Office 365 Migration Tips and Tricks

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Office 365 Migration Tips and Tricks"

Ann Dalton
5 years ago
Views:

1 Office 365 Migration Tips and Tricks By: Shawn Lyles 1

2 Intro Office 365 has embraced the cloud and many organizations are following suit. This trend will continue to grow well into the future of cloud computing. If you are new to Office 365, it can be a daunting task to learn everything you can before a migration. CGNET Services International put this migration guide together to help organizations understand better what they are getting into before they jump into their migrations. We go in depth, comparing Office 365 to its competitors, and make it a point to examine which cloud service might be a better fit for your non-profit. We go over how to tailor Office 365 to fit your organization s needs and what you should know about migrating to a different Office 365 plan. It is also very important to understand what you will need to be prepared for your Office 365 migration. So we have dedicated a section to helping you properly plan. We have some additional information in this guide that will help with your migration needs. Migrating can be a big task, but with proper research and planning you will be able to deal with any issues that arise. Remember, we are here to help! 2

3 Contents Introduction 2 Office 365 Vs Google Apps: Which one will better fit your non-profit? 4 Office 365 Nonprofit pricing tailored to your Organization s needs 7 Office 365 Migration: Planning and Preparing your organization for success 9 Common Issues in an Office 365 Migration 11 Migrating to a different Office 365 Plan? Read this first! 12 Don t forget about migrating your Windows server

Office 365 Vs Google Apps: Which Will Better Fit Your Needs? The first decision you have to make is whether to adopt Office 365 at all. After all, there are other alternatives.

4 Office 365 Vs Google Apps: Which Will Better Fit Your Needs? The first decision you have to make is whether to adopt Office 365 at all. After all, there are other alternatives. Many websites and blogs have gone into the debate about Office 365 vs Google apps, but not many have compared them for nonprofit organizations use. Since our customers are primarily nonprofit organizations, and I use both Office 365 and Google apps daily, I thought that it would be good to shed some light on how they compare for nonprofit purposes. Google apps: Google apps for business is a lean, mean, simplistic machine, offering a clean, simple, and cheap way to handle the basic, everyday tasks. I would compare Google apps to a journeyman boxer. Like a journeyman boxer Google apps has the tools to get in the ring, can put up a fight and will cost the promoter less to book. Office 365: Microsoft Office 365 is a more robust, feature-rich and complex business solution. Office 365 is like the heavyweight champion with all the tools to handle any contender or task. At the same time, it costs the promoter more to bring in Office 365, and some think the champ is a bit overweight. How to decide which one is a better fit for your non-profit organization? When trying to decide which business solution you should use, there are some questions that will need to be answered. The first questions you should ask are: How many accounts will your organization need? What tools will your organization need to help streamline your processes and reach your goals? What is the budget for your business solutions and which of these tools will be more cost effective? Will your organization migrate internally, or will you need to get a third party to assist in the migration process? What business solution is more secure for your organization? The next step in deciding which business solution to use for your organization is to find out what differentiates the two, as I show below. This information is needed to be able to properly answer the questions above. 4

5 What to consider Microsoft Office 365 for Nonprofits Google Apps for Nonprofits Users & Pricing Eligible nonprofits and charities can receive free (donation) or heavily discounted versions of Office 365 tailored toward their nonprofit s size. See if your nonprofit is eligible for free or discounted Office 365 here. Google Apps suite, including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive, is free to all nonprofits. More information is available here. Tools Compared Office 365 is a feature-rich, complete business solution. It offers similar tools to Google Apps, but with very different and more advanced features. Google Apps provides a similar alternative to Office 365, but is less robust since it works only from the cloud. Downtime can cause your organization productivity loses. Migration Office 365 can employ an migration wizard that automatically creates users and syncs on-premise Exchange mailboxes in the background of your migration. Office 365 also has an autodiscover feature to automatically configure Outlook for Office 365. Exchange users migrating to Google Apps will have to move all messages into appropriate labels, since the original folder structure is not retained. Converting works well for most files, but it can be time consuming, and complex documents can potentially become damaged, needing editing. Security Microsoft Office 365 s policy is to not use your data for purposes other than providing organizations with productivity services. Nonprofits using Office 365 will know where their data lives and who exactly can access it. Office 365 meets many key world-class security standards. Google Apps focuses a lot on advertising by reading your s and generating ads on your content. Google Apps seems to lack clarity about following government policies and is therefore seen by some as being riskier for Enterprise organizations. 5

