Disclaimer

It may seem that in this topic I am scolding Yandex, but in fact everything is completely different. This story is about how little things can seriously affect the impression of a product, or help in solving the problem. Also, I hope that this article will help "fellow sufferers" while in Yandex are engaged in product modifications.

Prehistory

One fine winter day we decided to transfer the corporate mail to Yandex, because the old mail delivered unnecessary trouble: it was necessary to free up space for new letters, then the boxes stopped working for no apparent reason. In general, compared to what it was, Yandex.mail seemed to be something far and beautiful ...

Admin Adventures - the secret of Yandex

Start

First of all, I opened chrome, logged in on Yandex and tried to connect a domain. The domain name was entered, the button was pressed, and the word “Checking the domain connection may take a long time” appeared to me. For 5 minutes I was intently waiting for the result, after which I decided to go through the offices and solve organizational issues.

Returning a couple of hours later I found the exact same picture and decided to look for a solution on the Internet. Fortunately, the helpful comment went on the go almost immediately. It became clear from him that chrome and safaris have “family” problems with the work of the Yandex code - after a couple of minutes the domain was successfully added via IE and with its confirmation there were no problems.
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Note number one : The message about the "test connection" is not informative - too loose the concept of "long time." Maybe someone has been waiting for a week for this duration to pass. I will talk about cross-browser compatibility below ...

And set up?

I have one habit: to test before being introduced into use. Therefore, I didn’t really like the Yandex approach, in which nothing can be configured without setting MX records. So you have to work outside office hours. I sent out to everyone messages that from tomorrow all mail will be in another place and prepared for the work evening.

Note number two : Do not underestimate sandboxes and opportunities to try out the product, especially if it was created for administrators. Due to the fact that I had to work “lively”, employees of the enterprise had extra hemorrhoids added during mail transfer.

Friendly interface

Using the instructions , I connected a subdomain to enter the mail. The mail subdomain was already actively used for old mail (Thunderbird mail was taken from it), so I decided that pochta would not get any worse from using the subdomain. At first glance, everything worked fine - the login form was displayed. And there was nothing to check it - mailboxes can not be created before the move.
Looking ahead, I will say that the idea failed: after logging in to the mail, all users fell out like this “beauty”:


Panic, chaos and calls to the admin were provided.

Note number three : If you actively monitor security, then make sure that the user understands that “something is wrong” as soon as possible. It would be better if a security warning was issued before the data entry - then I would not have to mislead users.

Creation of boxes

It is impossible to create boxes in advance, it is impossible to add boxes with a pack - strictly with handles one by one. Well, okay, why not go for the sake of a brighter future ... The catch turned out to be where it was not expected: the interface was desperately stupid after adding a couple of boxes. The inscription "Running ..." could hang as long as necessary - you had to constantly reload the page to check the result of the action. Work evening smoothly flowed into the work night ...

Note number four : New technologies are not always as good as marketers say. Fashionable "Ajax" interface can stop working normally even for Yandex. So sometimes it's better the old way, but reliable.

Safety first

Not all the boxes were created with old passwords. Someone passwords were not enough intricate, someone not long enough. Due to the fact that they do not tolerate this in Yandex, I had to explain that the other is not only a login page, but also a password. Not very happy news among unexpected working nights.

Note number five : Security is always uncomfortable. Do not forget about it and do not fan from all sorts of checks and encryptions, users are unlikely to appreciate it.

Keeping the best

Over the years in the old mail, employees collected valuable correspondence that needed to be left intact. And certainly with the folder structure. But the transfer of mail on IMAP also did not want to work in chrome, and without any messages.

In one box were only system notifications that no one sorted. I tried to transfer it through POP3. And here was an unexpected trick - all letters began to be redirected. Fortunately, by that time I had not set up the entire redirection, and 10,000 letters had fallen into the test box. That would be surprised users ...

Arctic fox crept in unnoticed

Suspecting Yandex of dislike for the creation of a competitor, I discovered good old IE. It did little to help. Attempts to open the “Other mail server” tab end in nothing - IE users may try to transfer mail only from gmail. I realize that many people dislike Yandex in :).

When things are bad, they usually remember redheads for some reason. The same happened in my case - Firefox was called to help. And a little miracle happened, it all worked pretty well. It seems that the developers of Yandex use only them.

Note number six : If you are developing web applications - do not rush to divide browsers into good and bad, or bury them. Leave this entertainment to admins and users. In most cases, the user will find the web service bad and not the browser.

Continuing to keep

However, porting via IMAP did not immediately want to work in firefox either. This time already with the message about the "internal error". I decide to postpone the transfer to the next day - the morning promises to be restless.

After long explanations and promises "everything will be" I begin to engage in the transfer of correspondence. It is necessary to carry one box for several reasons:

• You can see only the number of transferred letters in the admin area of ​​Yandex, and then only during the transfer.
• In the old admin there is only the size of the box in megabytes.
• Transfer error messages are extremely non-informative. There are only two of them:
  “Check the correctness of the entered data and the list of logins and passwords. Then try again. ”And
  "Internal error. Try again later or contact support. ”
• It is impossible to understand when transferring which box an error occurred.

Therefore, the transfer went slowly and sadly: start the process, wait for the end (some boxes were transferred for 1-2 hours), open the old mail, open a new mail and visually compare their correspondence.

Note number seven : Everything should be done as simply as possible. But not easier.
Excessive simplification of the interface can be harmful. In my case, any additional information about the boxes would help. But the Yandex mail interface for the domain is poorly adapted for corporate mail - there is neither information about the boxes, nor fields for comments (which will be useful to other administrators of the company).