MIT Exchange Email to MIT Office 365 Email Notes for SHASS

This document is the narrative of our transition experience and a "choose your own adventure" for your own transition experience

IMPORTANT: This document is constantly being updated as new information becomes available. 



What is Office 365?

Office 365 is an enterprise email, calendaring and notes platform based in the cloud on Microsoft's servers in their data centers. The email on these servers is owned by MIT via contractual agreement with Microsoft.

What is happening?

Starting Fall of 2022, IS&T is in the process of transitioning the entire MIT Academic community from the current onsite IS&T Exchange email servers to cloud-based Office 365 Email.

PRE-TRANSITION

What needs to be done pre-transition

  1. Make sure you have working MIT CERTIFICATES. Certificates are used as part of the authentication for O365.

    1. Test certificates here to make sure they are installed and working in your browser of choice.
      https://web-cert.mit.edu/certificates/test/index.html

    2. Install MIT Certificates if you don't have them on the chosen browser.
      1. For Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer:
        https://kb.mit.edu/confluence/x/bGZBCQ#CertAidLandingPage-Using 
      2. For Firefox:

        https://kb.mit.edu/confluence/x/ShhS

    3. For users who prefer not to use Certificates, kerberos usernames and passwords in Touchstone will indeed still work as it is paired with DUO authentication.

  2. Read/skim the IS&T O365 Pre-transition information: https://kb.mit.edu/confluence/display/istcontrib/Office+365+Pre-Migration+Information 
    AND the IS&T Migration Checklist: https://kb.mit.edu/confluence/display/istcontrib/Office+365+-+Email+and+Calendaring+-+Migration+Checklist

    1. Make a note if any of the listed conditions apply to you.
    2. Plan contingencies if a specific condition applies to you.
    3. If you are not sure what needs to be done for any condition affecting you, contact the IS&T O365 representative who is helping your DLC transition to O365.
    4. If none of the listed conditions apply to you, you're all set. Proceed to 3.

  3. Make sure you are using a modern client program to connect to O365 Email. Starting October 1st 2022, Microsoft is disabling the use of just username and password to log in to the O365 platform. Touchstone should still allow username password authentication for MIT users paired with DUO authentication.

    For most of our Apple Mail users what this means is you must be running Mac OS 10.14 Mohave or later, and iOS 14 or later for your iOS devices in order to be able to connect to O365 Email: 
    https://kb.mit.edu/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=164757649

  4. Clean up your emails including deleting and purging deleted emails and junk emails.

  5. Notify IS&T of ANY AND ALL shared MIT Exchange calendar resources you use as they will need to be migrated to O365 as well.

  6. Anyone who is a user sharing a calendar or has Delegate permissions to see a user's Calendar must all be transitioned at the same time.

  7. If you have any unusual conditions affecting your current MIT Exchange account it is important that you let the IS&T O365 representative know.
    For example:

    1. Multiple folders embedded within folders that you can't get rid of.
    2. Any emails you can't delete in either Apple Mail or OWA.
    3. Any emails you can see listed but you are unable to view in either Apple Mail or OWA.

What To Do

  1. The IS&T O365 representative will work with each DLC's Administrative Officer or Program Administrator to determine the cutover date and time when the emails for everyone in the DLC will be completely migrated from the MIT Exchange servers to Office 365 Email and access to MIT Exchange will be cut off and access to Office 365 Email will commence.

  2. There will be NO notification from IS&T that the migrations are done or that the cutover has happened. The cutover will just happen at the appointed date and time and when it does, some users in some clients like Apple Mail will begin to see errors from their MIT Exchange email client. Users should wait until they start seeing error messages before they do anything.

  3. When users see error messages at the appointed cutover date and time, it's time for the user(with any available local IT help) to delete their old email settings and add an Exchange Email account back into the client program (if needed). 

  4. Most MS Outlook client users won't need to do anything (except maybe approve the change to the new O365 servers in Windows 10). Apple Mail users will need to remove their old broken Exchange accounts and add a new Exchange email account for O365.

Definition: The cutover date and time = Email migrations from MIT Exchange to O365 Email are complete, access to the old MIT Exchange Email will be cut off, and access to the emails on O365 is online and active.

 

The TRANSITION

On Monday September 19th 2022, Albert and Dan were migrated from MIT Exchange to MIT O365 Email. As Apple Mail and iCal users these are the notes of what they saw.

When the cut over from MIT Exchange to MIT O365 occurs we saw errors in Apple Mail. This means that our email has been transitioned to O365 and we should stop using MIT Exchange as it no longer works.


Most users in SHASS will need to delete their old MIT Exchange settings from Apple Mail and add the new MIT O365 Mail account.

 

 

These were the screens that Albert saw after he deleted his old Exchange Email account from Apple Mail and clicked to set up a new Exchange Account in order to set up the MIT O365 Email.

Type in your full name as it appears in the MIT directory followed by your full MIT email address.

 

Click on "Sign In".

If you have your certificates installed, click on "Use Certificate - Go". Otherwise log in with your kerberos username and password.

 

Select your Duo Authentication Device. Move the bottom left-right scrollbar right to see the buttons.

Click on the button of the appropriate Duo method you want to use.

Select on the services you need/use that were in Exchange.

For Albert there were about 42k email messages that took 5 hours to download on campus over an Ethernet connection. At home he left his machine running overnight. Home internet speeds will vary depending on your plan. Since the end of Net Neutrality, cheaper ISP plans usually mean slower download speeds. Make sure your home machines have their sleep or power saver settings turned off.

During the O365 Email Download

Apple Mail was NOT really usable on the Mac at all while email was downloading from O365. Apple Mail was unresponsive and looked like it was hung most of the time. This is normal behavior. We recommend users leave Apple Mail running to download the emails but do NOT use it to check or send emails while it is busy downloading from the Outlook365 cloud. Instead, use the NEW O365 OWA webmail on your preferred browser which can be found at outlook.office.com . Users who have been migrated to O365 should stop using the old Exchange OWA (owa.mit.edu). It will no longer work for you.

The new email O365 OWA Webmail is at outlook.office.com . Instructions on how to use it can be found here:

https://kb.mit.edu/confluence/display/istcontrib/Microsoft+365+Post-Migration+-+Web

 

Mobile Devices

All iOS and Android devices will need to have the email accounts deleted from the devices and added again as the old Exchange accounts are now on Office 365.

 

Resources, References, Related Services, and The Fine Print

 

Odds and Ends

  • Internet Update Lag

    Because the O365 email servers are no longer on campus, users should be aware of potential internet lag when composing emails via a client program (like Outlook or Apple Mail) to the O365 server at Microsoft. This lag may increase during busier times of the day like noon and 4pm. It is therefore recommended all users wait 3-5 seconds before hitting send(depending on the time of day) after the text of a particularly important email is completed to make sure the last edits made to your important email gets saved to the Microsoft's O365 server before sending.

  • Windows 10 users

    Due to increased data security in Windows 10, MS Outlook may ask you to approve the change to the new O365 Servers. Users should approve the change.


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