Migration Project Plan

Published: May 2008

This document briefly describes the steps involved in a successful migration project and refers
to the additional planning materials provided in the Migration Admin Toolkit. It also references
TechNet Help topics and the Migrate to Microsoft Online white paper.
The materials in this toolkit have been adapted from materials used by the Microsoft Online
project team to manage the migration of their mailboxes to Microsoft Exchange Online. These
materials are provided as examples to help you plan your organizations migration. Some of the
material may not apply to your organization.
This project plan covers the four stages of migration:

Planning
Pre-Migration
Migration Day
Post Migration

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Contents
Planning..................................................................................................................................... 4
Identify Migration Project Manager.......................................................................................4
Build Migration Project Team................................................................................................4
Build Migration Support Team...............................................................................................4
Develop Migration Project Plan.............................................................................................4
Develop Migration Procedures..............................................................................................4
Develop Migration Communication Plan...............................................................................4
Develop Migration Tracking Process....................................................................................5
Pre-Migration............................................................................................................................. 5
Configure Microsoft Online for Your Organization.................................................................5
Establish E-Mail Coexistence...............................................................................................5
Establish Directory Synchronization.....................................................................................5
Develop Migration Lists........................................................................................................ 5
Pre-Qualify the Mailboxes to Be Migrated.............................................................................6
Validate Your Migration Plan and Procedures.......................................................................6
Communicate....................................................................................................................... 7
Qualify the Mailboxes for Migration.......................................................................................7
Identify and Track People to be Migrated..............................................................................7
Communicate....................................................................................................................... 7
Migration Day............................................................................................................................. 7
Activate the Microsoft Online Accounts.................................................................................7
Migrate Mailbox Content.......................................................................................................8
Perform Post-Migration Validation........................................................................................8
Send Welcome Communication............................................................................................8
Post Migration............................................................................................................................ 8
Users Perform After Migration Tasks..................................................................................8
Users Complete Post-Migration Survey................................................................................8
Delete Local Exchange Server Mailboxes............................................................................9

Planning
This section describes the tasks that must be completed before you can begin your migration.
Identify Migration Project Manager
The migration project manager is the person responsible for the success of your organizations
migration. This person:

Coordinates with the other people involved

Ensures that the migration plan and supporting materials are created

Communicates with the Support team, management, and your organizations end users

Executes the migration plan

Build Migration Project Team

The migration project manager defines the roles of the other members of the migration project
team, recruits the project team members, and works with them to ensure a successful migration.
Build Migration Support Team
Migration from your local Microsoft Exchange Server mailboxes to Microsoft Exchange Online
will generate support calls. The migration project manager must work with the Support team to
make sure that your organization has enough properly trained Support personnel to assist your
organizations employees with their migration. These people should be familiar with Microsoft
Exchange Server and Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. They should also have networking
troubleshooting skills.
Develop Migration Project Plan
The project plan is the key to a successful migration. This plan should include definitions of the
various migration project team and Support team roles and their responsibilities. It should define
how the migration project team will communicate with the Support team and the rest of your
organization. The migration project plan should establish migration milestones and clearly
define the criteria necessary to complete each milestone. This should include plans for initial
small-scale migrations, bulk migrations, and one-off migrations. This plan must be approved by
your Support organization and by management.
Develop Migration Procedures
The people responsible for actually performing the migration must develop the procedures that
they will use to migrate individual mailboxes and to validate that each mailbox has been
successfully migrated. For more information, see the Migrate to Microsoft Online white paper
and the Help delivered with the Microsoft Online Migration Tools.
Develop Migration Communication Plan
E-mail communication is critical to the operation of todays organizations. Before migrating your
organizations mailboxes to Exchange Online, you must communicate your migration plan,

required actions, migration status, and any migration issues to your organizations management
and to the people being migrated. This migration plan should include definitions of your
migration communication sites and the communication materials you will need. The Microsoft
Online team hosted their communication materials on a Microsoft Office SharePoint Online
site. For more information, see the sample Migration Communication Plan and the E-Mail
Templates.
Develop Migration Tracking Process
The more mailboxes that you plan to migrate, the more important it is that you develop a way to
track the list of mailboxes to be migrated and the status of their migration. The Microsoft Online
team tracked the migration of their mailboxes in a spreadsheet. See the sample Migration
Tracking Spreadsheet for more information.

