The process of migrating to office 365 can be a daunting task. Like anything, you need to ensure you have a well thought out plan. The implications of a failed migration can be catastrophic. Here are a few things we found contribute towards ensuring your migration is successful.

1. Assess your existing IT Environment

The first thing you need to do is make sure you archive or delete any obsolete mailboxes and ensure that you get an understanding of the size and number of mailboxes that you wish to migrate. Ensure also that you understand which versions and configurations you have in the organization and know the network bandwidth required for connectivity.

2. Formulate Pre-Deployment Decisions

Next, you need to formulate pre-deployment decisions by finding answers to mission-critical questions like – what method you will follow to create new accounts, authenticate users, achieve synchronization with the old user accounts and how will you transition data and perform migration.

3. Put all your pre-deployment controls right

Before you move your critical business communication to the cloud, clean up all any dormant Active directory accounts that you have, set up the network, update the versions of client software and make all the content that you wish to migrate ready for transition.

To execute all the above pre-migration tasks, you can take help from 3rd party tools that possess a pre-migration analyzer to give you precise approximations.

4. Research Office 365 Subscription plans as per your requirements

Now, it’s time to do extensive research on which subscription plan suits your business requirements. After you figure out one, cross-check the domains that you need to make use of with your new subscription. In this step, you can also pre-plan for configuration of applications that you may require in future.

5. Pilot-Test the deployment and the whole migration process

For your upcoming migration, it is crucial to perform testing on the deployed configuration and check the whole migration process for loopholes.

6. Proceed with final rollout

Finally, it’s time to set up accounts and mailboxes on the new environment i.e. Office 365. Start adding your old users, new contacts and allocate suitable licenses with each of them. Also, move data (emails, mailboxes, calendar, files and other information) that you wish to migrate to your new system.

7. Transfer Domain Name System Settings to your new environment

After you’re done with complete configuration of Office 365, you need to validate the functionality by transferring your previous DNS setting and enabling them to point to Office 365.

8. Configure client systems and establish connections

Now, it’s time to configure client systems again as per the new environment and establish connections with Office 365 including applications like Outlook, Office, Outlook for MAC operating system and other mobile devices.