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Posted on: 15 February 2022
Author: Karen Rogers
Are you thinking of an Office 365 migration? Moving your business to Microsoft 365 And SharePoint?
Utilising new technology in your business can be an exciting time. However, that enthusiasm can quickly turn into chaos, unless you have fully prepared beforehand to make sure your project is a success.
A move to the cloud is a big decision and our easy list of prerequisites for an office 365 migration will help your project be a huge success.
What to do prior to your Office 365 Migration
1. Review your current mailboxes
If you currently have an on-premise solution a good starting place is to assess all your current mailboxes and public folders. The aim of this process is to make a list of those no longer utilised, assess whether the mailbox could potentially be a shared mailbox or a distribution group- all of which are not charged for in the cloud. This procedure will give you an accurate number of mailboxes, distribution groups and shared mailboxes and will enable you to reduce the potential cost of your office 365 project, with the added benefit of allowing you to focus your resources effectively.
2. Review the size of your current mailboxes
With the majority of Office 365 plans, you will have a limitation of 50Gb for the user’s mailbox, so now is an ideal time for all of this data to be cleansed. If at the end of this process you still have several users with huge mailboxes this is a good time to consider looking at in-place archive.
Your office 365 migration partner can assess for you any mailboxes that might require an additional archiving licence.
3. What plan do I need and what term of licence would suit me?
There’s a plethora of Microsoft 365 plans available; each with a different monthly price point so it is worth taking a moment to evaluate what plan is right for you, here is a list of things to consider:
- What is the size of your team?
- Where do your team generally work from (in an office, at home, on phones, offline etc)
- What collaboration tools will benefit your business, such as:
- Email and calendar
- Ability to access and share files from anywhere
- Tools to communicate with your team, customers or partners
- Is your data sensitive? Is there any regulation that needs to be considered?
- Do you need to be able to remotely wipe employee devices if a device was stolen? or when someone leaves the company?
- Do you want to protect yourself from advanced cyber threats such as malicious links or attachment
Once you have the answers to the above, you can then pick the plan that will give you the best value; or work with an office 365 migration partner so you can make an informed decision on the right plan for you.
With regards to the term of licence to suit you, please read our New Commerce Experience Blog which explains the differing options available including terms, payment frequency and your ability to add and remove users.
4. Domain names
Identify the domain names that you will need to migrate as part of the process. If your domains are being managed by a third party then contact them with a clear list of DNS entries required and the date and time you would need their help to point your MX record to Office 365.
This does all sounds a little bit techy! Make sure you engage with your office 365 solutions provider and they can take care of this for you as your 365 migration partner.
5. Training
Prepare, in priority order, a list of users who you will be migrating. Schedule set-up times to migrate them to the new environment. This is to make sure you are not flooded by all users at the same time to configure their devices and outlook.
Prepare some initial training enablement sessions for your team; including awareness of outlook and applications that form part of your initial project. How to use the web version if required and how to setup their devices to make the migration as easy as possible.
It’s worth taking the opportunity at this stage to discuss the importance of Cyber Security and showing users how to set-up their two-factor authentication.
Share with your users some QuickStart guides, such as below, so they have an easy way of remembering all the day to day actions that they will need to know to undertake their roles.
Look at our QuickStart guides here.
Wishing you good luck with your project- although the preparation will mean you don’t necessarily need luck as you will have planned for all eventualities!
Corbel are highly experienced IT Experts who can work with you to ensure your business can take advantage of the wealth of office 365 solutions, or even partner with you as your ongoing office 365 migration partner.
If you need any office 365 migration help, call our friendly team today on 01473 241515 or click here
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