Why are you switching?

The current setup is inadequate for the client’s needs.  The mailbox may be at it limits, using POP instead of IMAP or Exchange, or spam is cluttering the use of it.  Perhaps, you have Office 365 but it’s with Rackspace or GoDaddy and they aren’t cutting it.  The Microsoft Hosted Office 365 is a significantly better roll out of Office 365 than any other 3rd party hosted Office 365.  Again, it’s highly recommended you use the Microsoft hosted Office 365.

 

Before you begin, it is essential to understand the existing email workflow; and hand off credit card information if your IT team is setting it up for you.   You can save a lot of money and headache by simply creating a spreadsheet or using our contacts-CSV template of all the players involved.  Gather all the mailboxes, forwarders, passwords (use secure password manager) if possible, etc; and what addresses you can consolidate in aliases to save money.  It is best to find someone that knows the lay of the land at the particular office, has been there for years, and work with them.  Keepass is the best route for storing sensitive credit card info and mailbox addresses/passwords.

 

Email Mailbox Alias
chuck@acme.com Linda@acme.com
office@acme.com kimmy@acme.com, Wash@acme.com,
Maintenance@acme.com

 

Use a Professional Migration Tool

It’s questionable whether there’s a need to automate 10 users or less user mailbox migration.   Anything more, consider this free tool by Microsoft.  The problems are the old email shows up as an attached PST that should be migrated later  and this solution is very much a Microsoft Outlook based solution.  Meaning, the assumption is everyone is already on Outlook.

 

Establishing the IT Go-To Email

There will be a lot of correspondence that the outsourced IT person needs to work on.  Creating or utilizing a third party email avoids charging the client for additional mailbox account but also give the IT person an opportunity to deal with IT situations directly.  The obvious email to create is acme.general@gmail.com if the client doesn’t already have something similar.  Perhaps, you (the client) already have a third party junk email account established for this type of scenario.   Please provide credentials to that junk email account for your support team to work with or they will generate new gmail mailbox.

 

Hosting Providers Details

Gather all the hosting provider details including support number, email address, and hours of operation

  • Who’s the registrar?
  • Who hosts the DNS?
    • ProTip!  Microsoft hosted Office 365 allows you to authenticate with GoDaddy’s DNS for making all the necessary changes to the DNS.
  • Who is the current email host provider?
    • You will need to cancel the old email service once you feel all the data has been migrated off of it.

Go to O365 Website

Select the package on Microsoft’s  O365 Business site to proceed with the setup. Purchase the following Exchange email service plans:

  • Office 365 Business Premium
  • Office 365 Business Essentials

We selected 3 users because we consolidated the email address and are left with three actual mailboxes.  The rest are aliases that redirect to the appropriate mailbox. The rest of your journey can be found on other Network Antics blogs such as migrating the old hosting email into a PST.

Microsoft Hosted Office 365 Summary

The rest of your journey can be found on other Network Antics blogs.  We will re-post resources as we gather them.

 

Hosted Office 365 Resources:

Exchange or Mail Locally Hosted On-Site Resources:

Hosted or Local Hosted Links: