Office 365 / Live@Edu - Change of Domain

[MYK-IT]

Current Setup

Staff using Live@EDU Email based on @..sch.uk

Awaiting Office365 Upgrade

 

New Proposed Setup

Been informed school is changing domain to .com

 

What options have I available?

 

Register a new Office365 account for then:

 

1) Register the new email addresses as a connected account to their existing Live@Edu account? or

2) Setup a forwarding rule from existing Live@EDU email to new .com Office365 Email Account? or

3) Can existing accounts be 'magically' transferred across with the magic of PowerShell?

 

Also, what would be the best method of transferring existing folders across from user's ..sch.uk email account to their new .com email account?

PowerShell or with Outlook 2010 software?

 

Any suggestions / advice would be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[EduTech]

Hi MYK-IT,

 

If you currently use Live@Edu I would wait for the tenancy to be upgraded to Office365, when this has been completed go ahead and add your new schoolname.com domain as another domain and then you will have the ability to use that as your primary domain going forward with the old .sch.uk domain being an alternative address. If you wish to then at a later date you can remove the .sch.uk domain name.

 

I do not see a reason why you should need to create a new tenancy using your new schooldomain.com domain, this will just over complicate things as you will then need to migrate your user mailbox data to the new tenancy.

 

If you do really want to go ahead and create a new tenancy, then you would go ahead and set this up and verify your new domain and make the relevant DNS Changes, You can then indeed setup a forwarding rule for your mailboxes but again it's just configuration that don't need to be done as you can add your new domain to your existing tenancy.

 

I hope that helps,

 

Regards,

James.

 

Current Setup

Staff using Live@EDU Email based on @..sch.uk

Awaiting Office365 Upgrade

 

New Proposed Setup

Been informed school is changing domain to .com

 

What options have I available?

 

Register a new Office365 account for then:

 

1) Register the new email addresses as a connected account to their existing Live@Edu account? or

2) Setup a forwarding rule from existing Live@EDU email to new .com Office365 Email Account? or

3) Can existing accounts be 'magically' transferred across with the magic of PowerShell?

 

Also, what would be the best method of transferring existing folders across from user's ..sch.uk email account to their new .com email account?

PowerShell or with Outlook 2010 software?

 

Any suggestions / advice would be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[jamesbmarshall]

As James has suggested, there's no need to over-complicate this. I'd recommend completing the upgrade to Office 365, adding in your new domain as an additional accepted domain, and then run a simple PowerShell script to change every user's UPN and primary SMTP address to use the new domain suffix.

 

You can, at the same time, set the old domain suffix to be a proxy address to allow your users to continue to receive mail sent to the old addresses; this is useful as it prevents people missing mail and senders getting NDRs unnecessarily.

[MYK-IT]

Thanks, makes sense and since found some articles stating the same thing.

 

The only issue now is that out of the 2 (original) Live@EDU domains we have, one was upgraded to Office365 last week but the main staff one (which we have had for years) has not been selected for upgrade yet; despite requesting it online and via an Edugeek thread here many months ago (to go on provisional phase etc.).

 

I've logged a call with Live@EDU support as i cannot log into the LiveEDU management portal, and they are currently saying that the (Office365) service has been cancelled!!?!*£

 

Noooooo, i've been waiting months for the upgrade option!!

Edited March 28, 2013 by MYK-IT

[EduTech]

Hi,

 

Regarding your problem with the upgrade...

 

At this point, the system is fully utilized upgrading other academic institutions which have been scheduled. The Live@Edu Team cannot commit to an ETA for the upgrade, you will get an automated email the moment you can start the upgrade. This automated email will be your 30-day notification prior to your scheduled upgrade date. You will also have a one-time option to postpone for 60 days.

 

It is a very busy time for them at the moment as I am sure you can imagine a lot of academic institutes are being moved over, look out for your mail! :-)

 

Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

 

James.

 

Thanks, makes sense and since found some articles stating the same thing.

 

The only issue now is that out of the 2 (original) Live@EDU domains we have, one was upgraded to Office365 last week but the main staff one (which we have had for years) has not been selected for upgrade yet; despite requesting it online and via an Edugeek thread here many months ago (to go on provisional phase etc.).

 

I've logged a call with Live@EDU support as i cannot log into the LiveEDU management portal, and they are currently saying that the (Office365) service has been cancelled!!?!*£

 

Noooooo, i've been waiting months for the upgrade option!!

[MYK-IT]

Thanks @EduTech

 

I appreciate and understand that.

Just don't understand why our main, original Live@Edu account/domain which was registered to express interest in being upgraded to Office365 has never been acknowledged (at all), and our other account/domain was done many months afterwards and is now Office365 based.

 

Therefore the upgrades are not being done in chronological order i guess??

[EduTech]

No I don't think there is a particular order, I am not sure why it hasn't already been moved over if you have expressed interest early on.. but I'm not personally familiar with how they have chosen to do the service upgrades i know it's quite complex, @jamesbmarshall might know more...

 

James.

 

Thanks @EduTech

 

I appreciate and understand that.

