Microsoft Online Services Team Blog : Planning and Evaluation Resources

What State Are Your User Accounts In?

JimGlynn — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:25:00 GMT

The most common user account states are enabled and disabled, which are pretty straight forward. However, if your company is using the Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization tool, your user accounts can also be activated and deactivated. The combination of all of these states can be confusing, so let's look at what each state means.

The four states are:

· Enabled

· Disabled

· Deactivated

· Activated

Enabled and Disabled

If your company is using Active Directory, you'll be happy to know that enabled and disabled accounts work just like they do in Active Directory. You have the option to enable a user account when you create it. Users can log on with an enabled account and they are prevented from logging on if their account is disabled.

You may want to disable an account when someone goes on vacation, or if you want to temporarily lock an account for any reason. Disabled accounts continue to exist and use one or more licenses; they're just locked. Enabling the account unlocks it and returns it to service.

Deactivated

If you're not using the Directory Synchronization tool, you won't have deactivated user accounts. Deactivated accounts are visible in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center. The good news is that they don't use any licenses, so they're free. Think of them as shadow accounts waiting for you to assign services to them.

Deactivated user accounts are created by the Directory Synchronization tool when it synchronizes all user accounts, contacts, and mail-enabled groups from your company's on-premises Active Directory directory service to Microsoft Online Services. Synchronizing accounts to Microsoft Online Services is a fast, easy way to create user accounts. However, if you have a large company, you may not want to assign services to all of your users at the same time, so synchronized accounts are in a deactivated state until you activate them by assigning services to them.

Activated

Activated user accounts are accounts that have been assigned one or more services. Each activated account uses one or more licenses. If you create a user account in the Administration Center, the account is automatically activated when you create it and assign a service to it.

You can activate deactivated user accounts by selecting one or more accounts in the Administration Center and clicking Activate User Accounts. This lets the service know that this is now a "real" user account that will start using licenses. The rest of the activation process works just like creating a new user account.

GlaxoSmithKline standardizes on Microsoft Online Services; service upgrades coming soon.

erikgun — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 02:40:00 GMT

This is Erik Gunvaldson, Service Program Manager for Microsoft Online. We are excited to be launching in the very near future an upgrade of Microsoft Online Services in 19 new countries and 4 new languages. As part of this upgrade, we’re introducing instant messaging and presence awareness with Office Communications Online as well as streamlined, low-cost email and collaboration with the Deskless Worker Suite. If you are interested in access to this upgrade before general availability in early April, let me know through our feedback form or the comments below.

In the spirit of this international upgrade, I wanted to share comments from GlaxoSmithKline, a recent customer who decided to standardize on Microsoft Online Services for their more-than 100,000 employees worldwide. Below GlaxoSmithKline’s Vice President of Information Technology Strategy, Ingo Elfering, shares his experience deciding to make a platform change and provides advice for other companies considering a similar path. It is fascinating to hear this perspective from an industry leader like GSK, and a leader like Ingo who has such a significant global role in GSK’s IT organization.

- Erik

Voice of the Customer

Ingo Elfering

VP of Information Technology Strategy

GlaxoSmithKline

A Diverse IT Environment

GlaxoSmithKline, like many big companies today, was born of a merger in 2001 between GlaxoWelcome and SmithKline Beecham. For us in IT, that meant a complex marriage of systems that would require some tough decisions. Due to the investment in Notes applications supporting R&D processes, the Notes platform used by SmithKline was chosen over the Exchange platform used by Glaxo. The new Intranet, my GSK Portal, was implemented in 2001 on Plumtree Software providing a global single communications channel and B2E platform. We used several in-house developed solutions to support Collaboration and rolled out Lotus Sametime globally.

In 2007, as part of a strategic IT Service Review, we identified several issues. One was our ability to collaborate with external partners. Another was how effectively we were able to support our growing markets outside of the US & UK. The final and most critical was the realization that all of these technology platforms were fast approaching ‘end of life’ or refresh scenarios that would require action and reinvestment in the next 3 years.

We decided that we needed to make a change to our systems to achieve the following:

· Facilitate better collaboration internally and externally

· Provide a better service and enable greater productivity for our global user community of more than 100,000 users in over 100 countries

· Simplify the environment and move away from a culture of customized solutions

· Decrease our operating and investment cost

Decision Process

Moving forward, a project team was established to understand, in more detail, what options we might have. We created a cross-functional team made up of representatives from the various global IT organizations, our partners in the business units and in the major growth markets. The team reviewed, in detail, what services were being offered at what service levels around the globe, how our existing technologies were used as application platforms and how the various tools worked together to create an integrated collaboration environment now and in the future. Other key questions that the team considered were: how the collaboration platform in the future would enable GSK to tap into a changing set of user profiles, devices and new software capabilities and how we could optimize opportunities to further simplify IT in other service areas.

