Office 365 Newbie question

[AJWhite1970]

OK, so I'm a bit late to the party but signed up for the Office 365 Educational E1 package this morning, managed to get my AD in sync after working through IDFix, created all my users, provisioned a few test E1 licences for a couple of test users, logged in, ran Cloud Office apps etc, OneDrive is sorted etc and generally quite pleased with myself.

 

One thing I don't fully understand is the email though. I was half expecting the mail app to just magically point at my in-house OWA if I haven't migrated anything from my Exchange 2010 server but obviously that isn't the case. So not wanting to migrate away from my on-site server for a while (one step at a time and all that) I've run the Microsoft Office 365 Hybrid Configuration Wizard, logged in and run the Minimal Hybrid Configuration successfully but if I click on Mail then I get a mailbox not found error.

 

So, having answered the question how hard can that be (clearly harder than I thought) where do I go from here to get my mail showing in the https://outlook.office.com/owa/ tab or does it not work like that? Certainly until the summer I'm not looking to migrate any on-site email to o365

 

Any basic numpty docs or explanations very much appreciated

 

Thanks as always

Andrew

[AlanD]

It may be late to tell you the...but hybrid might be a mistake. Once you go down this route you are practically committing yourself to keeping your on site exchange. If you had migrated you would be able to fully manage exchange in cloud. By going hybrid first you will need to retain onsite exchange...which may be ok because you would need an smtp relay otherwise. If you have a hybrid, and move all accounts to cloud then turn off your exchange you don't get full management in the cloud.

[snagrat]

It may be late to tell you the...but hybrid might be a mistake. Once you go down this route you are practically committing yourself to keeping your on site exchange. If you had migrated you would be able to fully manage exchange in cloud. By going hybrid first you will need to retain onsite exchange...which may be ok because you would need an smtp relay otherwise. If you have a hybrid, and move all accounts to cloud then turn off your exchange you don't get full management in the cloud.

 

What?

 

If you move everything to the cloud then you have full management in the cloud.

 

Going Hybrid is required when you want to have some in-cloud and some on-premise.

 

If you are planning on going full cloud then complete the migration, switch Max records and away you go

[AlanD]

I don't think you can complete the migration once you have elected a hybrid solution. It's not supported by Microsoft and you will have problems with management. Yes you can take away your on site exchange after moving ...not really migrating... users. And yes you can manage users via your AD, but ...as I understand ...you don't get the same control as if you do a migration. Or at least that was what I was told...and had some doubts...but they seemed to know what they were talking about.

[snagrat]

I've moved a few customers using the Hybrid solution and all are now full cloud and have the same management as customers who started out in O365.