Migrate from RM Esaymail to Office 365

[techie08]

Hi

 

Im taking the plunge and move a small primary school currently using RM Easymail plus to Office 365.

 

Has anyone migrated from Easymail yet? and if so whats the process i would need to take as the school still wants to use the school.region.sch.uk domain.

 

Is it easy to migrate emails from easymail?

 

Many Thanks

[zag]

We migrated like this a while back from an onsite exchange, should be pretty much the same. We did it manually and it worked pretty well.

 

- Setup office 365 exchange online

- Setup your users with a csv file and batch import them

- Copy all the staff mailboxes into individual pst files

- Migrate to office 365 with empty mailboxes

- Give new credentials out to students, make it their default webmail the office 365 url

 

Of course you don't have to migrate messages, you could just leave the old webmail system up and running and tell them to log in.

 

There are also auto migrate options but we found doing it manually for a 1000 people only took a few days. You have to setup outlook again anyway for staff so its easy enough to attach a pst at the same time as an "archive". The other option is of course to leave the old webmail going and just ask people to log in to find historical emails.

Edited October 10, 2012 by zag

[techie08]

The MX record on the SWGFL currently points to the Easymail server so would this have to be changed so it points to the Office 365 server?

[zag]

The MX record on the SWGFL currently points to the Easymail server so would this have to be changed so it points to the Office 365 server?

 

Yes. But only once you have prepared the migration and mailboxes for everyone. Its basically the last step.

 

We went around that problem by setting up a new .co.uk domain that we controlled, not the council. Worked really well as we it was easy to run the 2 systems for a while during the changeover.

 

The teachers loved it because they had a much shorter address for their emails and a brand new webmail system.

Edited October 10, 2012 by zag

[techie08]

Im trying to verifiy the domain name school.lea.sch.uk but it wont verify saying "Verification DNS record not found" does this mean i have to contact the SWGFL and get them to make a change?

[zag]

Im trying to verifiy the domain name school.lea.sch.uk but it wont verify saying "Verification DNS record not found" does this mean i have to contact the SWGFL and get them to make a change?

 

Probably yes.

 

This is one of the reasons we changed our domain name. Dealing with the council wasn't fun.