Day 1 : A trial of Office 365 E3
This is the only package we trial as it give all the flexibility you could need.
Day 2 : Two delegate emails
As a Microsoft partner we can request delegate access to you instance which is the nearest thing to getting server access that is available. From that point on we can reset passwords and change settings as requested by you without having to log in as you. We also keep a transcript of any commands run so that we can explain the impact of changes.
Day 3 : Three trial users
Setting up a few test users gives us the chance to see how you use emails in your organisation. Some people like an empty inbox, others keep 20,000 items in there along with enough full subfolders (you know there is a 64,000 item limit right?) to make your eyes water. It’s at this point that shared/public folders usually come up, but they are often a difficult concept to explain to someone used to just POP email.
When I used to teach outlook i could spend a whole day on public/shared folders and workflow. Once you understand the rights and responsibilities of working with other peoples mailboxes then the appropriate required permissions then follow.
Day 4 : Four folder permissions
Following on from the mailboxes is checking that everyone can see/change/add contacts/calendar entries appropriately. It works really if we set up a dummy user for a role who can then be scheduled and modified by different people before we transfer those settings to an appropriate security group to apply to all users.
You can set a junior member of staff to have permissions on their boss’s mailbox but without visibility to anything. At any stage the boss can then reveal content on a per folder level and revoke it later. This works well with an empty inbox and subfolders of actionable emails while the boss is on holiday.
Day 5: Five DNS changes
The most important part of getting the office 365 deployment right is getting the DNS correct. Over the last 20 years we have had a lot if experience with moving domains and splitting out the different services to different places. We have found the most successful approach to be to put an ISP in front of the Microsoft services that gives us a lot of flexibility on how we set things up.
Often it can take time to get everything lined up, but once we have the web site, email, autodiscover, spam, and lync setting in there is takes just seconds to add client machines onto the platform.
Day 6 : Six hour zero TTL
Whether we are doing a new setup, migration or hybrid setup we have to manage the dns transition for the main domain name without interfering with any if the services. If you web site has been up for Ten years then you really don’t want it to go down for a minute as things switch. Often we keep the existing website hosted on the isp just to keep the web designers and the email hosting separate.
We usually also move the domains onto our hosting platform that way we can renew them automatically and cheaply (less work for everyone – right?).
By scheduling the TTL on the old ISP to go as low as it can (and we are still at their mercy for what this is) we can the duplicate most of the settings on the new DNS. During this time each user might get a popup warning about security certificate changes as we are not going toby SSL certificates for just a few days. once these have been accepted then email will continue to flow as before and we can start on the users.
Day 7 : Seven user mailboxes settings
Setting up new users is quite straightforward and we have a standard spreadsheet of details for clients to fill in. Some of that information is for is and others for Microsoft. While it is tempting to skip some of the settings there are some rather cool features we can enable later if we have this info. We can put in a footer for all staff with mail-merge-like replacements e.g. This email came from <name> at <direct line>. Please contact my manager on <company line> if you do not hear back from me in 2 hours.
Day 8 : Eight Hours of Office Downloads
While it is possible to get office 365 as a mailbox platform the real value comes from the integration with office and outlook. Having current versions of the software makes everything a whole lot simpler. There are 2 choices for office on the pc – click-2-run and the full corporate version. Price wise there is not much in it as while c2r gives you a quick start on a new machine the corporate version allows us to create a single click usb installation with all the latest updates on it. If you only have a 3g connection then be aware that the c2r downloads in FULL with every significant change for patching with the corp version only downloads the patches themselves.
For not for profit clients we tend to always recommend their purchase office separately as this reduces the paperwork by a factor of 24x!!
Day 9 : Nine pages of options
With each user you get to choose the plan that is correct for them. This can vary form the kiosk k1 plan (Starbucks) to the exchange E1 or the office E3. There is some flexibility between plans and you can always upgrade later, although that can prove complicated. The biggest issue we have at the moment is related to users on trials and warnings that data will be deleted. Now we get these emails week for some client or other and we know what to check,but if you are only a small company you really don’t need the worry of being told that you will lose everything in a few days.
Day 10 : Ten Gb storage
All users with storage in their plan get access to sharepoint space. This is split into 2 distinct locations. Fistly each user gets 25 gb of personal space whci they can then share with other people on a folder by folder basis. This can be accessed via their shaepoint-my web space or using skydrive pro on a pc (?? On the mac). They also get access to a common pool of SharePoint storage to which all authorised staff have full access. This is 10 gb with an additional 500mb per user. It can be split up into smaller chunks but we tend to just create a single additional 500mb pool for external users which can then be used for experimentation without any impact on the normal storage locations.
After a quick visit to skydive pro on the user desktops suddenly documents can start flowing and we’re almost live.
Day 11 : Eleven Client Setups
Now the legwork really stars as we connect to every device and add the mailbox settings. We tend not to use an automated process for this as most end users cannot answer all the questions we ask to ensure it goes smoothly so simply setup the new services in parallel.
With a new mailbox new sitting in outlook they can sent emails and start to look at other peoples calendars – all as per their permissions. We tend to encouraged a scavenger hunt approach by putting in a few items which staff can win a prize for accessing – if they can get round the security!
With the users now able to test SharePoint and sync it using dropbox pro they can start to migrate data or reorganise the company filing. It might take a while to sync these files but with a bot of planning it can all be fairly seamless.
Day 12 : Twelve second managed switchover
With the TTL now set to zero on the dns we can change the email settings so that mail is now flowing to their new home in the Microsoft cloud. Sometimes it can take a few hours or even days for email to stop being delivered to the old mailbox even though we have told every dns server on the internet to stop caching the settings for this domains.
All that’s left to do is drag and drop emails calendars, contacts and tasks across to the correct message store (user or shared/public) and wait for a final sync. A quick check to see the residual size of the .pst/.ost and then have a ‘conversation’ about how to deal with the bosses’ folder of emails about poodle hairstyles with photos that his wife just loves (this sounds like a shared mailbox situation).
As long as the new mailbox is now set as the default we can keep the old folders around for a few days, or better still take a copy before we start and the remove them at the end.
Now we can delete the old email accounts and the migration is complete. All that is left is to check our documentation and confirm that the clients are happy with how everything has gone.