Email Services/Office 365

Welcome

Welcome to the Argonne Office 365 pilot. We hope that you will find this new email and collaboration experience to be an improvement over the existing Argonne service offering.

As we plan to transition your email data and services to the cloud, there are several key items of which you should be aware. They will be outlined here for your review and reference. You can find all of the information relevant to the initiative on this wiki. We hope that the details to follow will both answer common questions and set some reasonable expectations for the process.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact the CIS Service Desk at 2-9999 option 2

Thank you,
Christiaan Zaluzec and the CIS Email Services Team

What to Expect

1. Once your migration date is set, you will be informed via email no less than two days before and again on the day of your migration
2. Migration times vary based on mailbox content and total size. As an estimate, it’ll take about an hour for every 2gb of data in your mailbox
   1. Mailboxes with a large number of folders and subfolders will take much longer to migrate, as data for each folder must be verified and compared with the source after data migration. Any efforts to clean up unneeded mailbox clutter before migration will help reduce this effect
3. All mailbox data will be migrated. This includes mail, mail folders, calendar items, contacts, inbox rules and notes
4. During the migration process, you can work normally in your mailbox. Your access will not be affected
5. After your migration has completed, you may need to reconfigure your mail client or mobile device. Instructions for doing so can be found on the Office 365 Client Configuration Documents Wiki.
6. If you had any connections to additional calendars or shared mailboxes, they will need to be re-established in your new mailbox. Instructions for doing so can be found on the Exchange User Documentation Wiki.
7. If you are a delegate for another user’s mailbox or calendar, that capability will be unavailable until that user is also transitioned. Every effort will be made to coordinate the migration of mailboxes so that managers and delegates are migrated together

Accessing Your Mailbox

In addition to your normal email client and mobile device, you can access your mailbox from anywhere in the world from either of the following websites by logging in with your ANL domain username in the format [email protected] and your password.

• https://mail.anl.gov
• https://portal.office.com

From the Office 365 Welcome page, click the “Mail”, “Calendar” or “People” icon to access your inbox, calendars, or contacts, respectively.

For more information on how to use Office 365 via the online interface or how to connect your existing email client, please reference the wiki pages listed below.

Known Issues

• If a potential pilot user has delegates, all delegates MUST also be moved to Office 365 in order to retain that level of mailbox access.

• Pilot users will see an *incomplete* directory listing (GAL) - any users with their mailbox associated with a child domain account will NOT be visible to pilot users (a pilot user in Office 365 will not be able to “look up” a user with a mailbox associated with a child domain account; however, this does not prevent the pilot user from sending or receiving email to/from that user)

• Free/Busy calendar time for users with their mailbox associated with a child domain account will NOT be visible to pilot users - this does not prevent scheduling meetings, but it will be difficult without knowing availability.

• During the migration process, you should not expect any interruption in mail access or service. After your migration has completed, you may need to reconfigure your mail client or mobile device. The following documents will outline that process for the Laboratory's most frequently used mail clients and mobile devices.

• Office 365 users will not have access to Public folders. We are investigating the fix below as an option
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn249373(v=exchg.150).aspx

• Mailboxes with a large number of folders and subfolders will take much longer to migrate, as data for each folder must be verified and compared with the source after data migration. Any efforts to clean up unneeded mailbox clutter before migration will help reduce this effect

• Users with subdomain email addresses as their default email address recieve undeliverables when sending to external recipients. The workaround is to configure their mail client to send through smtp.anl.gov instead of smtp.office365.com. A ticket has been opened with Microsoft to determine the cause of this problem.

Migration Notes

• Outlook for Windows users not in cached mode do not seem to automatically reconnect. They also report slower performance when compared to on-Premises Exchange
• Some Thunderbird users had to delete and recreate their profile. Simply changing the server name and login settings does not always re-establish connectivity
• Most Android users had to delete and recreate their Activesync connection for their Mobile device to function
• Users with subdomain email addresses as their default email address recieve undeliverables when sending to external recipients. The workaround is to configure their mail client to send through smtp.anl.gov instead of smtp.office365.com. A ticket has been opened with Microsoft to determine the cause of this problem.