6 Nonprofits Using Office 365 and Google Apps The American Heart Association chose Office 365: AHA wanted to move to a hosting service because of the money it could save. AHA was researching and considering Google Apps and other third-party hosted Exchange solutions, but quickly found the right fit with Office 365. Michael Wilson, executive vice president of technology and customer strategies at AHA said, We passed on Google because we didn t think it was feature-rich enough. Also, our staff has been on Outlook for a long time, Philadelphia s Jenkins Law Library chose Google Apps: The Jenkins Law Library in Philadelphia was using VMware and Exchange Server 2003 and later realized they would need more licenses. Jenkins Law library did research on Office 365 and other options, then came to decision. Andrew Sather, assistant director for technology services at Jenkins Law library said, I played with Office 365 a little bit in beta but didn t feel it was ready, he said. After more research, Sather and the management team decided that a move to Google Apps was a no brainer. This section is provided by Matt Gervais, from Tech Target Search Exchange. Bottom Line: Office 365 for nonprofits: Office 365 provides a familiar and feature rich cloud-based office solution to organizations. If your organization is using large spreadsheets, complex files, and needs enterprise security then Office 365 is the best option available. Google Apps for nonprofits: Google Apps is great for smaller organizations that need their suite of services, but don t need a desktop version of the software. Also there s no user limit, so you don t have to worry about having to change plans if your business is growing. You have to do the research and ask yourself and your organization what business solution will be the best fit for your nonprofit. I hope this article has helped you in at least taking the time to start thinking about bringing your organization up to speed with the latest business services from Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps. 6

7 Office 365 Nonprofit Pricing Tailored to Your Organization s Needs Interested in how Office 365 s pricing will impact your organization? In this guide, I will go over all the different pricing options and highlight which ones would be more suited for your organization. Microsoft has recently changed some of its Office 365 choices for nonprofits, reflecting changes it made to its offerings to small businesses. There are now four plans available to nonprofits, two for smaller organizations and two for larger. If your organization is already an Office 365 subscriber, things won t change much for the E1 and E3 plans. If you have one of the plans based on the older small business plans, however, you will probably see some improvements. If your organization is not yet an Office 365 subscriber, you need to find out whether you qualify for nonprofit pricing. Microsoft provides guidance on a Who s Eligible page. For nonprofits in the United States, the basic rule of thumb is whether you have 501c3 tax status. 501c3 foundations of all types are eligible, for example. Microsoft also has made nonprofit pricing available in many other countries, which you can see on its volume licensing page. CGNET will be happy to help you determine your status. If your organization has more than 300 users, you will need either the E1 or the E3 plans. If you have less than 300 users, you can choose any of the four plans. In terms of functionality, the big differences among the plans are that two of them (Nonprofit Business Premium and E3) include the desktop Office applications and more functionality in the apps for smartphones and tablets. All of the plans include Exchange Online, Skype for Business, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. Only the top-of-the-line E3 plan includes archiving, advance compliance features and voic (see the detailed feature comparison below). In terms of price, Microsoft donates the plans without the desktop apps to you for free. These are the Office 365 Nonprofit Business Essentials plan and the E1 plan. You get a bit more functionality with the E1 plan, so since the price is the same (free) why not take it? The Office 365 Nonprofit Business Premium plan costs $2/user/month, which is a nice discount off of the $12.50/user/month price to for-profit businesses. The E3 plan is available to nonprofits for $4.50/user/month, which costs businesses $20.00/user/month. 7

8 Should you take the Premium or the E3 plan? Beyond the specific differences in features, the key question is probably how your organization thinks of itself. If you want to have convenient access to all the available features and the price difference doesn t matter that much, the E3 plan may be the answer. If you want to save some money and don t mind the occasional limitation, the Premium plan should work fine. CGNET will be happy to discuss your specific needs with you and help you decide on that basis. If you re interested in getting any Office 365 plan, the first step is to sign up for a free trial. All the free trials are for 25 users of the E3 plan, but you can select any plan you want later in the process. You can find a link to the sign-up form here, or CGNET can help with this. If you have questions about implementation or migration, which is likely, we d be happy to help. Contact us by filling out the form in this page s right-hand column. [ ] 8

Office 365 Migration: Planning and Preparing Your Organization for Success So your organization has decided to migrate to Office 365, but you are not prepared, you don t know where to start, or you

9 Office 365 Migration: Planning and Preparing Your Organization for Success So your organization has decided to migrate to Office 365, but you are not prepared, you don t know where to start, or you just need some insight on migrating to Office 365 without any issues. This guide is written to help your organization prepare for a smooth, clean and hassle free migration planning process. I am going to go over the planning and preparation steps that will help your organization succeed with your Office 365 migration. The goal of your organization is to have less risk and as little impact on your systems as possible when you are migrating to Office 365. Your organization also needs to make sure that your legacy platform and Office 365 are both working to maintain user productivity throughout your entire Office 365 migration. Planning for your Office 365 migration The decisions you make and the planning process you take before installing Office 365 are crucial. Once you commit to your installation much of what you have done cannot be reversed, so it is important to have a plan of action that takes into account different variables that might hinder your Office 365 migration. What you will need to know: How many tenants you will need The preferred sign on method Domain names and DNS Where your organization s employees are located Users and Admin Security and Distribution groups Resources and Conference rooms Hardware and Software in your organization Phone and voice mail interactions What should be in your plan? 9

10 Defining and planning your migration schedule Validating custom domains Software deployment Choose a plan before you start a trial version Explore third-party migration services and tools that can help Make sure you have the proper technical support Create a URL cheat sheet to make sure you have all your URL s accessible Let everyone in your organization who might be impacted by the Office 365 migration know when it is taking place Let your users know about your Office 365 migration, how it may impact them and what to expect. Preparing your Office 365 migration Preparing your DNS to be changed Prepare on-premises Active Directory Configure directory synchronization Mailbox migrations Login and licensing for users and admin Office 365 training Have support available if issues arise Exchange server migration Migration to SharePoint Configure Exchange hybrid deployment (if used) Configure end user experience Your Office 365 migration may not be a quick and easy task, but if you plan and prepare accordingly your Office 365 migration can be successful without having any downtime or user impact. This is the goal, and if you are not prepared with the right tools, customer support and knowledge, your Office 365 migration can become a disaster very quick. Let us help your organization with any part of your Office 365 migration process. 10

11 Common Issues in an Office 365 Migration You may run into some issues when migrating to Office 365, such as seeing an increase of spam. Nevertheless spam can be easily configured and the way that you will choose will eventually depend on the number of your organization s end users. Another problem you might face is the slowing of your mailbox migration. This is a very common occurrence and Microsoft offers troubleshooting tools in such cases. Problems might also occur because of firewalls or the device that you used to increase capacity (concurrent users) and reliability of applications. PowerShell for Office 365 gives organizations the control to automate their Office 365 resource management. Your organization s admins should learn the process of unlocking the features that PowerShell has to offer. PowerShell can also be used to effectively change the password policies of Office 365. Sometimes an organization s current structure may create problems during the migration process. These problems include: The current exchange environment may not be stable and also may have corruption issues which needed to be taken into account while the migration process is ongoing. Slow network connection may also hamper the migration to Office 365 process Sometimes organizations are filled with so much intense security that Office 365 migration needs to be tweaked in order to fit within that organization s security systems. Moving to the cloud is something that is completely new to organizations which call for security and regulatory policy adherence. A proper management plan needs to be crafted even after your organization s Office 365 migration, so that you can stay assured that your Office 365 continues to run smoothly. Every enterprise is different in terms of its goals and needs, so these plans can be customized according to that. If your organization needs help with your Office 365 migration then we can help! Our support is available 24 hours a day. 11

Migrating to a Different Office 365 Plan? Read This First! Once you ve been running Office 365 for a while, you may decide to migrate to a different Office 365 plan.

12 Migrating to a Different Office 365 Plan? Read This First! Once you ve been running Office 365 for a while, you may decide to migrate to a different Office 365 plan. This could happen, for example, if the number of your Office 365 users increases significantly. In this section, I am going to go over how to switch from one Office 365 plan to another; I will present the easiest way to switch, and the challenges, setback s and limitations you may face. I will also throw in some tips, things to look out for, stuff to keep in mind and, of course, my opinions. Steps to migrating to a new Office 365 plan Proper preparation A successful migration to a new Office 365 plan begins with proper preparation. Here are some things that you will need to think about and do to properly prepare for your migration. 1. Do you have the right Office version? 2. Does the plan you are choosing have enough users for your organization? 3. Finding the time to schedule your migration. 4. Check your current service health. 5. Review the schedule for planned maintenance to make sure that your migration will run smooth. Tip: Call a support rep if there is a serious issue, you might have to wait an hour or so. While you wait, keep checking the service health dashboard. Manually switch plans Follow these steps to manually switch your Office 365 plans. 12

