As we wrote back in April we believe that Office 365 will be a great solution for small businesses and now it’s out! Right now we are in the process of moving from one Microsoft Online Service to another, BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) to Office 365. Let the migration start!

Our impression starting the migration was that it would be easy and straight forward. But unfortunately we’ve had a slightly different experience. 

Our main issue with the migration from BPOS to Office 365 is with the domains. To be able to transfer over to Office 365 everything needs to be completely removed from BPOS; that includes all email accounts and the domain itself. It can take anything up to 48hrs for the domain to be removed from BPOS and FOPE (Forefront Online Protection for Exchange) and only then can you add the domain to Office 365. We followed the migration plan but when we didn’t receive emails to our Office 365 accounts it turned out that the domain had not been fully deleted from FOPE on the BPOS side. You will need to contact BPOS support to get your domain flushed out. One thing that you will notice is that if the domain gets stuck in Forefront, you will be able to send and receive mail from within online services, send mail outside, but outside mail coming in will receive a relay error.

As I mentioned earlier BPOS and Office 365 are two different services and the two don’t really communicate so you will need to work closely with the transition team!

Here are some things to keep in mind

• Make sure that you save the service request number somewhere; these numbers will save you a lot of time when you call in for support. 
• We also started to keep track on who the request was assigned to and asked for the same technician for our follow ups. This will save you tons of hours not having to explain the situation over and over again.
• It’s also a good idea to provide an alternate email address.
• Take Screen shots (Ctrl + Alt + Print Screen) and attach to your service request.
• Save Error Messages and attach these to your service requests.
• Don’t wait for Support to call you back, be on top of it and call in to get all updates!

Contact

Office 365 Support: 1-800-865 9408
BPOS Support: 1-866-676 6546
FOPE Support: 1-866-291 7726
Office 365 Transition Team: 1-888-884 7282