Office 365 free Educational licensing issue

[AlexM]

Hi All,

 

Having real problems with signing up schools to Office 365. I'm currently working with around 30 schools to migrate their aging SquirrelMail P4 email servers to Office 365 but almost every school I sign-up and validate the .sck.uk domain name subsequent have no access to the free Office 365 licenses - only the trial E5 licenses. The only way previously has been to contact Microsoft each time and then jump through all the hoops which takes a very long time both in hours spent on the phone and waiting for resolution. Previous MS have said that all subdomain schools will automatically be granted the licenses but this still is not happening.

 

Anyway, my question is - is there a way to email someone at Microsoft direct to get all of the schools properly licensed in one go? It would be so much easier and they should have on file that the TLD name is for educational use only.

 

Any help would be gratefully received.

 

Many thanks

[Sylv3r]

I've always just used the online support via the Office365 admin website. I log a call and generally they call me back within 30 mins. You are assigned a provisioning account manager and I would imagine they will be able to support you in getting all schools onboard. You just need to ensure that you have all the relevant contact information filled in etc as they may question whether the school is entitled to the education accounts.

[snagrat]

I just do the online support method but do not answer their calls.

 

Then they just email asking for a few details and hey presto the account is authorised

[XiJ]

I found this a pain too. But so far I'm moving schools individually as and when they need to.

[AlexM]

Thanks for the replies - have to say I have been using the email support option via the Office 365 portal and never answer the calls and as snagrat says, they soon sort the issue out anyway. Main issue I'm having now though is the latest batch of schools I'm setting up don't have the email option anymore - only phone - and this is on both the new and old style admin consoles. Any ideas or routes to raise the call via email still?

[3s-gtech]

Are you going to get stroppy emails from the LEA asking why you're not migrating them to Hwb? Just CYA here - my experience with Hwb is that it's a slow mess and the username/UPN/email convention is appalling, but there is a lot of money being poured into it and the LEA are still driving it at the moment. I know more than one school has moved to it as their primary email provider.