13 Buy your new plan: Go to your Office 365 admin center, and then go to the Purchase Services link on the left menu. Once there, you are able to choose and purchase your new plan. Re-assign licenses: Go to your Office 365 admin center, then under the users link in the left hand side menu there is a list of Active Users. You can select your users and click on the edit link (the pencil icon), then select what new plans they are going to have, then click save. Cancel your old plan: Go to your Office 365 admin center, on the left hand side menu under Billing, click the Subscriptions link. Here you will be able to see your old plan, and click cancel subscription in the right side menu (link at bottom). Tip: 1. When assigning licenses you can assign up to 20 at a time. 2. Don t forget to cancel your old plan, or you will continue to get billed. The Switch Plan Wizard The Switch Plan Wizard is an Office 365 admin feature that takes away the step of you having to previously purchase your Office 365 plan because the Switch Plan Wizard does that for you. The Switch Plan Wizard is only for eligible plans, and plans that have less than 300 users. You can check to see if you are eligible for the Switch Plan Wizard by going to your Office 365 admin center. In the left hand side menu under Billing, click Subscriptions. Then under the actions menu you will see No Switch Plans learn more link, click it. You will get to a page that will show your plan and what other plans you can switch to. Tip: If you see you re eligible for the Switch Plan Wizard and you can t switch plans, it is because an issue is going on in your service health dashboard. Remember to keep an eye on your service health dashboard. Migrate with PowerShell You will need this PowerShell script: Connect and Gather Information: Connect $cred = Get-Credential 13

14 Connect-MsolService -Credential $cred Review Licenses Get-MsolAccountSku ft AccountSkuId Export and Re-assign Licenses: Export a list of all users before you start making changes Get-MsolUser -All Export-Csv c:\temp\allusers.csv Re-assign licenses for one user Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName {UserPrincipalName} Where {$_.Licenses[0].AccountSkuId -contains {tenant}:e1 } Set-MsolUserLicense -AddLicenses {tenant}:e3 -RemoveLicenses {tenant}:e1 Re-assign Licenses for all users: Get-MsolUser -All Where {$_.Licenses[0].AccountSkuId -contains {tenant}:standardpack } Set-MsolUserLicense -AddLicenses {tenant}:enterprisepack -RemoveLicenses {tenant}:standardpack Tip: Switching plans with PowerShell requires: 1. Your organization has over 300 users. 2. You need to download the Microsoft Online Services Module for PowerShell. Challenge prevention Here are some of the challenges that you will face when migrating to a new Office 365 plan. Downtime: Make sure you have scheduled time for the migration to your new Office 365 plan. Custom Domain: With your custom domain you will need to first remove it from your existing plan, switch plans, and then add it again once you have switched. If you don t have a custom domain it can take up to an hour with Switch Plan Wizard. Also admins have no access to O365 Admin portal. Office version: When switching from standard to Enterprise Office, users need to uninstall the old Office and download the new one. Sign in to get the new Office version. 14

15 Old and new Outlook profiles. Reconfigure with Intune (only if you are using Intune). Credit check: The credit checks can take up to 2 weeks. Tip: Since the credit check can take up to 2 weeks make sure to purchase your new Office 365 plan before planning your migration. If your organization needs help with migrating to Office 365, contact us we can help! 15

Help Is Here: Migrating Windows Server 2003 to Azure Migration can involve more than Office 365. Here s some advice on one whose time has come. Is your organization still using Windows Server 2003?

16 Help Is Here: Migrating Windows Server 2003 to Azure Migration can involve more than Office 365. Here s some advice on one whose time has come. Is your organization still using Windows Server 2003? You might not have noticed that Microsoft s extended support end date was July 14 th, That date marked the End of Life (EOL) for the Windows Server 2003 product. So now is the time to be migrating or thinking of migrating. Do you need assistance with your execution plan and process of your migration? Well, we are here to help! Contact us with questions about your migration process. The EOL for the Windows Server 2003 means there will be no security updates or patches provided for Windows Server Loss of further security updates could increase the risk of server compromise over time, as well as introduce information security compliance issues. What does this do for you? We all know that migrating your Infrastructure can be a daunting task for IT, but ultimately it becomes necessary in order to keep your infrastructure up to date and up to the task of supporting the organization s mission. The question is not so much, should I migrate? as it is, what should I migrate to? If you want to continue maintaining on-premises server hardware and software, then migrating to Windows Server 2012 is going to be the right choice for you. You will have to make sure that your server platform complies with the requirements for Windows Server 2012; you can find a list of those requirements here. This may also represent an opportunity to migrate your Windows server to the public cloud, such as to Windows Azure. Moving to Azure can make sense for financial reasons, trading capital expenditures for operating expense. Moving to Azure can also get you out of the server hardware maintenance business which could free up time to focus on other projects that will advance the organization s mission. Still need Windows Server 2003 running for a few more months? If you can t migrate just yet and still need to run Windows Server 2003, you need to at least make sure that your servers are running in a healthy state. You can only do this by creating a performance baseline and 16

17 checking relevant performance counters. If you are not sure how you go about doing this, or do not have the time, we can help. 17

Microsoft 365 Migration

Microsoft 365 Migration Abstract As the new world of automation drives the change of pace in technology, commitment to the next wave of technology for businesses is necessary to remain competitive and