I am in the middle of doing my second email migration to Office 365. Originally I migrated our 9 accounts from Google Apps and this time I am upgrading from Office 365 P3 plan to the E3 plan. See plans here - http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/business/compare-office-365-for-business-plans-FX102918419.aspx
With both migrations I am using MigrationWiz - https://www.migrationwiz.com
Before doing anything you should carefully read the instructions provided my Migrationwiz. In our case with an Office 365 to Office 365 migration the instructions are here - https://migrationwiz.zendesk.com/entries/20358091-How-do-I-perform-an-Office-365-to-Office-365-migration-keeping-the-same-domain-name-
Please Note: That the only reason we need to do this is because we are still on the old version (2010) of O365. In June they would have upgraded our system to 2013 versions and we wouldn't need to transfer our mail manually when going form a P3 to E3 plan.
This tool makes the migration a breeze. You simply:
- create a connector between your old mail system and the new one (You will need to be an admin on both systems)
- Specify the mailboxes to copy across and start copying
Benefits
- Very easy to use
- The support is great and very responsive
- It does multiple passes of the mail so that if during transfer more mail comes in, it will be picked up on the next pass
Things to watch
- Don’t use your main email address as the connector admin account. If using O365, use the onmicrosoft accounts they provide. These email addresses are unique to each account so when you transfer the MX records across you can still keep transferring in the background.
- Large accounts can be slow to transfer. In the screen shot above you can see that we have 2 15 gig accounts that will probably take a week to transfer. If set up properly though you can start using your new account straight away as it copies newer mail first.
Next I’ll be looking at transferring content from our internal SharePoint to Office 365.
If you need any help with your Office 365 migration, contact us at info@webcoda.com.au and we will be glad to help.
Cloud based services are becoming more popular as more organisations recognise the costs savings that come from letting someone else manage your software and infrastructure. So what does it mean for companies wanting to deploy SharePoint in the cloud?
The pros
- Less expertise required to get up and running
- Guaranteed up times
- Less maintenance. Back ups and updates are done for you
- Add on services – Office 365 can provide a full suite of tools including LYNC (Communications Server), Hosted Exchange, Dynamics CRM
- Cheap if you have 10 or less users.
The Cons
- There is a minimal custom SharePoint Development allowed. Forget third party add-ons or customising the look and feel too much
- It won’t be as fast as an in house system. Especially when uploading and downloading documents
- You can’t integrate it with other systems you have on premises
- You need to run Federated Active Directory services so that your users can be imported into SharePoint
Conclusion
If you are a small company that just needs the built in SharePoint functions and isn’t concerned about the look and feel of their site and especially if you don’t have in house IT support then Office 365 is probably a good solution.
If you are a larger organisation who’s needs may grow to require custom functionality then we wouldn’t advise at this point. Plans start at approx. $8 per user per month and go up significantly depending on your plan so it is cheap if you only have a few users.
If you would like to discuss SharePoint Design, SharePoint Customisation or SharePoint Development call Webcoda to speak to one of our SharePoint Experts!
1. Its Expensive
A SharePoint implementation doesn't have to be expensive. The most commonly used features such as:
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Document Management
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Approval Workflow
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Announcements
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Calendars
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Office Integration
These all come standard with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS).
WSS comes free with Windows Server 2003 and 2008. You don't even have to
purchase a SQL server licence.
2. It's not user friendly
Because SharePoint is easy to get up and running and is relatively inexpensive, many organisations install it and provide no training or instruction to their staff.
Like any highly functional software, SharePoint can introduce a lot of new concepts and so there are certain steps that should be taken by every organisation implementing SharePoint:
Assign a SharePoint champion(s).
Someone who has a good understanding of SharePoint from a users perspective and can help with day to day issues.
Someone to help manage change in an organisation, often with resistance from users.
With proper planning many of the common usability issues users experience when they first encounter sharepoint can
be greatly reduced or even removed. E.G Hiding features that are unnecasary or by creating shortcuts to the most commonly used features.
3. It doesn't look good always looks like SharePoint.
When it comes to the look and feel of SharePoint there are really 2 different SharePoints.
There is the Web Content Managment Side (WCM) and the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) side.
The good news is that the WCM side can be made to look however you choose.
Some of the best examples can be found here - http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/topwebsites.aspx
The ECM side which is more commonly used for intranets is easy to brand, harder to customise but can still be done so with a bit of effort.
Examples of what can be done can be seen on sites such as sharepointpackages.com
4. It's only a document management system
Although the fantastic Document Management functionality is what initially attracts most organisations to SharePoint,
Document Management is only skimming the surface of SharePoint's capabilities.
Some of the out of the box features are
News/ Announcements
Shared Calendars
Personal Sites
Forums
Wikis
Online forms
Surveys
and much more
5. It can be installed and configured by your IT dept even if they have no
SharePoint experience.
SharePoint installations can be done by anyone with IT experience but there are likley to be many best practices that will get overlooked.
Examples are incorrect permissions, sub optimal performance configuration, planning for future growth and correct back up procedures.