Moving Into Microsofts Suite Office

Adopting Office 365 is an attractive proposition for IT departments.

Actually pulling off a successful migration is daunting, yet quite doable.

EDITORS NOTE

MIGRATING TO
OFFICE 365

MUST-KNOW APPS
FOR OFFICE 365 AND
EXCHANGE

REMEDIATION AND
TRANSITIONING TO
OFFICE 365 SERVICES

EDITORS
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The Suite Life

The significant waves made by Office

365 are difficult to ignore, and its myriad benefits and application upgrades put pressure on
IT departments. Maybe youre wondering if its
time for your organization to make the leap.
A successful migration to Microsofts cloudbased suite of Office tools means starting in
the right place and making a full assessment
of your organizations existing environment.
IT should look closely at the business from all
angles and then target migration planning to
the areas in which 365 will be most involved.
Syncing the right technology, identifying
patches and assessing mail infrastructure are
just some of the essential tasks in preparing for
migration.
This three-part guide offers help with this
complicated process. First, Microsoft expert

MOVING INTO MICROSOFTS SUITE OFFICE

Steve Goodman identifies where IT should

begin and how it should work its way through
an assessment. He outlines a mail migration,
discusses how organizational size plays into
the decision-making process and speaks to the
intricacies of Office 365.
Next, Neil Hobson touches upon the mustknow apps for Office 365. He covers the major
applications, and discusses potential complications that may arise when users are accessing
Office 365 on mobile devices.
Finally, Goodman writes about how to build
a remediation plan and how a pilot program can
serve as a dry run prior to implementation. n
Patrick Hammond
Associate Features Editor
Data Center and Virtualization Media Group

OFFICE 365
TRANSITION

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Migrating to Office 365

Transitioning to Office 365 (or any new

productivity system) can be disruptive to a
business for both good and bad reasons. A successful migration should enhance productivity, whereas a troublesome migration can cause
pain for end users and potentially even lead to
lost revenue for a business.
This is certainly the case with Office 365,
which comprises a number of different integrated platforms: Exchange Online, SharePoint
Online, OneDrive for Business, Skype for
Business Online, Office Pro Plus and Yammer.
You should consume allor at least mostof
these services in order to make the investment
worthwhile.

STARTING POINT

Most organizations start with Exchange Online

and first migrate email to the cloud. This is
often done in conjunction with a rollout of

MOVING INTO MICROSOFTS SUITE OFFICE

the new Office Pro Plus client. By starting the

migration this way, a core business system is
moved to the cloud and the business will see
an early return on investment (ROI), often with
minimal interruption to users.
When creating your adoption plan, be sure
that senior executives understand and support
the overarching goal. Users also need to be
in the loop. This is often best achieved via a
series of workshops, all-company meetings and
regular, friendly communication. If there are
desk visits or a small degree of disruption, it is
helpful to keep users informed of the business
vision.
Any successful migration requires a thorough
understanding of the current environment.
With Office 365, this process means gathering
information about the number of employees
at each site, where specific departments are
located within the organization, network links
between sites, along with existing firewall and

OFFICE 365
TRANSITION

supporting proxy server infrastructure.

Identity forms the core of the relationship
between the source environment and Office
365. Azure Active Directory, Office 365s
underlying identity service, will have a copy
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MUST-KNOW APPS

Check the number of mailboxes

in use, including shared mailboxes, for license assessment
and migration planning.

FOR OFFICE 365

AND EXCHANGE
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of on-premises Active Directory accounts. Its

important to carefully examine information
about security requirements, such as if multifactor authentication is needed for external
access to email.
The User Principal Name, or the Windows
2000 Account Name in Active Directory, is
usually copied to Office 365 and instituted as
the login ID. Alternate Login ID is not typically suitable for email migrations. Therefore,
you will need to update User Principal Names
to use a valid Internet-routable domain name
system suffix. The most appropriate option is
usually to make the User Principal Name match

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the email address.

Youll also need to understand which objects
you want to syncthis decision should be
made based on the Organizational Unit and
the total sync count. Any errors within the
data being synced must be identified using
Microsofts IDFix tool, which is provided in the
Office 365 portal.