Pre-Migration
Before you can migrate your mailboxes, you must prepare your Microsoft Online environment
for migration. The first three topics in this section describe this preparation. When you have
completed these three steps, you can begin your migration work.
Configure Microsoft Online for Your Organization
If your organization wants to use your registered Internet domain name with Exchange Online,
you must add that domain to Exchange Online, verify your ownership of that domain, and then
configure Exchange Online to use that domain.
You should also verify that your organizations network configuration allows access to the
Microsoft Online features. For more information, see the Migrate to Microsoft Online white
paper.
Establish E-Mail Coexistence
You can continue to use your local Exchange Server environment while evaluating Microsoft
Online. During e-mail coexistence, some of your organizations mailboxes will be hosted on your
local Exchange Server environment, and others will be hosted in Exchange Online. Verify that
mailboxes on both systems can send and receive e-mail. For more information, see the Migrate
to Microsoft Online white paper.
Establish Directory Synchronization.
Directory synchronization writes a copy of each user account and all e-mailenabled contacts
and groups from your local Active Directory directory service to your organizations Microsoft
Online directory and synchronizes any changes in those objects from your local Active Directory
to Microsoft Online. Directory synchronization can also provide Global Address List
synchronization between your local Exchange Server environment and Exchange Online. For
more information, see the Migrate to Microsoft Online white paper.
Develop Migration Lists
In this stage, you populate your migration tracking tools with all of the people that you plan to
migrate.

Pre-Qualify the Mailboxes to Be Migrated

The Migration team must gather information to pre-qualify the migration candidates identified in
the previous step. The migration team should gather the information in the following table.
Information
Mailbox size

Active Directory forest

Active Directory domain
Active Directory organizational unit (OU)
Mailbox forest
Mail-enabled applications
Mailbox delegate access
Mailbox folder access control

When to migrate?

Others

Considerations
If the mailbox to be migrated is larger than 1
gigabyte (GB), some mailbox content will not
be migrated and the users mailbox may be full
which will prevent them from sending or
receiving e-mail until they have deleted or
moved some items.
Do your migration administrators have the
necessary permissions in this forest?
Do your migration administrators have the
necessary permissions in this domain?
Do your migration administrators have the
necessary permissions in this OU?
Do your migration administrators have the
necessary permissions in this forest?
Does your organization have any mail-enabled
applications? If so, you must determine if they
can be migrated to Exchange Online.
If users have delegated mailbox access to
others, those people should be migrated at the
same time.
If users have customized access to some of
their mailbox folders, the people who have
been granted access should be migrated at the
same time.
Does your organization work in shifts? Do you
have mailbox blackout restrictions? Are there
other possible job restrictions that would
prevent someone from migrating?
Are there any other limitations in your
organization and e-mail environment that might
prevent or postpone mailbox migration?

We recommend that the team perform test migrations for every forest, domain, and OU
configuration represented by the people in your migration list.
Validate Your Migration Plan and Procedures
Before migrating your users mailboxes, you must validate your plans and procedures. Begin
validation by creating test mailboxes in your local Exchange Server environment and migrating
the contents of those mailboxes to Exchange Online. As part of this validation, you should
ensure that your Support team and the migration project team are familiar with all phases of
migration. The best way to do this is to migrate these people first. We recommend migrating
your Support team first, so they can help troubleshoot any issues that you encounter.

