up within VT Google Apps Mail instead of My VT

The core suite of Google Apps for Education will provide a wide variety of tools to improve collaboration:

  • Mail: send, receive, and search through email that provides 25 GB of storage space
  • Calendar: organize your schedule and share it with others
  • Drives and Docs: multi-user, concurrent editing of web-based documents, spreadsheets, drawings, and presentations
  • Sites: build and publish private (or public) websites using a WYSIWYG editor or HTML
  • Contacts: quickly and easily add contacts
  • Talk: instant-message and make calls

More than forty additional services provided by Google will be activated with minimal or no formal support, including:

  • Blogger: publish and maintain blogs
  • Google+: a social media tool that allows you to create "circles" of contacts and "hangouts"
  • Picasa: view, edit, share, and organize the photos on your computer

As part of Virginia Tech's agreement with Google, ad revenue generating services such as DART, Doubleclick, Google Ads, etc. will not be deployed.


Thanks to the University of Michigan and Michigan Tech for letting us borrow/modify their extensive Going Google site for use at Virginia Tech.