Centennial School District’s move to Gmail, as our central mail and collaboration platform has brought up some important questions. This article is intended to address two of them directly.  Setting up mail access, on two of the most popular mobile computing platforms.  iOS, from Apple is on every iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.   Google’s Android platform, is provided by various device manufacturers.

 

For the purpose of this document, we’ll be setting up an existing Centennial email account on a device running IOs 8, on a personal (not district provided) device.  

 

  • Open your device to the home screen.
  • Open the application called “settings”.  
  • On the left side, slide down to “Mail, Contacts and Calendars”.  
  • tapping on that, will open up additional options on the right side of the display.
  • Tap the “Add Account” option. That will slide to the account type section.
  • You’ll see a list of pre-configured mail provider choices.
  • Choose the option for “Google”.
  • Enter your full name, full centennial email address, and password.
  • For Account Description, use Centennial.
  • After entering these, tap the “Next” at the top/right of that window.
  • It should verify the account credentials, and offer what items to sync up.
  • You’ll want to sync all items, to get full use.
  • You should be able to tap “Done” and have it show up in the account list.
  • Go ahead, and press the home button.
  • You may already start receiving notifications from the mail server that messages are/have been arriving.
  • Tap on Mail, and you can begin using your device.



For devices running the Android system, there is an added caveat.  Most personal Android devices already have your personal Gmail account in place.  because of that, you’ll need to get comfortable toggling between accounts.  it’s easy to use, and we’ll go over that as well.

 

For the purpose of this document, We will being using a device running Android 4.4 as it’s widely used.

 

  • Open your device, and look in the application drawer for “Settings”.
  • Once that’s open, find the “Accounts” option.
  • Tap the “Add account” option.
  • This will bring up a list of potential account types.
  • Choose “Google”.
  • It will ask if you want to add an existing account, or create a new one.  Choose “existing”.
  • Enter your full Centennial email address and password.
  • Tap “Next” and you’ll be given the Terms and Conditions.
  • If you Tap “OK”  The device will sign into that account.
  • Once successful, if will the Synchronization options.
  • I would recommend having Calendar, Docs, Drive, Gmail, sheets and slides synced.
  • Tap “Next” and the account will be added.  

Here’s the caveat;  Accounts are seperated, and you’ll need to toggle between them.

  • Load up your Gmail Application.
  • Locate the menu icon on the top-left side.
  • If you tap it, the account drawer will slide into view.
  • The first item is the currently viewed account.
  • Tap the account name, and you’ll see the other account below.
  • Tap the second account, and you’ll be viewing the correct mail.
  • This same procedure works with Google Drive, Hangouts, Calendar and Google Keep.
  • Almost all applications provided by Google, have this same feature.