I had the wonderful opportunity to speak at a great meetup in Manchester, UK a few days ago.  The Microsoft Cloud User Group has some fantastic gatherings coming up, and I highly recommend all my UK friends take advantage of them.  They are excellent networking events.

In this post, I will review what I covered in the event for those who could not make it!

The User Group Experience

This gathering was my first user group experience since moving to the UK.  I love them.  I attended a few in Hartford, CT, and found them quite valuable.  An unofficial group of peeps from the Hartford area insurance companies used to gather periodically and that was super helpful.  Earlier this year, I wrote an article on the importance of user conferences along with conferences like Microsoft Ignite.  I should have added another section on how vital these intimate conferences are, particularly for the networking opportunities.  That article can be found here: https://practical365.com/ignite-is-great-where-do-i-go-to-solve-todays-problems/

At the Manchester session, Martin Boam did a fantastic job coordinating the event, with Steve Goodman and Mark Vale providing support as well.  They have developed a great slide deck and method for streaming the event out into the internet.  It allowed for people who suddenly could not make it, to still participate.

Neo was a superb host location with plenty of room.  As someone who has been quite distant from other people in person since COVID, I felt quite comfortable choosing a seat in the back.

In summary, if you find a user group in your area, you really should consider participating.  They will give you great ways to collaborate and get some excellent practical advice. 

Office 365 Migration Preview Programs & Free Tools

The topic for my slot was going over the Preview Programs and Free Tools from Microsoft relating to the Office 365 Migration Space.  I carefully monitor the Migration Preview space, where I commonly work on tooling for migrations.  We keep seeing more and more advancement in this space.  Things keep getting better, but there is some slowness as well.  Here is a quick overview of the Preview Programs and where they stand.

Preview Program Disclaimers

Preview Programs have limited support and are constantly changing.  They are beneficial to participate in. However, you need to understand their limits fully.  When it comes to migrations with precise timelines, they can be a difficult fit.  Features suddenly changing or not working can put users into a state where they cannot work.  Some of the programs below have been in preview for a long time.  If you rely on them for production, you need to engage with your account team to understand supportability.

That said, use them whenever you are can and provide feedback.  We all must get engaged in features that are important to us!

Cross-Tenant Mailbox Migration via MRS

The Mailbox Replication Service (MRS) has been a core part of Exchange for a very long time.  We all have used this service to migrate mailboxes between versions of Exchange and even to Office 365.  For years, it was not known for speed in cloud migrations.  The reality is the problem is often environmental and highly dependent on many things.  Depending upon the project and situation, some third-party tools could give a sizeable boost.

The MRS Preview Program gives you the same capabilities, but just between Office 365 Tenants.  It seems quite basic, but this process has proven to be quite complicated.  This feature was first demoed at Microsoft Ignite several years ago…something many have heard me rant about.  It is in Public Preview and outlined here:  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/cross-tenant-mailbox-migration?view=o365-worldwide

Perhaps one of the most exciting items here is you can scope which mailboxes you can migrate or not, something great for Divestitures!  It will also facilitate mail redirection, again something quite helpful.

From the field, I hear it keeps getting better.  However, the number one complaint remains stalled pairs that break maintenance windows.

SMTP Domain Sharing

The ability to share an SMTP domain in Tenants has been long-running as well.  On-prem, we had several options to do this. However, all of these were not available to use in Exchange Online.  This lack of sharing has been a massive challenge.  This situation has forced customers to merge tenants faster than they want in order to fix this branding requirement.

Many find an address rewrite solution to get around this issue.  However, this solution can add complexity and expense.  It also isn’t always ideal.  Address rewrite, just like this preview program, only handles the SMTP domain.  It does not handle the UPN, making this a cosmetic change for External Users. 

This feature works by allowing a special relay connector, similar to when an on-prem Exchange System is connected to Exchange Online.  There is an excellent demo of this outlined in this video here:  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/video-hub/supporting-mergers-acquisitions-and-divestitures-in-microsoft/ba-p/1681208. 

This program is in Private Preview, and my understanding is quite difficult to get into right now.  You can see information on this here:  https://aka.ms/domainsharingpreview

SPO/ODFB Migration

This migration program was announced at Ignite 2020 in a demo video.  It makes some fantastic commitments and promises.  It includes creating a special SPO Org relationship to migrate with native PowerShell commands.  It even provides link redirection.  However, nothing has been shared publicly since, making it feel like Cross-Tenant MRS all over again.  Because of this, we can only say how exciting it is, but there isn’t much to know about it yet.  You can see it demoed in this video here while it remains locked away in a very private preview.  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/video-hub/supporting-mergers-acquisitions-and-divestitures-in-microsoft/ba-p/1681208. 

SPO Rename

I cover this topic in detail in this post here: https://practical365.com/renaming-your-sharepoint-online-url/.  The one major update is that eligible tenants can now see this in their SPO Admin Centre!  Note that this is 1000 ODFB & SPO sites!

PST Import Service

I covered the PST Import Service as well.    My mate Dom covers this really well, and in more detail here: https://blog.quadrotech-it.com/blog/how-to-migrate-pst-files-to-office-365/

Conclusion

If you are located in the UK, check out one of the Microsoft Cloud User Groups near you!  You can give their page a follow here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-cloud-user-group/ or checkout their website here: https://www.mscug.com/

 If you are not in the UK, seek out one in your area, or create your own!