Exchange (2016) to G suite for education - email migration

[k-strider]

Hey all, since the lock down our teachers are using google classroom as the main teaching tool we already had setup federated (ADFS) google and office 365 environments before the lockdown. we have an on prem Exchange 2016 server that i was going to over the next year move to hosted exchange in our 365 environment... but now that our online teaching is done via google classroom and resources are going onto google drives im thinking that it would just be neater to migrate exchange to google instead of o365...

 

just wondering if anyone has been through this... i know its going to be orkward to do it whilst everyone is remote... but just looking for hints tips gotchas...

[6Foot2]

It seems that we are at a similar stage to you (although no on-premises Exchange server: We are already Office365)

 

I have been trying to get here for some time, but there have been a few anchors (sound alike and missing a 'W', perhaps?) holding us back for reasons that seem to be "Why do we have to change? We have always done it this way"

 

If I encounter any 'Gotchas' I will come back to this thread and update.

[gh5000]

Just checking that you've come across the migration tool that Google have in beta.

 

Would be interested to hear your experiences of it when/if you use it

[jthompson]

We migrated from on-prem Exchange 2010 a few years ago. I'm assuming that Google still provide a tool for it. There's a cloud-based migration tool in the Admin console, but that didn't work for us due to some peculiar Exchange config that we had here, so we used the separate migration utility instead to migrate mailboxes, calendars and contacts.

 

Things to watch out for:

• You'll need the Gmail service turned on for your users in order to migrate their mailboxes. This might confuse people if they end up seeing mail in Gmail before you've done the cutover of your MX records, etc. I turned the service back off for users who I wasn't currently migrating data for.
  
• Mailbox folders will be converted to labels, but any users with hundreds and hundreds of folders will end up with Gmail struggling to present them all. You might be better to ask people to reorganise beforehand.
  
• Folders with slashes in them end up being split into a label and sub-label. E.g. a folder named Odds\Sods will end up becoming two labels, with the latter nested under the other.
  
• It takes a long time, so do successive runs to migrate the bulk, before deciding on a cutover date when you will sync the last couple of days of data and change your domain's MX records and have everyone start using Gmail.
  
• Probably best to plan the switch carefully in terms of supporting users. During a school closure is perhaps not ideal, so you might want to consider setting up dual delivery, so that some users can continue using Exchange for a while.
  

[paulkerton]

Look at the built in tools in G Suite, but there are also third party tools that can help. They're not cheap however. CloudM are the big boys, but the new tools baked into G Suite are very, very powerful.

 

 

• I'd certainly start with dual delivery to begin with if you're a large site, and I would also limit how much you're going to migrate over that is historic. Most people won't need more than a few months of their email, despite protestation otherwise.
  
• You can migrate email after you've migrated users over. Better to get them using the tools first, then get their historic email over, then set the historic email as an initial marker for migration.
  
• Start with a subset of users first. When I did this for my old school a few years ago, I moved all of the staff that don't use email that much first. It got a bulk of users over (Learning Support at my old site didn't really use their email, no matter how much they were told important information would be there, and then they complained they weren't in the loop), and they were less likely to have complaints and issues over missing mail.
  
• I would look to do it in a holiday window, but with the current closures, it probably isn't wise to go for it at the moment. I did a primary school over a day on a weekend before a holiday.
  
• People suggest otherwise, but I moved my MX records first. That way, new email was being delivered to GMail before I migrated. This will be different for you if you go dual delivery first.
  
• We were on an Outlook platform that was shared with many other schools, so I had to make sure that the company that provided it removed all traces of our domain name from their system, as Outlook was treating our domain as an internal domain for schools that didn't migrate from the platform when we did. Other local schools were ringing up complaining that we hadn't responded to them. The company had just switched off our access, but left our domain configured.
  
• Set the expectations. GMail looks different to Outlook or OWA, and people will complain about that. Make sure that you show them that they can have a split pane mode, which is similar to the Outlook way of displaying mail. (Settings > Inbox > Reading Pane) Keep themes switched on, it can mitigate the complaints about change if they realise they can have a picture of their bichon frise in the background of their mail.
  

 

I'll come back if I think of any more pitfalls and tripping hazards I saw.

Edited June 9, 2020 by paulkerton

[jthompson]

Something else that I've thought of: Google Groups will seem RUBBISH if you're used to using some of the more advanced features of Exchange distribution lists. You'll want to make sure that you're on top of how the Google Groups are configured before you go live. You can do things like prevent students from being able to send email to groups that they're members of (e.g. cohorts) but you have to employ routing rules or content compliance rules to achieve that. The Groups setting by themselves don't give you those options.

[DGardiner]

Learn a bit of GAM https://github.com/jay0lee/GAM

 

the groups flag to stop users leaving them is amazing! and it also simplifies alot of bulk management

 

 

also there used to be an outlook migration tool for use on computers, not sure if it works for 365 and that but it could be a quicker way to get key staff migrated manually quickly - then use the mass migration tools to move everyone elses stuff in the background?

Edited June 9, 2020 by DGardiner

[k-strider]

Thanks for the replies so far..

 

i get this sort of erro at the moment on my Sync from AD to Google and i know its because they dont have an associated mailbox and therefore no email address in AD

Warning - Excluding local LDAP group at DN "cn=Cleaners,ou=Distribution Groups,ou=SchoolGroups,ou=SchoolUsers,dc=myschool,dc=lan" as it has no name.

 

adventually no one will so i guess i have to change the Sync from somthing like mail to CN ?

[paulkerton]

Learn a bit of GAM https://github.com/jay0lee/GAM

the groups flag to stop users leaving them is amazing! and it also simplifies alot of bulk management

We literally had to use that flag today. Hadn't been run on our year groups because it never happened before, but Year 10 have found out you can unsubscribe and passed it to each other.

Not anymore they can't

[jthompson]

It's probably going to require an email address to use for the group. If you don't want it to have one in the mail attribute in AD for whatever reason, specify some other attribute in the Groups search rule in GCDS. Look for an unused customAttribute or extensionAttribute to use, even if for your other groups you're just duplicating what they've already got in mail.

 

Populate the other fields being used for Groups display names and descriptions as well, as that makes them friendlier to use in G Suite.

[k-strider]

thanks jthompson - in reality i want it in mail i am going to play with this and see what i can do with groups im guessing users are going to be the same its curently set to sync like this which works as we provision exchange mail accounts more or less as soon as we provision the users. the UsersPrincipleName in AD attribute is the same as the mail attribute so i could use this to sync maybe??? love to hear from people who use G directory Sync with AD but dont have echange but use google for their email...

Edited June 29, 2020 by k-strider

[jthompson]

We use the mail attribute for our users and groups, but initially, when we still had Exchange, I used one of the extensionAttributes. After getting Gmail all online and Exchange was out of the picture, I just populated the mail attributes in AD accordingly and updated the GCDS config. It was quite happy and didn't mess anything up (users and groups are identified by the 'Unique identifier attribute' in GCDS, which isn't going to change as you fiddle with other attributes).

 

You might therefore want to use an alternative attribute for email addresses for your groups, with a view to changing that to just use the 'mail' attribute at some point in the future, once you're happily that you've completed the migration away from Exchange. That saves you from having Exchange needing to deal with a load of new mail-enabled groups.