SharePoint / OneDrive domain rename in an education tenant

[jakeives]

Hi All,

 

I'm working with a very large academy trust who have recently rebranded.

 

I wondered if any of you have renamed your SharePoint URL per the guidance here: Change your SharePoint domain name - SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn and have any real-world stories to tell following completion of this?

 

We're concerned that renaming the SharePoint domain will break certain aspects of class teams.

 

Look forward to hearing from you

 

Thanks a lot

[snagrat]

Hi All,

 

I'm working with a very large academy trust who have recently rebranded.

 

I wondered if any of you have renamed your SharePoint URL per the guidance here: Change your SharePoint domain name - SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn and have any real-world stories to tell following completion of this?

 

We're concerned that renaming the SharePoint domain will break certain aspects of class teams.

 

Look forward to hearing from you

 

Thanks a lot

 

No, but following as this would be handy for me to do soon

[jakeives]

Would really love to hear from anyone who has done this - I feel like I've done so much testing already (more than I'm willing to admit), and I'm still not overly confident (especially since you can't backtrack on the rename!)

 

For the benefit of those who are yet to complete this, I've established the below impact list off the back of testing, and comms with Microsoft's SDS Support Team:

 

 

1. Class Materials will break and need to be readded manually
   
2. If teachers have created any tabs which link to document libraries in class teams, these will break following the rename, and need to be removed and re-added.
   
3. Teachers and students will see an error message when they first access the ‘Files’ tab, however this will self-heal.
   
4. Microsoft Forms which include ‘file upload’ boxes will need to be re-created
   
5. If your SLT team or Teachers/Students use the OneDrive client on their computer, please note that this may not work for an extended period but will self-correct provided they are running the latest version of the software.
   
6. Existing assignments in Class Teams will supposedly break, however future assignments will function as normal. (I'm really not sure about this one, I couldn't replicate this in my testing, but the Microsoft support team tells me so)
   
7. Any PowerBI, or Power Automate flow that links to SharePoint would need to be recreated
   

[snagrat]

Sounds like doing during the Summer hols before running the new SDS process might be the best time?

[jakeives]

Good idea, but in our scenario, we have to crack on with moving staff over from traditional file shares to SharePoint - Our deadline is summer 23' so this rename ideally needs to be performed before we can start the major work in SP.

 

I'm not overly concerned about the time it's going to take to perform the rename, in my previous experience I've seen it complete in under 5 minutes for a tenant with 40 users.

 

I've done one of these renames before on a non-education client of ours, and it's gone quite smoothly (a few minor issues), but Microsoft's documentation doesn't account for education environments - and there are so many unknowns.

 

If we did perform the rename over a school term and the rename did break previous assignments, and impair the creation of new assignments, because we can't revert the change, this could adversely impact the teacher's ability to school students working at home, and I'm not sure how we would overcome this, and I don't think MS support would be of much help.

 

Bit of a tricky situation really - and I feel like we're alone on this one! (Quite concerning when Microsoft come back to support reqs and use language such as 'might' 'potentially')

[nicholab]

Good idea, but in our scenario, we have to crack on with moving staff over from traditional file shares to SharePoint - Our deadline is summer 23' so this rename ideally needs to be performed before we can start the major work in SP.

 

I'm not overly concerned about the time it's going to take to perform the rename, in my previous experience I've seen it complete in under 5 minutes for a tenant with 40 users.

 

I've done one of these renames before on a non-education client of ours, and it's gone quite smoothly (a few minor issues), but Microsoft's documentation doesn't account for education environments - and there are so many unknowns.

 

If we did perform the rename over a school term and the rename did break previous assignments, and impair the creation of new assignments, because we can't revert the change, this could adversely impact the teacher's ability to school students working at home, and I'm not sure how we would overcome this, and I don't think MS support would be of much help.

 

Bit of a tricky situation really - and I feel like we're alone on this one! (Quite concerning when Microsoft come back to support reqs and use language such as 'might' 'potentially')

 

Could you migrate to a new tenant?

[jakeives]

We could, at massive cost - We're talking a lot of work here.

 

This trust are heavy users of Teams, Exchange, SharePoint, Yammer, Intune, Azure AD - We would need MigrationWiz licenses at £xx per user, a lot of planning and input from our team.

Plus all machines would need to be rebuilt.

[Jamoire]

We did it last February half term.

 

All worked fine and was much smoother than we expected.

 

Only issue that we experienced that wasn't documented at the time was the class materials folder link needing to be recreated, but that looks to be in your list.

 

We also never experienced any issues with assignments, old ones continued to work OK for us so interesting that Ms are flagging it as an issue now.

 

Iirc it took at 3 hours for about 1500 users and 500 ish teams / sharepoint sites.

[jakeives]

That's really good to hear, thanks for sharing your experience.

 

Did your existing assignments stop working following the rename?

A Microsoft Education specialist informs me that this is the case..

Edited October 26, 2022 by jakeives