Next Step to Implement 365

[karldenton]

So far I have registered the domain with Microsoft and been accepted as educational. I have “purchased” 300 users on E1 for £0.

 

What is the next step? Do we need to do hybrid or cutover migration?

 

Initially I’m presuming its hybrid. Once all the users have migrated across can we then switch to a cutover and turn our on-premises off? I don’t want to keep it in hybrid mode completely as I’d like to get rid of the on-premises servers.

 

Can you move a few users over to the cloud rather than doing them all?

 

I’m presuming once we’ve done hybrid mode we have to change the autodiscovery dns records on both the godaddy account and on premisis DNS server.

 

Do you still need a digital certificate?

 

Has anyone successfully got it working with on-premises Lync?

 

Many Thanks

[Edu-IT]

For us, we went straight over to Office 365. We exported out all of the mail from the onsite mailboxes straight into the Office 365 mailboxes. It only took a few hours to do it this way. We then just turned off the onsite Exchange.

 

There's various ways to 'move' to Office 365.

[apearce]

First step for us when we are talking to customer is identity. Do you want Common Sign On where attributes and passwords are copied to Office 365. This could be installed on a current box while if you want True Single Sign On, you will need ADFS and a ADFS Proxy box and a certificate.

 

Once you have users and they can log in. Then starting getting your data in 365. You dont want to put it in teh cloud without being able to access it ;-)

[karldenton]

First step for us when we are talking to customer is identity. Do you want Common Sign On where attributes and passwords are copied to Office 365. This could be installed on a current box while if you want True Single Sign On, you will need ADFS and a ADFS Proxy box and a certificate.

 

Once you have users and they can log in. Then starting getting your data in 365. You dont want to put it in teh cloud without being able to access it ;-)

 

Thanks Alex, we will be using outlook on most machines so single sign-on would be good but I'm presuming if you set autodiscover correctly, they'll only have to put their password in once on there machine ?

[apearce]

Thanks Alex, we will be using outlook on most machines so single sign-on would be good but I'm presuming if you set autodiscover correctly, they'll only have to put their password in once on there machine ?

 

unfortunately Office isnt the best of products when it comes to single sign on. Outlook still requires you to enter your password when you open it for Office 365 even with ADFS.

 

Yes you want to get all the right DNS records done at the right time so it doesn't effect users. Dont forget if you have your external namespace on your internal DNS servers, you need to add all the records there too.

[karldenton]

Thanks Alex. Without single sign on, do they still just enter the password once on their office pc and it remembers it?

[Blue_Cookeh]

So long as your usernames and UPN is the same as Office365, you can use GPOs to make Outlook fill all the relevant settings in on first start, and then all the user has to do is enter their password.