Frequently Asked Questions
These FAQs should help answer a lot of your questions about the upcoming service changes to Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, email, and calendars at Hartnell College.
If you have additional questions, please refer to the user information pages on this website, or contact the IT Help Desk at A117 on Main Campus or by calling 831-755-6789.
What Everyone Needs to Know
Empower students to grow and thrive academically, emotionally, physically, socially and spiritually. Create environments that encourage students to become responsible, engaged and empowered community members and citizens.
Hartnell College will continue to provide email services for students, faculty, and staff
Google Workspace and Google Groups will remain available for students and employees
until June 2027.
Microsoft 365 will be available for students and employees.
Usernames and passphrases will not be affected by this change.
Outlook offers many benefits that are not available with Gmail. It improves the security of Hartnell email services by leveraging Microsoft's Defender for Office 365 advanced threat protections for all users. This aims to reduce phishing attacks and identity theft and to verify safe email links and attachments.
Consolidating email and calendars to the Outlook platform will also streamline and enhance the user experience and reduce our storage footprint in Google Workspace.
Employee FAQ
This will greatly depend on which services you use for your instruction. Canvas will not be affected. Information for instructors who use Google is available on the employee information page.
Yes, except for Gmail and Calendar, Google core services will remain available for collaboration. You will also have additional collaboration options available through Microsoft 365.
More information for instructors who use Google Workspace in their courses is available here.
While the applications can be used interchangeably, their feature sets are not identical. You will still be able to create and share course materials in Microsoft 365.
No, it will stay the same. You will continue to use your "username@hartnell.edu" to log into both Google Workspace and Microsoft services at Hartnell.
Student FAQ
Most changes for students are upcoming starting in Spring 2025:
- New, incoming summer and fall 2025 students will be on Outlook
- GSuite storage will be limited for existing students June 2025
- All students will be on Outlook June 2026
- GSuite will be end of life for students June 2027
Complete details on Google and Microsoft changes impacting students are explained on the student information page.