Peer to Peer Magazine

82 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | SUMMER 2016 Ripping Off the Band-Aid: Tips and Tricks for a Quick Office 365 Migration LESSONS LEARNED If using DirSync to sync Active Directory to 365, perform regular password syncs, especially just before cutovers If possible, do not manually set up 365 accounts beforehand as it can cause issues with email and migrations (i.e., to allow someone to download Office or have full functionality on an iPad) Public folders can't be active in both the cloud and on-premises » The migration process is not difficult but can be tedious The final email sync process will take between 20 minutes and several hours depending on how many people are being migrated » Email is down for the people being migrated during this process » Reboot PCs to ensure Outlook opens cleanly aer the migration completes » If users continue working during the final sync, make sure they know not to open Outlook » Consider disabling remote access during this process so users cannot open Outlook remotely The changes were quick because the system is cloud-based. MY BIGGEST TIP: If possible, have IT open Outlook for all users aer their migrations. » We did not do this for the first two offices, and the result was annoyed users and a few sarcastic "I guess Office 365 isn't so great" comments » If you don't proactively open Outlook, users must know the following (we taped notes to monitors in the first offices, which was not enough): » Outlook will take a long time to open (between three and 10 minutes or more) as profile seings are changed to 365 servers » A user must enter his/her email address and password and might be prompted to do so oen » Outlook will force a message that says "Microso Exchange administrator has made a change that requires you quit and restart Outlook" » Patience is a virtue and a requirement –– forcing Outlook to close might/will corrupt the profile » You will experience some random anomalies and will have to open and close Outlook multiple times for some (or many) people » Ensuring Outlook was fully functional required IT to obtain user passwords » Note beforehand who is not in cached mode as Outlook takes longer to open for them; this also means recreating the profile might be faster » You will have to recreate at least a few Outlook profiles because they won't open or give an error, so note if they had delegate access (this enables you to add those mailboxes back to the profile when you recreate it) » Cached mode is automatic for new Outlook profiles, including for delegate folders — unless you've disabled it via policy

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