E-mail has become a mission-critical application for many companies. Migrating your company’s e-mail requires careful planning, excellent communication between the management, the people performing the migration and the people whose mailboxes are being migrated.

We need to consider some things when planning and performing e-mail migration.

Migration Project Planning

E-mail migration should be handled like any other project at your company. You should assign a project manager who will create the project plan, recruit the team who will perform the migration, and arrange for the Support team to help people who experience issues with their mailbox migrations. The project manager must develop the migration plan, and clearly communicate the plan to management and the people involved in the migration.

Type of E-Mail Environment

What type of e-mail environment is your company currently using?

E-Mail–Enabled ApplicationsDoes your organization have any e-mail–enabled applications? Some examples of e-mail–enabled applications are:

• An auto-reply to incoming e-mail that is addressed to a specific e-mail address.

• A report automatically generated by a line-of-business application that is e-mailed to an e-mail address or a distribution group.

In some cases, it may be necessary to keep your existing e-mail environment to support e-mail–enabled applications until you can make the necessary modifications.

E-Mail Coexistence

If your organization is using Microsoft Exchange Server 2000, Exchange Server 2003, or Exchange Server 2007, you can establish directory synchronization and e-mail coexistence between your local Exchange Server environment and Microsoft Online Services. This enables you to perform a controlled migration over time.

Number of Mailboxes

Determine the number of mailboxes that you will need to migrate. When combined with the size of the mailboxes and your available Internet connection bandwidth, this information will help you determine whether to migrate all of your mailboxes at once in a single-phase migration, or to establish e-mail coexistence and migrate over time.

Current Mailbox Size

Mailbox size will affect how long it takes to migrate your mailbox content. Research your existing e-mail environment and make sure that your users' current mailboxes are smaller than or equal to the mailbox size allowed in Exchange Online. If your organization has not previously limited mailbox size, it may be necessary to archive e-mail from some of your mailbox content so the e-mail can be migrated to Exchange Online.

E-Mail Client Software

Microsoft Online Services requires Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2003. If your users are not currently using Office Outlook 2007 or Office Outlook 2003, or if they are using a different e-mail client, you will need to provide copies of Office Outlook 2007 and train your users in how to use the new e-mail client.

Help Desk Resources

Changing your organization's e-mail environment can be disruptive. Depending on your organization, it may be necessary to temporarily increase your help-desk resources, or provide them with special training. Performing a multiple-phase migration over time can help distribute the help-desk load over time.

Network Bandwidth

During e-mail migration, the Microsoft Online Services Migration Tools read During e-mail migration, the Microsoft Online Services Migration Tools read information from your e-mail servers, copy it to the computer running the information from your e-mail servers, copy it to the computer running the tools, and then transfer the information to Exchange Online. tools, and then transfer the information to Exchange Online. When you know the number and the size of your existing mailboxes, you When you know the number and the size of your existing mailboxes, you can determine what the impact will be on your e-mail servers and on your can determine what the impact will be on your e-mail servers and on your Internet connection.Internet connection.

Migration Tool Prerequisites

The person who installs The person who installs the Migration Tools must the Migration Tools must have the necessary have the necessary permissions, and the permissions, and the computer on which the computer on which the tools will be installed must tools will be installed must meet specific hardware meet specific hardware and software prerequisites.and software prerequisites.

Migration Tool Computer

The computer on which the Migration Tools is installed has access to all of the mailboxes being migrated and the destination mailboxes. Access to this computer should be as tightly controlled as access to your Active Directory domain controllers and other sensitive network components. Only people with Domain Admin permissions or above on your local Active Directory should be able to access this computer.

This computer on which the Migration Tools are installed may retain private information about those mailboxes, even after the Migration Tools have been removed. To remove private information after uninstalling the migration tools, manually delete the files and folders in the Transporter folder in the Application Data folder of the user who installed the tools. For example, if the tools were installed by someone with the user account name of Jim, the path to the Transporter folder would be C:\Documents and Settings\jim\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Transporter.

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