MIGRATION PLANNING

For a mail migration, performing an assessment of the email environment is a must. In

particular, ensure you understand the current
Exchange (or third-party) versions and the corresponding patch level. You should know how
Exchange Server is published to the Internet
and if valid SSL certificates or pre-authentication are used. All in-use, accepted domains
will need to be registered within the Office 365
tenant.
Check the number of mailboxes in use, including shared mailboxes, for license assessment and
migration planning. Understanding how long a
migration will take becomes clearer once you
know the mailbox size and item counts.

OFFICE 365
TRANSITION

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If your organization uses many public folders, then you need to understand whether you
can migrate to another platform, such as SharePoint. Another option may be to move the
functions to shared mailboxes. Public folder
co-existence is available but ideally avoided.
Third-party systems are often the Achilles
heel of mail migrations because they may need
upgrades either before or after a migration.
These include unified messaging integration
with an IP-PBX, anti-spam systems, journaling and archive systems, fax software, signature
software or client-side add-ins.
Client versions are equally important. As
of early 2015, a fully patched Office 2007
client was the practical bare minimum for connection to Office 365. A fully patched copy
of Office 2010 works well, and Office 2013 or
higher provides the best experience and all
new features.
You will also need to understand the mobile
estate thats in use within the organization,
including ActiveSync clients and mobile device
management products. Mobile devices will
often need reconfigurationand possibly
replacementat the time of migration.

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DECIDING ON THE BEST APPROACH

The two best migration approaches are using

hybrid technologies or relying on a third-party
migration tool. The other Exchange options,
staged and cutover, are only suitable for smaller
organizations. Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) works, but it is very limited unless
you run a simple open-source mailer.
effectively extends the onpremises Exchange organization into Office
365. This enables secure mail flow, native
sharing and full-fidelity mailbox moves, the
latter of which allows the pre-staging of
data, automatic client reconfiguration and
retention of the offline cache. A hybrid migration requires the most preparation, but for
larger or complicated organizations it has the
biggest payoff. Hybrid works with Exchange
2010 and 2013, and a hybrid bridge server
can be installed into Exchange 2003 and 2007
environments.
n

A hybrid migration

using products such

as BitTitans MigrationWiz, BinaryTrees E2E
Complete, and Refresh IT tools is the best
n

A third-party migration

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TRANSITION

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experience for organizations that do not have

the time to implementor cannot implementa hybrid migration. These tools provide
similar pre-staging technologies and in some
cases can accelerate the process by migrating
recent data first and then legacy data after the
user switches. These tools usually include client reconfiguration and automation technologies. Third-party tools work with all common
Exchange versions and a wide range of thirdparty mail servers like Lotus Notes or Google
Mail.
for smaller companies, as directory sync is available and the
entire organization is switched in a single
operation. On the day of the move, every client must be visited and reconfigured, and all
users must be provided a new password with
which to access Office 365. Cutover works with
Exchange 2003 to 2013.
n

Cutover migrations work

good choice for

small organizationsmakes use of the same
Directory Sync technologies used in a hybrid
n

A staged migrationanother

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migration, but copies data with Outlook Anywhere. A staged migration is a one-shot migration per user. After each batch, single users are
visited and the client is reconfigured.
IMAP migrations are great for open source
mail servers, such as UW-IMAPD, Dovecot and
other similar systems that provide a rudimentary experience. Like staged migrations, a batch
is created and mail is copied in a single run.
When a third-party tool is not available, IMAP
can be used to migrate mail from other thirdparty systems that support the technology,
such as Lotus Notes.
If youre using a third-party archiving or
journal system like Symantec Enterprise Vault,
then a third-party archive migration tool is
often required. Archive migration tools from
companies including BitTitan, Transvault,
SimplyMigrate, Archive360 and QuadroTech
take some of the pain out of extracting data
from the source archive and loading it into
Office 365. In addition, these tools often clean
up the short cut stub data to ensure that the
mailbox is clean and functional for the user.