In March 2008, the team kicked off a Request for Proposal (RFP) process to leading industry IT Vendors and in the Summer of 2008 we chose Microsoft Online Services, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online, and Office Live Meeting for our platform. Microsoft Online Services was selected for three main reasons:

· Cost: With Online Services, we are able to reduce our IT operational costs by roughly 30% of what we’re spending now and introduce a variable cost subscription model for these technologies that allows us to more rapidly scale or divest our investment as necessary as we undergo a transformational change in the pharmaceutical industry

· Voice of the Customer: Several types of user studies were conducted and confirmed the selection of Microsoft.

· Focus: The team needed the ability to focus internal IT on driving further innovation that differentiates GSK in the market while offloading innovation around communication and collaboration to Microsoft. This ensures that we can focus on our core competencies and also that we have an ‘evergreen’ IT strategy where the latest technologies are always at our disposal via the cloud.

Now, the hard work begins. Transitioning is a big challenge, so to ensure we are successful with our rollout, we’ve reorganized by bringing together all IT Services into one single team. We have started the Change Management Program and will have more details on this process as it progresses.

Lessons Learned

Through this process, we wanted to share with you what we’ve learned thus far on our journey.

Understand the true cost of ownership of Collaboration Services – often this is more expensive than one thinks
Understand what services are really being provided, to what service levels, where
Understand what the customer really wants and what their real pain points are
Be clear about the long-term business strategy and what impact it will have to IT
Understand the user (what functionality is really being used and how) and provide services that meet that need rather than deploying more than what is actually needed
Consider the complexity of the IT environment and how one can implement strategic levers to reduce that complexity
Be realistic about what to migrate and what not to migrate
Don’t underestimate the commitment to Business Change Management
Set up for organizational success and create the right team, sponsorship and leadership
Explore the opportunities and innovations that a change enables one to make in neighboring areas in IT and the business
Consider how one can accelerate the innovation one can bring to the customers now and in the future

Ingo Elfering

VP of Information Technology Strategy

GlaxoSmithKline

Exchange to Online!

arvindsuthar — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:47:00 GMT

This is Arvind Suthar, Director of Service for Microsoft Online. We are ramping up our community efforts and our team is excited to engage with you now that our service is live. We have a series of postings planned to introduce our team, dig into a series of technical topics, and trigger discussion around how we can make Microsoft Online more valuable for you. Please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions through our feedback form or in the comments below.

We work closely with customers in our Beta and Technology Adoption programs during their migration to Microsoft Online. During this process, we have identified some frequently asked questions around migration. Erik Ashby is a Senior Program Manager on the Microsoft Online team focused on simplifying migration to Microsoft Online. I asked Erik to take some time to answer some of these frequently asked questions in a post. - Arvind

Customers running Microsoft Exchange who are interested in moving to Exchange Online often ask me questions about how to do ‘Exchange to Online.’ Exchange Online supports several migration models and offers a set of tools that make the move easy. Here I recap some frequently asked questions around migrating to Exchange Online from an on-premise Microsoft Exchange environment. Detailed instructions on the process referred to below are fully documented in our Migrate to Microsoft Online Services whitepaper.

How do I get started?

Purchase a subscription or sign up for a free 30 day Microsoft Online trial here. We will create a fully functional sample domain for you to test drive the service. You will be able to send and receive email and perform all the migration steps at this sample domain. Your domain will be named something like “yourdomain1.microsoftonline.com” or you can verify ownership of a permanent domain name like "yourdomain1.com" and begin using that.

Is migrating my Exchange environment to Microsoft Online complicated?

Not really. There are three basic steps that you will need to go through and the Microsoft Online Admin Console will walk you through each step with tools that will do most of the heavy lifting. The three steps to move to Microsoft Online are:

1. Configure Exchange to send mail to Microsoft Online: To get your mail traffic flowing to Microsoft Online, you will configure Transport Layer Security (TLS) and create an SMTP connector to start forwarding email from selected accounts on your Exchange server to your Microsoft Online account. Later, when all of your users have mailboxes on Microsoft Online, you can redirect all your email traffic directly to Microsoft Online by setting your MX records to point to:

mail.global.frontbridge.com

2. Install and run the Microsoft Online Directory Sync tool: This is a tool that will run in your on-premise topology and provide regular one-way synchronization of user accounts, e-mail–enabled contacts, and e-mail-enabled groups from your local Active Directory to Microsoft Online. This will allow Exchange On-Premise and Exchange Online users to see each other in GAL lookups. Also, once the GAL accounts have been copied to Microsoft Online you can activate the accounts within Microsoft Online.

3. Install and run the Microsoft Online Migration Tool: This is a tool that will bulk migrate Exchange mailbox content to Microsoft Online and establish mail forwarding so that all new mail will now be delivered to Microsoft Online.

Can I migrate to Microsoft Online incrementally?