When you are confident that your migration plans are complete and that your processes are
correct and well understood, the final test is to migrate the members of your migration project
team. It may be necessary to repeat these migrations a few times until you have a well-defined
and understood migration process.
Communicate
When youre ready to begin communicating with the people who will be migrated and with their
managers, you can follow the processes that you defined in your communication plan. For more
information, see the sample Migration Communication Plan and the E-Mail Templates.
Qualify the Mailboxes for Migration
Before migrating mailboxes, you must make sure that those mailboxes are able to be migrated.
Management Qualify
After the migration team has pre-qualified the mailboxes to be migrated, you should validate that
list with management and notify them when you plan to migrate their people. Managers may not
want to migrate certain people because of previous project commitments or some technical
reasons. This is managements opportunity to approve migration of their people and perhaps
reschedule some of the migrations.
Self Qualify
The communication sent to the people to be migrated asks them to complete the Before
Migration Procedures. The last procedure on this list is to complete the User Qualification
Survey, which will involve them in the qualification process and help them understand what is
required of them. This will also highlight possible reasons why particular individuals should not
be migrated.
Identify and Track People to be Migrated
After the previous qualifying steps, you will have the final list of people to be migrated. Use the
migration tracking process that you defined in the Planning stage to track the information about
the people to be migrated, to schedule their migrations, and to track their migration progress.
Communicate
This is the final sign-off process before actual migration. As part of this process you notify the
people who will be migrated and their managers. Provide the Support team and the Migration
project team with the list of people to be migrated. The final communication step is to officially
notify the people who will perform the migration.

Migration Day
This section describes the tasks that the migration team performs as part of mailbox migration.
Activate the Microsoft Online Accounts
Directory synchronization has copied user accounts and e-mail enabled contacts and groups
from your local Active Directory to Microsoft Online. You must now use the Microsoft Online
Administration Center to activate the Microsoft Online accounts of the users whose mailboxes
you plan to migrate. For more information, see the Migrate to Microsoft Online white paper.

Migrate Mailbox Content

Use the Microsoft Online Migration Tools to migrate mailbox content and establish e-mail
forwarding from the local Exchange Server mailboxes of the selected users to their Exchange
Online mailboxes. For more information, see the Migrate to Microsoft Online white paper and
the Microsoft Online Migration Tools Help.
Perform Post-Migration Validation
Post migration validation includes:

Use the Microsoft Online Administration Center to validate that the selected accounts are
active.
Use your local Active Directory and Exchange tools to validate that mail forwards are
correctly set.
Review the migration logs generated by the Microsoft Online Migration Tools.
Update the tracking spreadsheet with the migration status and open any Support
requests that may be required.

When you believe that the migration of this batch of mailboxes has been successfully
completed, send the Welcome e-mail to each users local Exchange Server mailbox. When the
user receives the e-mail in their Exchange Online mailbox, you know that e-mail forwarding is
working correctly.
Send Welcome Communication
As mentioned in Perform Post-Migration Validation, the final migration step is to send the
Welcome e-mail to each user whose mailbox was migrated. This e-mail contains their Microsoft
Online user name and temporary password along with instructions that guide them through
connecting to Exchange Online and correctly configuring Outlook to work with their new
mailbox. For more information, see the Migration Communication Plan and the E-Mail
Templates.

Post Migration
This section describes the tasks to be performed after the mailboxes have been migrated.
Users Perform After Migration Tasks
As directed in their Welcome e-mail, each person whose mailbox has been migrated will
complete the steps detailed in the After Migration Tasks to connect to Exchange Online and
configure Outlook to work with their new mailbox. For more information, see the E-Mail
Templates and the After Migration Procedures document.
Users Complete Post-Migration Survey
After the people whose mailboxes have been migrated have completed the After Migration
tasks, they should complete the Post Migration Survey to notify the migration team of the status
of their migration. This survey is intended to capture feedback on the migration process and to
highlight any remaining migration issues. The Support and the migration project teams must
review these survey results and improve their migration plans and processes to improve the

migration experience for people whose mailboxes will be migrated in the future. For more
information, see the Migration Communication Plan and the Post Migration Survey.
Delete Local Exchange Server Mailboxes
When you are confident that your local Exchange Server mailboxes have been successfully
migrated, you can delete them and you may be able to decommission your local Exchange
Servers. For more information, see the Migrate to Microsoft Online white paper.