Steve Goodman

MUST-KNOW
APPS

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Must-Know Apps for Office 365 and Exchange

With an increasing number of available apps for Office 365, it can be difficult for
organizations to determine which ones should
be deployed and used in conjunction with the
software. The answer varies, but Exchange
administrators must know which apps are
used and how they work with their organizations systems. If your organization uses
cloud services such as Office 365 or Azure
Rights Management, take the time to research
the apps that are likely to be of value in your
organization.
Email and Microsoft Office are likely the first
two applications that come to mind. Most end
users cant operate without email, so a mail app
that connects to an Exchange Online mailbox is
something many consider essential. For Windows Phone users, Outlook Mobile is already
included and allows for Exchange ActiveSync
connectivity to Exchange Online. Microsoft
offers an Outlook Web App (OWA) for Office

MOVING INTO MICROSOFTS SUITE OFFICE

365 that provides iPhone and iPad users with

mobile functionality, such as offline access to
mailbox items.
Most end users will also want to view Office
documents on mobile devices. To facilitate
this, there are versions of Microsoft Office
available for a number of device platforms.
Office Mobile is built into the Windows Phone
operating system and allows users to view
and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. A
version of Office Mobile is also available for
Android users.
For Apple devices, Microsoft offers Office for
iPad and Office for iPhone, complete with individual Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps. As an
Exchange admin, be sure you understand the
core Office apps your end users have, and also
related apps such as OneNote and OneDrive
for Business. End users may be storing files
in multiple locations, which makes the latter
group of apps all the more important.

MUST-KNOW
APPS

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For organizations using Lync Online in Office

365, there are apps for Lync 2010 and Lync
2013 on Windows Phone, Android, iPhone and
iPad. These apps bring Lync features such as
instant messaging and audio conferencing to
the mobile device.

In addition to Office 365, an organization can choose to deploy

other cloud services, such as
Azure Rights Management.
Not only will systems admins likely want to
use the Lync app as part of their day-to-day
duties, but theyll also want to be aware of any
functionality restrictions applicable in some
countries. More information on these apps can
be found on the Office on Microsofts Mobile
Devices site.
There are apps for Office 365 that appear
within existing products such as Outlook or
OWA. Exchange Online comes with five apps

MOVING INTO MICROSOFTS SUITE OFFICE

that are enabled by default and available to all

end users. The Bing Maps app, for example,
displays in Outlook or OWA the map location
of physical addresses that appear in email. To
find these apps, Exchange admins can launch
the Exchange Admin Center, navigate to the
Organization pane and then click the Apps
tab. The Action Items, Bing Maps, My Templates, Suggested Meetings and Unsubscribe
features are then revealed.
In addition to Office 365, an organization
can deploy other cloud services, such as Azure
Rights Management. If this is the case, consider the Rights Management sharing app
thats available for Android, iOS and Windows
Phone mobile platforms. This mobile app
allows end users to view protected files, as well
as protect pictures they might want to share. If
they want to protect files other than pictures,
theyll need the Rights Management Services
app for Windows. These apps can be downloaded from the Microsoft Rights Management
portal. Neil Hobson

OFFICE 365
SERVICES

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Remediation and Transitioning to Office 365 Services

Once an IT shop has assessed its current

environment in preparation for an Office 365
migration, a clear remediation plan is required.
This should cover areas that are required to
prepare the source environment for the implementation, based on the chosen migration
approachhybrid, third-party, staged, IMAP or
cutover.
There are numerous areas that typically
require remediation. These include patching the Exchange environment, updating User
Principal Names in Active Directory, implementing corrections recommended by the
Microsoft IDFix tool, replacing or obtaining
additional SSL certificates, updating Proxy
Server exclusions, modification of firewall
rules, acquisition and implementation of bandwidth upgrades, correction of DNS entries and
patching of Office clients.
The assessment should provide a list of
accepted domains that must be registered

MOVING INTO MICROSOFTS SUITE OFFICE

within Office 365. The first tasks therefore

should be to verify the domains and add them
to Office 365. At this stage, no MX records are
likely to be switched.
If you plan to use the cutover migration
approach, then you will use a CSV file to create an import file instead of relying on directory sync tools. After the cutover migration
completes, you could choose to implement the
identity management tool set.
Other migrations typically require a little
more preparation, although third-party tools
do make this optional. Identity management
implementation usually starts with installation
of Windows Azure AD Sync Tool (DirSync)
or, for multi-forest environments, Azure AD
Sync Services (AADS)these copy and link
user accounts from AD to Azure AD in Office
365, and may also copy the hash of passwords.
DirSync with Password Hash Sync meets
requirements for many organizations and is a

OFFICE 365
SERVICES

simple installation that allows the sign-on with

the same password as used with AD.