One of the first questions customers face is how long they want to take to migrate to Microsoft Online. Broadly, there are two approaches:

1. perform a single large migration of all mailboxes at once (aka ‘Big-Bang’ migration), or

2. stage the migration over a period of time

Tools provided by Microsoft Online support both methods. For big-bang migrations the Microsoft Online Migration tool provides an easy-to-use migration wizard that can bulk migrate Exchange mailboxes and it can be fully automated with PowerShell. For migrations that are staged over a period of time, one-way synchronization directory synchronization from your local Active Directory to Microsoft online will allow users to share a synchronized GAL and unified messaging experience whether they have been migrated to Microsoft Online or are still using on-premise Exchange. We call this email coexistence.

Note that during coexistence, free/busy lookup and delegate access between a mailbox that is on-premise and a mailbox in Microsoft Online is not possible. Also, during coexistence, if a user has both an on-premise Exchange mailbox and a mailbox in Microsoft Online, these mailboxes can get out-of-sync after a migration. The migration will copy the content of a mailbox to Microsoft Online and establish a mail forward so that new mail will be directed to Microsoft Online, but any changes that are made to either mailbox after the migration will not be reflected in the other mailbox. Typically this is not a problem since most people will use only one of the mailboxes or will remove the on-premise mailbox after a migration.

Although we have had a fair mix of customers doing both big-bang and staged migrations, at this point most customers are going with quick ‘Big-Bang’ migrations and we have seen several companies with over 1000 users successfully execute a ‘Big-Bang’ migration.

Can I use email coexistence during a trial?

Yes, even if you are planning on a ‘Big-Bang’ migration, using the coexistence tools is a good way for you to have a few users ‘Try’ the Microsoft Online services. These tools allow several people to exist with mailboxes in Microsoft Online but still share the same GAL and messaging experience with others still on Exchange On- Premise. The same limitations for free/busy lookup and delegate access exist. Also, because mailboxes will get out of synch as mentioned above, you would need to copy any mail in the Microsoft Online accounts off to a local PST if you ultimately chose not to migrate.

To address synchronization issue between the Exchange and Microsoft Online mailboxes , Cemaphore, a Microsoft partner, offers a free 15 day trial of a full two way mailbox synchronization tool between your on-premise Exchange environment and Microsoft Online. MailShadow® for Exchange Online will continuously synchronize mailboxes from an on-premise Exchange server to Microsoft Online. This makes trialing Microsoft Online even easier.

Can I just export my mail messages to a PST and import into Microsoft Online?

Although Outlook is an option for migrating content, I would not recommend using it for migrating Exchange mailboxes. PST files store local email recipients and email senders using references to Active Directory. When your Active Directory server changes these references may no longer be valid. The Microsoft Online Migration tool performs the necessary translation when moving messages to Microsoft Online. Outlook is great as a generic tool to get content from non-standard sources like files, databases, and other sources into Microsoft Online, but for migrating Exchange mailboxes stick with the migration tools.

The bottom line is organizations are already moving from Exchange to Microsoft Online through different models and are using the Microsoft Online coexistence and migration tools to make their move simple and painless.

Erik Ashby

Sr. Program Manger

Microsoft Online

Watch a Demo about the Benefits and Experience of Using Microsoft Online Services

Lori - Microsoft — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:55:00 GMT

Watch a demo, and learn how Microsoft Online Services can help you by providing

· Streamlined Communications

· Business Class Security and Reliability

· Simplified Management

Exchange Online Service Description

Lori - Microsoft — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 08:26:00 GMT

Microsoft Exchange Online is a hosted enterprise messaging solution based on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Exchange Online services include advanced e-mail features as well as calendaring, contact, and task management capabilities. This white paper describes the services and features that are included with the Standard offering of Exchange Online.

Download and read the Exchange Online Service Description

SharePoint Online Service Description

Lori - Microsoft — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:46:00 GMT

Microsoft Office SharePoint Online is a collection of Web-based tools and technologies built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that help you store, share, and manage digital information within your company.This white paper describes the services and features that are included with the Standard offering of SharePoint Online.

Download and read the SharePoint Online Service Description

Plan for Microsoft Online Services Deployment and On-boarding

Lori - Microsoft — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:15:00 GMT

View the Webcast: Planning for Microsoft Online Services Deployment and On-boarding

Event Overview: Deploying the Business Productivity Online (BPO) Suite from Microsoft Online Services requires planning and preparation to ready an organization for the full use of the services. In this webcast, we discuss preparations for the BPO Suite, including infrastructure requirements and desktop application deployment, and we provide a working check list for IT professionals to reference as they on-board the services.

Presenter: Ryan Phillips, Escalation Engineer, Microsoft Corporation

Start Planning Your Move to Microsoft Online Services with Free Assessment Tools and Guidance

Lori - Microsoft — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:06:00 GMT

Visit the Solution Accelerators TechCenter, and get free assessment tools and guidance to help you plan your move to Microsoft Online Services.

Solution Accelerators automate discovery and assess requirements for migration. They provide prescriptive guidance and operations framework to speed up the on-boarding and migration process. Get free guides and tools. Get moving with Microsoft Online Services today!