Office 365 Migration Approaches Homestretch

University IT has successfully migrated more than 20,000 faculty, staff, and student email and calendar accounts to Office 365, Microsoft's cloud offering that brings several new features to the Stanford community.

 

The 20,000 mark put us more than halfway through the migration, which we expect to complete by mid-August. We've also migrated all of the shared resources (e.g., conference rooms, shared calendar) so that everyone can use them easily regardless of whether their email and calendar have been migrated.  

 

The migration hasn't been flawless for some clients, and University IT continues to work closely with Microsoft to eliminate some functionality gaps we've identified. For example, managing another person's calendar (i.e., delegate access) and managing recurring meetings via a mobile device's native calendar application don't always work ideally. University IT and Microsoft are committed to continue to work on identified issues until they are resolved.

 

Of course, the new service comes with enhancements too, including an increased email quota of 50 GB, future integration with a suite of collaboration tools including Office Online and SharePoint, integration with the global address list, and helpful email features such as action items and attachment recognition.

 

To help minimize difficulties with transitioning to Office 365, our Computer Resource Consulting staff have partnered with local desktop support groups to help them understand common concerns and issues prior to a migration in their areas. We've also added additional staff to the Service Desk (5-HELP and HelpSU) to help answer questions as quickly as possible. 

 

More information is available on the University IT website on our migration page, including a migration schedule, a migration day checklist, how-to information, and a signup for one of our informational brown bag sessions.