Best Practices for Office 365 Migration – Important Points Here

One should always make sure there data on the web is safe. Many email services such as Office 365 provide various benefits & security options to its users. However, users should adopt best practices for Office 365 migration as well.

Did you know, over 70% of Fortune 500 companies preferred using Office 365? Also, according to the annual report of Microsoft, there is a significant rise in Office 365 users in the past few years.

Further, with the introduction of cloud services, all this is happening quickly. Almost all sized organizations are becoming a part of the digital transformation.

Are you too interested in improving your IT infrastructure? And want to migrate to Office 365? If the answer is yes, then it is very simple to adapt to Office 365 migration best practices.

Now, many organizations are not sure where to begin the process! There are various things to consider, certain practices you need to adopt before migration.

Today’s blog is entirely based on these practices and what users need to make sure about which methods they should apply.

We will start by following the best practices for the migration from one platform.

Let’s take a quick look at the practices first.

What Are the Best Practices for Office 365 Migration?

In this scenario like complex IT migration, you need to start from level zero. That is planning.

You have to plan for your Office 365 migration. The planning includes the Pre-Migration checklist >> Choosing Appropriate tool to carry out Migration >> Post-Migration checklist.

We will discuss the same in detail shortly. This will help you when you migrate Office 365 to Office 365.

Along with the above, you should keep some basic practices while setting up an Office 365 migration.

Ask Yourself a Couple of Questions Before Adopting Office 365 Migration Best Practices

As you know, the right set of questions helps you reach the goal. Hence, you should try asking the below questions for a better result of migration.

• Is it a suitable Office 365 plan for business needs?
• What will the migration schedule look like and what are key milestones?
• How would you manage the downtime(if there is any)?
• How can you effectively deal with the cost of the project?
• What are the ways to ready your staff regarding the migration?

After getting the answers to the above questions, apply the best practices for Office 365 migration & move to the pre-migration to-do list.

Tasks to Complete before Migration Via Pre-migration Checklist

There are a few things you need to keep in mind for a successful Office 365 migration. Many IT admins also follow the below rules.

1. Prepare the End-user ahead of the migration process.
2. Decide the migration day and approximate time frame to complete the process. Be realistic and estimate according to the volume of data.
3. Communicate clearly and provide complete information to each and every employee of your organization.
4. Office 365 migration best practices include being aware of the downtime you face while the migration is in process.
5. Also, set the priority that is which data should be migrated first and so on.
6. Analyze your on-premise inventory. That is the number of user mailbox names, email addresses, and their sizes.
7. Check your network settings. That includes internet connection, DNS host, firewall configuration, available bandwidth, internal switches, etc.

Another important factor of the pre-migration stage is the inspection of your current environment. The best practices for Office 365 migration involve:

• Figure out the methods to create and synchronize the user accounts.
• Carefully examine the number of licenses needed by the user accounts.
• The necessity of backup and backup policies.
• Do you have the network capacity to carry out the migration?
• Is there any need to upgrade the Antivirus, Firewall, Routers?
• User account authentication is essential.

Moreover, you need to make sure that your data is ready for migration. To ensure the same check off the following list.

• Updating the Active directory before migration is a useful step of Office 365 migration best practices.
• Remove all the user accounts that are not in use for a long time.
• It is important to match the UPN of the Source and Destination environments.
• All the email addresses are authentic within the proxy addresses.
• In the future, there may be a need for archiving facility.
• Meet the compliance requirement.

Then, the final task before the migration process is to set up Office 365 accounts. To do so, cross out the below checklist.

• Obtain enough Office 365 licenses and choose the correct plan as best practices for Office 365 migration.
• Validate all the domain names.
• Don’t forget to configure security permission, applications for use, etc.
• Last but not least try a test migration

It is important that you understand each & every step and point carefully. If even a single step is missed, it might cause a lot of problems in the migration process.

Now that you have the knowledge of pre-migration criteria, we will make a step forward for choosing the right method.

Best Method After Learning About the Office 365 Migration Best Practices

When it comes to handling a huge volume of data for migration, considering experts’ advice is a wise move to make. And they recommend using the tried and trusted tool i.e. Extraordinary Office 365 Migration Software

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It is always the best practice to use the software to be on the safer side for successful data migration. Hence, plan accordingly.

After opting for the best services, now it’s time to get ready for the post-migration strategy.

Post-migration Checklist from Best Practices for Office 365 Migration

There are certain things to be taken care of after performing the migration. They are:

• You need to redirect the user email accounts to Office 365.
• Once migration is completed, assign licenses to the Office 365 accounts within 30 days of migration.
• Set up the auto-discover DNS records in O365 to easily connect to the user mailboxes to Outlook.
• You can deactivate the Source environment after the migration. Though, you need to be absolutely certain that all your data has been migrated entirely before deactivating.

Final Words

Performing an Office 365 migration is quite an overwhelming task. However, now by following the best practices for Office 365 migration, you can systematically perform the same.

The need for these practices and points for migrating the data from Microsoft 365 account is explained in this article. Learn the importance and find out about the pre-migration & post-migration checklists.