Migrating from on-premise Microsoft Office suite of products, including on-premises Exchange Server or other IMAP Email services can be achieved overnight with careful planning and performing the required steps the previous days or weeks in advance.

We achieve this by performing a hybrid migration. A hybrid migration is a staged migration method that transfers data to the new system on the cloud platform whilst still being accusable in the old, on-premises Exchange server. This ensures data integrity throughout the migration process no matter the number of users or email data.

Below is a comprehensive checklist for IT Administrators looking at migrating to Microsoft 365 in the shortest time frame. This list will also guarantee a successful migration. The last thing you want is to get half way through the cloud migration and realize you don’t have a certain piece of information that is unobtainable at 3am.

PIP has been working with Microsoft for over 30 years and has performed hundreds of Office 365 migrations. PIP is also an independent Internet Service Provider with its own infrastructure. Our friendly staff can assist or help you with a step-by-step guide for your migration. Whether your a small business or large organization, don’t hesitate to give our friendly staff a call if you need ANY help in your transition process to a successful office 365 migration.

Microsoft 365 Migration Checklist

DNS Checklist

• The first step is to out exactly where your DNS is hosted.
• Make sure you have access to the zone files or you can request zone changes 24×7
• You will need to add/change you MX Email Exchange Records
• You may also be required to add Microsoft 365 verification TXT records to your domain
• Ensure to set the TTLS on ALL your domain zones to minutes
• Liaise with your service provider to confirm what DNS reverse entries you have in place
• Make sure you understand your internal DNS servers if you have them
• Understand your Microsoft Split Horizon DNS or Split Brain DNS setup within your Forest or Domain.
• Check with marketing and web design teams to make sure you have a list of EVERY domain representing your company

Microsoft 365 AZURE Active Directory – Microsoft Entra ID

• Synchronize your current Active Directory with Microsoft Azure Active Directory “Microsoft Entra ID” using the migration tools
• Check all user accounts have migrated successfully by logging into several accounts of various groups and privileges.
• Standardize and setup your new multi-factor authentication methods (minimum 2 factor authentication)
• Add all relevant users to the new Microsoft 365 cloud if required
• Allocate Microsoft 365 Application Licenses to all users

Microsoft Exchange on-premise – Microsoft 365 Exchange Migration

• Send out an informative Email months before, insisting end users clean out there current mailboxes and best practices for exchange mailboxes
• Compile reports daily or weekly on mailbox owners and sizes acting appropriately.
• Reduce your deleted items retention time if possible.
• Create Auto Archives and store them on shared folders.
• Confirm you are running on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or latter
• Confirm your on-premises Exchange Organization has less than about 200 mailboxes
• Ensure TCP Ports 6001, 6002 and 6004 are opened from the Internet to your Exchange mailbox servers
• Join your Exchange farm to your new Microsoft 365 Exchange farm
• Confirm all Email Addresses are as they should be in the cloud
• Migrate all archival data required in the cloud
• Setup Email Signatures
• Add Email Disclaimers
• Setup Email Aliases, Email Groups and Distribution Lists
• Configure Exchange Server Side Email Rules
• Confirm what devices use SMTP Email sending such as faxes and scanners
• Trial run some mailboxes and take note of the size of the mailboxes and the time taken to migrate
• Calculate the total time require to migrate all mailboxes.
• Note: This is a very slow method and is throttled. Either allocate days/weeks or speak with the good folks at PIP for alternative solutions.

IMAP Migration to Microsoft 365 & POP Email Migration to Microsoft 365 Exchange

• Send out an information Email months before insisting users clean out their current Email boxes.
• Setup auto archiving on all Email clients and archive to a shared folder
• Ensure you have Email logins and passwords for all users.
• Speak to your Email provider and obtain any/all portal access.
• Setup virtual machines or lab PCs for migration
• Configure lab PCs with all Emails users with their credentials
• Download all users Email to pst files for safe keeping
• Create all Mailboxes in Microsoft 365 Exchange Administration portal
• Create all Email Signatures
• Add Email Aliases, Email Lists and Distribution Lists to your Exchange Online
• Add Exchange filters and workflows for Email Addresses and Email Lists
• Transfer all archival data required in the Microsoft 365 cloud
• Confirm what devices use SMTP Email sending such as faxes and scanners
• Preform a Pilot Migration from the lab PCs to Microsoft 365 and time the transfers
• Calculate the required time to transfer all data for the data migration

Migrating Documents to Microsoft SharePoint Online and OneDrive

• Correlate and document all user files, group files and public share files
• Now is a great time to redesign your file storage schema
• Design a new file storage hierarchy and schema
• Ensure to include and “Document Archival Schema” for company file sin you new layout
• Perform a company wide archival to your new archival schema
• Make sure you time some of these transfers to extrapolate what the live file transfer will require.
• Make sure you have sufficient bandwidth for both file copies and Email copies on transfer night.
• If your short on time, ensure all cold data is migrated before the migration, migrate hot data during the migration and transfer warm data the following day or days.

Internet Connectivity required to migrate to Office 365

• Ensure you do simultaneous / real time test transfers on the previous days
• Remember Outlook Clients will be set to Cache and therefore will need to download either all or parts of their mailboxes to their OST cache files.
• Increase you NBN uplink with your ISP if required
• Consider migrating to Ethernet or Fibre for you internet as Microsoft 365 and Exchange Email will now be cloud based

Migration Day – Migration Night

It might seem like a complex process, but performed methodically, the right tools and being prepared is the key to a successful office migration plan and cost savings. Don’t rush, if it looks like the migration process is not going to be a smooth transition, cancel the migration, prepare the migration steps again and reschedule. Data transfer is a slow process and if  a task takes longer than expected, there is no way to regain time with data transfer.

If in doubt, please contact PIP for a professional Exchange 365 migration.