IMPLEMENTATION STEPS
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For organizations that require true single signon or integration with on-premises multifactor authentication systems, Active Directory
Federation Services (ADFS), a component of
Windows 2012 R2, is used in conjunction with
Windows 2012 Web Application Proxy in the
DMZ. ADFS can then be federated with Office
365, meaning all password requests are redirected to on-premises ADFS servers.
When migrating email, the implementation steps depend on the specific migration
approach.
A hybrid environment will need either an
Exchange 2010 Client Access and Hub Transport server or Exchange 2013 Client Access
and Mailbox serverif neither are currently
installed in an Internet-facing site. This
does mean that enabling hybrid for Exchange
2010/2013 is simple, but enabling hybrid
for older organizations is similar to the first
steps of an Exchange migration. Assuming

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prerequisites such as firewall rules have been

configured, the Hybrid Configuration Wizard
implements all necessary connectors required
for mail flow, mailbox moves and sharing.
A staged or cutover migration requires Outlook Anywhere to be configured and enabled
externally, along with valid SSL certificates.
An IMAP or staged migration also requires
mail routing to be configured. This allows
the accepted domains to be shared between
on-premises and Office 365. At a minimum,
an Outbound Connector is required in Office
365 to route email for the shared domain to
on-premises.
Third-party tools differ, but most use either
Outlook Anywhere or Exchange Web Services.
Prerequisite configuration is similar to a staged
migration when routing mail for co-existence
is configured, but each tool has a different
approach when performing the configuration.
As an example, BitTitan MigrationWiz works
best with a service account in both the source
and target that can use impersonation to access
mailboxes. A connector is created with credentials specified for both environments, and then
accounts to migrate are added.

OFFICE 365
SERVICES

ENABLING SERVICES

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After configuration of base services and associated basic testing has been performed, other
required services should be enabled. Office 365
Multi-Factor Authentication is provided with
SKUs such as E3 and ensures that a physical
device and password are required. Office 365
Mobile Device Management, which is based
on Microsoft InTune, is also worthy of consideration. Office 365 MDM can monitor email
profiles and Office 365 applications on mobile
devices.
The actual transition, after thorough testing,
should be straightforward. After basic testing, a technical pilot with users typically from
the IT and Office 365 project team should be
conducted. Obvious issues need to be identified and corrected at this stage. In conjunction
with wider communications planning, the pilot

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group should be identified. This group should

be a dry run of real migrations and include realworld users.
A successful pilot should then lead into the
creation of schedules (and associated migration
batches) for the transition of users to Office
365. This schedule should be clearly communicated by the project team and take into
account available resources to assist users with
any desk-side reconfiguration needed. The
migration often starts with smaller batches. As
confidence grows, so does the pace of migration. Be prepared to think on your feet through
the migration and have the confidence to push
forward when necessary, but also halt to deal
with issues. Some issues, like sharing problems
when users are split between the cloud and onpremises are best dealt with by moving the onpremises users to Office 365. Steve Goodman

ABOUT
THE
AUTHORS

STEVE GOODMAN, an Exchange MVP, works as a tech-

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nical architect for one of the U.K.s leading Microsoft Gold

partners. Goodman has worked in the IT industry for 16
years and has worked extensively with Microsoft Exchange.
He is the author of the book iPhone with Exchange 2010:
Business Integration and Deployment, co-hosts The UC
Architects podcast covering Exchange and Lync, and regularly blogs about Exchange Server, Office 365 and PowerShell at www.stevieg.org.

MIGRATING TO OFFICE 365

MUST-KNOW APPS
FOR OFFICE 365
AND EXCHANGE
REMEDIATION AND
TRANSITIONING
TO OFFICE 365 SERVICES

Margie Semilof | Editorial Director

Phil Sweeney | Senior Managing Editor

NEIL HOBSON is

a U.K.-based Microsoft consultant with

a background in the design, implementation and support
of infrastructure systems covering Active Directory,
Windows Server, Exchange and Lync. He is currently
focused on Office 365 in technologies such as Exchange
Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online, Yammer and
Office ProPlus. He is also focused on the associated
areas of identity, networking, migration and service
integration. Hobson is a member of the Chartered
Institute for IT (MBCS) and held Microsoft MVP for
Exchange Server status from 2003 to 2010.

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Moving Into Microsofts Suite Office

is a SearchExchange.com e-publication.

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Patrick Hammond | Associate Features Editor

Linda Koury | Director of Online Design
Neva Maniscalco | Graphic Designer
Rebecca Kitchens | Publisher
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