Office 365 & GSuite Hybrid.

[Rob_D]

Morning all,

 

Bit of background: We're a large-ish (1500 students) secondary and we've been using Office 365 for our email/cloud provision for the last 10 years or so. Our SLT IT lead has been pushing for the school to shift to GSuite.

Now instead rather than full gsuite, they're suggesting a hybrid solution whereby either: KS3 use GSuite and KS4 use Office365 (meaning they transition between the platforms in year 9/10 - or as they start their GCSEs)

Or some departments curriculum areas use GSuite while others use O365 (so the kids are using both all the way through the school).

Everyone I've talked to agrees that the second option doesn't sound like a good idea so the first "dividing by key-satge" suggestion is more likely.

 

Has anyone here run a Google/O365 hybrid solution like this before? If you run a hybrid do you enforce a "person a uses Google and person b uses O365" system or is it a more fluid, "here's all things" type setup?

For people running any kind of Google/O365 hybrid are there any gotchas I should be aware of?

[3s-gtech]

If you take email out of it, running both is easy and G Suite can be logged into via Azure, so only one auth setup. They can all use both.

 

If they want to split email between the two, and you have to punt a yeargroup’s emails across once a year, that’s nuts. What’s the benefit? Why is this member of SLT pushing that?

[mavhc]

I'd just go with using both, each have things the other doesn't

 

Main issue is email, mx records only point at one server, so you have to then split it somehow there

 

Other issue is OneDrive vs GDrive, there's various sync options, but they're not going to work well.

 

If google docs are in gdrive I'd bet classroom will fail, and similar the other way around.

 

So easiest solution is: have both, use email only in one. Live with having 2 home drives.

[jmak]

Strongest arguments against are logistics - teachers knowing which students are using which system for what and the fact that you'll have an extra system to manage.

 

Having said that, IME, G Suite is much more straightforward to manage than O365, so it shouldn't cause you many issues, especially once you get SSO set up (which isn't a major challenge).

 

I had both systems running in parallel due to $reasons without any great difficulty. I'd suggest getting File Stream (for GSuite) and Files on Demand* (for O365) running and then all of everyone's files will be available through File Explorer and the context menus in applications.

 

*Worth getting the Group Policies set up to map SharePoint Online libraries as mapped drives.

[Rob_D]

Thanks for the replies, everyone! Puts my mind at ease that this might not be a nightmare to manage.

 

Although there was talk of the students being on gmail and staff staying on outlook, I think (I hope) we'll be able to keep everyone on 365 outlook.

We've already got a utility for mapping onedrive and sharepoint as drives in windows explorer, but I'll take a look at File Stream for Gsuite.

[jthompson]

Keeping everyone on one email system would seem wise, certainly to start with. Something to watch out for would be delivery of automated notifications for things like document sharing. I've noticed that one or other platform's notifications sometimes don't get delivered if the email service on that platform isn't being used, or if they get delivered, they don't quite click through as they were designed to do. G Suite seems more okay with Gmail not being used that 365 is with Outlook not being used.

[Michael]

I've setup both - AD > Azure/O365 > G Suite

 

Use O365 primarily for MS Exchange and G Suite for the likes of Drive and Classroom. Drive in my opinion is much easier to use than SharePoint/OneDrive and of course integrates with Classroom. Many Interactive Panels also run on Android, so you can sign into Google services this way too.

 

Other advantages are that you can sign into other services using SSO with either provider.

 

In terms of the MX issue, I created a guide here on Edugeek.

[Sheridan]

We're going the other way, we've used GSuite for years and now the MAT are pushing us to O365. We already have an o365 domain as part of our OVS agreement so this is going to be another one!

 

I'm glad I'm not the one telling staff we're switching again!