exchange to office 365 advice required domain name change

[round2it]

Hi All

 

I have just been told we must be all using office 365 in September (Great)

 

Current Setup

 

Exchange 2010 with around 60 staff using a @lea.sch.uk address

 

Office 365 is setup for students with a @schoolname.org.uk address this is working fine.

 

I have setup some staff on 0365 already but thinking this is the wrong way to go about this.

 

 

I have been told we must use the @schoolname.org.uk for our email address now.

 

 

How would you go about this project

 

staff use mandatory profiles with a prf that points to our exchange I presuming I can do the same for office 365 (any guides on this to hand)?

 

in an ideal world I would like all our email that comes to @lea.sch.uk address to be forwarded to the office 365 account for about 6 months then I can get rid of the exchange server.

 

I am thinking of a fresh start but you always get staff who use email as a file system 13 years worth in some cases (RETENTION POLICY WAS REMOVED BY ORDER OF SLT)

 

not sure where to start on this...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O

[NicholasEsping]

If you can't just migrate and let them use the same email address I would add the @lea.sch.uk domain to your tenant and have it be used as an alias for your staff. Then you don't have to manage their previous mailbox for forwarding and can just get rid of the exchange server.

[round2it]

Didnt think of that. Just need a way to transfer calendars etc. I will look into this thanks for the lightbulb moment

[NicholasEsping]

If you can just do a migration that would transfer all previous emails, calendars, and everything else your after. Then you can just change their primary SMTP and UPN so they can log in with the new email format.

[round2it]

Need to hit the books. Need time to plan and work out what needs to be done especially getting outlook to work with mandatory profiles

Being on my own after redudancies is hard and no cpd to help.

[round2it]

anyone used messageops mail migration software as it looks ok and price is not too bad

[timbo343]

I did our exchange 2010 to office 365 in a weekend using the cut over migration. It all went well. A lot of reading and testing was done weeks before the move.

 

Some mailboxes had to be uploaded via PST exported from exchange

[round2it]

in preparation for this I was wondering if anyone can tell me if adding my old domain name to office 365 without changing the MX record could I start adding alias accounts to users that I have already created.

 

I just wanted to make a start on this. so all I am left with is migrating mail, calendars and a mx record change to go live in september

 

 

I am presuming as long as I do not change the mx record mail will still flow to my exchange box onsite.

[Mayki5]

You would be able to yes. In the Office 365 control panel, you can tell the DNS wizard not to give you Exchange settings, so the Office 365 tenancy won't warn about missing autodiscover and MX, but will still allow the addresses as valid Aliases on your mailbox. It would be adviseable to configure the domain as 'Internal Relay' in the Exchange control panel also.

[round2it]

Thanks for that. It is exactly what i thought would happen.

 

But its always best to check.

 

The plan is to add the old@sch address as alias for each user.

 

So email can still be receive if it goes to the old address.

 

Need to get my head round what autodiscover settings i need now.

 

More google searches required.

[Oaktech]

I'm using o365 at one site and exchange 2010 at the other. I'm going to do a cutover in the summer, and I've clearly read the same articles. At the moment we don't use any PRF files.

 

I'm given to understand I can't sync two AD environments with one tenant, so until I do the full migration and deprecate the AD environment that has the exchange server in it I can't use Sync.

 

I've not found a way to use a PRF with Office365. PRF files need the server hardcoded into them, which is not possible when your server may change hourly for fault tolerance and load balancing - however, I've discovered Outlook ZCE...

 

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/outlooking/2015/10/30/zeroconfigexchange-automating-the-creation-of-an-outlook-profile-for-exchange-online-accounts-and-exchange-on-premises-environments/

[round2it]

I have managed to add our old domain to the tenant

purchaced codetwo exchange to 365 migration tested and it works great

 

wish me luck still not got round to getting outlook to work yet with mandatory profiles but it I could get it to ask for account and password that would surfice.

 

our prf worked with onsite exchange but tons more to do before I get to that point.