With the successful migration of the University email systems for students and alumni from the on-premises systems to Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online (“O365” is Microsoft’s cloud solution for educational institutions) in 2013, the Information Strategy and Governance Committee (ISGC) of the University has endorsed (i) the immediate migration of the University email system for staff from the on-premises Microsoft Exchange system (“Exchange”) to O365, and (ii) the whole migration be completed within one year from August 2014.
O365 feature highlights:
50 Gigabytes (GB) mailbox quota and 1 Terabyte (TB) of cloud disk sotrage
Access email, calendars and contacts from anywhere with PC, Mac, and smartphone via web browsers, email clients and apps
Wipe data from mobile device to prevent unauthorized access in case of loss
Full O365 suite including MS SharePoint Online, MS Lync Online, OneDrive for Business
More stable email connection via Apple Mac Operation System
Useful “Connected Account” feature help to migrate email from non-Exchange email system to O365
The Computing Services Centre (CSC) has started contacting the Departmental Network Administrator (DNA) of each department to explain the migration steps and to agree on a time to perform the migration of Exchange accounts owned by the department to O365. As of the end of August 2014, 19 departments have started their first batch of O365 migration, and among them 8 departments have successfully completed the migration.
To smoothen the migration process and minimize the interruption of staff’s email activity, the following important points are worth noting:
Prior to the migration, staff members should ensure that their email clients (e.g. MS Outlook), web browsers and email apps on their PCs and mobile devices running on iOS and Android, are up-to-date with the latest software patches; otherwise, they may have problems connecting to O365 that runs on the latest version of MS Exchange. For MS Outlook, MS Outlook 2010 SP2 or a higher version is recommended. O365 is not designed to work with versions earlier than MS Office 2010 (e.g. MS Office 2007).
During the migration period, which normally takes less than two hours during lunch time, the Exchange mailboxes of the staff scheduled for migration will be temporary inaccessible.
After the migration, the staff must reconfigure their email clients and email apps on their PCs and mobile devices for connecting to O365 as the email server has to be changed. Please visit the FAQ “What should you do after your mailbox has been migrated to O365?” at http://www.jvrhmfr.xyz/csc/deptweb/support/faq/email/o365staff/what_to_do.htm for details of the reconfiguration (especially the part that relates to Outlook) before the migration.
