Office 365 - What level of difficulty is involved in implementation?

[woreilly]

I have recently been made part of a team of 4 to research and develop the process by which we might implement Office 365 into a school. We are all novices and thus know little about it. Is there anyone out there with any tales to tell of their experience in getting an organisation started and how, if any, many problems they have encountered since it was put in? How long did the whole process take? Does anyone have any experience tying Office 365 in with EES Licensing? What feedback have your users given you?

We have a school who are itching to be a guinea pig for our trial. However, we are unable to give them an accurate time frame on long it might take us to get them started due to our limited knowledge.

[LukeC]

Are you migrating fro an existing service or starting from scratch?

[woreilly]

We will be starting from scratch, the school are currently rocking a 3-4 year old Server 2003R2 with Windows 7 Clients. It is my understanding that Office 365 users can be synchronised with an existing AD structure? Edited January 22, 2014 by woreilly

[AngryTechnician]

Yes, you install the Office 365 DirSync program onto a server connected to the domain (not a DC) and it will sync usernames and passwords to Office 365.

 

There are some very detailed guides to the whole setup on the Microsoft UK Education blog. I used this one originally and it's still a good guide, but bear in mind some of the specific info is a bit behind as it's from Aug 2012: Office 365 for education Starter Manual - Microsoft UK Schools blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

 

It can look a bit overwhelming at first but once you get stuck in it's not that tricky.

Edited January 22, 2014 by AngryTechnician