Just don't understand why our main, original Live@Edu account/domain which was registered to express interest in being upgraded to Office365 has never been acknowledged (at all), and our other account/domain was done many months afterwards and is now Office365 based.

 

Therefore the upgrades are not being done in chronological order i guess??

Edited March 28, 2013 by EduTech
Typo

[jamesbmarshall]

Managing these upgrades is a very complex process - the way in which we schedule upgrades isn't as straightforward as alphabetical or chronological, there are lots of factors that affect how and when customers get to upgrade.

 

Many customers have already upgraded. The best advice I can give is that you can contact Live@edu support and request your upgrade - you'll then be entered into the upgrade queue to be enabled ASAP. The upgrade process is very popular at the moment so we cannot guarantee when this will happen.

 

If you want the latest, check out: Live@edu

[MYK-IT]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

 

Can someone (@jamesbmarshall) please assist.

 

Now been told that our main domain is no longer on Live@EDU, it has been cancelled!! and been advised to visit a generic link regarding Office365 on how to register!!

 

I have been registering and expressing interest ever since Office365 was made available....I just want my Office..3..6...5...

[EduTech]

Hi MYK-IT,

 

I am assuming that you do not have any active users then on the Live@Edu subscription? Because if you did then it would still be registered, or are you using a different domain?

 

If you do not have anyone active at the moment, then can you not just sign-up to office365 with your domain name and then away you go?

 

Sorry If I am mis-understanding your situation.

 

Thanks,

James.

[jamesbmarshall]

Now been told that our main domain is no longer on Live@EDU, it has been cancelled!! and been advised to visit a generic link regarding Office365 on how to register!!

 

Do you have the support reference number for the case where you were informed that it had been cancelled? Please drop it to me as a PM.

[MYK-IT]

HI @EduTech,

 

Yes, still using the Live@EDU system, it is our main staff email facility!

 

Thanks

[MYK-IT]

Do you have the support reference number for the case where you were informed that it had been cancelled? Please drop it to me as a PM.

 

Thanks @jamesbmarshall

 

PM on its way.

[EduTech]

Ok... I do not have access to view your support case so best to leave this one in the hands of James then as he will be able to see an overview of your support case.

 

Cheers

James.

 

HI @EduTech,

 

Yes, still using the Live@EDU system, it is our main staff email facility!

 

Thanks

[MYK-IT]

Just an update, our original Staff Domain based Live@Edu accounts have just been upgraded to Office 365 (Plan A2) and completed yesterday!

 

I changed and notified staff of the correct URL(s) to use to access OWA email. The WebGUI layout is still the same (as Live@Edu) is this what they class as pre-upgrade? and a further GUI based upgrade is due in the future (its not the new tiles based GUI).

 

Also, now that i have upgraded, I have also registered the new school domain name that we will be using in the not too distant future.

So if staff are using [email protected] for the email, and I have registered domain2.com what is the correct (and best) method of changing all the staff accounts to use [email protected]? whilist still allowing emails sent to [email protected] to continue to be received (during the transition period)?

 

Thanks.

Edited April 25, 2013 by MYK-IT

[jamesbmarshall]

PowerShell

 

Change their UPN and primary SMTP address to reflect the new domain, and add the original (now legacy) domain as an additional email address.

 

If you're synchronizing with AD, forget PowerShell, make the changes there and wait for DirSync to sync the changes (or force a manual sync).

[EduTech]

Hi, The PowerShell commands are as follows:

 

Set-Mailbox USERNAME -EmailAddresses SMTP:[email protected],smtp:[email protected],smtp:[email protected]

 

The Upper SMTP will set the primary email address.

 

If you wish to change the User Logon ID then you need to use the following Powershell Command:

 

Set-MsolUserPrincipalName -UserPrincipalName [email protected] -NewUserPrincipalName [email protected]

 

But as James has pointed out, If you are using DirSync then I would make the change within Active Directory OnPremise & then when the next Sync completes this will update the users accordingly.

 

If you want to make this change, you can do this using a script to modify the attributes for a list of users in a CSV, If you want this then let me know and I'll post that up.

 

Regards,

James.

[MYK-IT]

Thank you both for the advice and assistance.

 

Just another query, just like @bodminman http://www.edugeek.net/forums/cloud-services/112047-ms-365-email-has-gone-all-weird.html We still have the orange (Live@Edu) banner / theme.

 

Is the process to the Outlook 2012 (blue themed) layout automatic or will we get prior notification?

 

Thank you.

[jamesbmarshall]

Is the process to the Outlook 2012 (blue themed) layout automatic or will we get prior notification?

 

Yes, and yes!

 

The upgrade to the new Office 365 Education (aka the-one-that-looks-like-Exchange-2013, or Wave 15, or "the blue one") is automatic, and you get a notification. The upgrade involves ZERO downtime and your end users do not need to reconfigure anything. You'll get a notification sent to you advising you of your scheduled date.

 

You can postpone once by at least 60 days, after which you'll be rescheduled. This rescheduled date cannot be postponed.