This feature spotlight provides an in-depth look at the process of migrating a Microsoft Teams instance to a new Office 365 tenant with MigrationWiz. Learn more about the growing demand (and opportunity) to support Teams migration projects here, or watch a short demo video of a Teams migration with MigrationWiz.

As adoption of Microsoft’s new collaboration platform has grown, so too has the need to migrate the files and conversations as part of a broader tenant-to-tenant project. That’s why we’re pleased to announce MigrationWiz now supports the migration of a Microsoft Teams instance to a new Office 365 tenant! We’ve been hard at work on this solution for several months and worked closely with beta partners, analysts, and internal teams to understand new migration demands of this workload and how to deliver the best experience for our partners and end users.

This article will detail what components of a Teams instance we are able to migrate; how this new workload can be configured in the same familiar MigrationWiz flow as other workloads like mail or documents; and information about our new pre-migration assessment and license type. For step-by-step migration guides and other technical information, visit the BitTitan Help Center.

What Components of a Teams Instance Can BitTitan Migrate?

MigrationWiz now supports the migration of the following components:

• Teams: the top-level Groups comprised of a user base, file site, and Channels. There may be several Teams in the organization’s broader instance and users may belong to multiple Teams.
• Channels: within each Team, Channels are individual sections that contain a threaded Conversation tab and file folders.
• Conversation History: the central discussion threads specific to each channel. This does not include private or group chats between users in the same tenant or a federated tenant.
• User Permissions: the governance behind the entire Teams instance, including access control for users to each Team.
• Files: documents stored on a SharePoint site specific to each Team with subfolders for each Channel.

The migration of Conversation History is worth calling out here – as of this writing, there is no existing Microsoft API for exporting or importing conversation history. Fortunately for partners, we’ve developed a process to migrate the most recent 2,500 conversation threads from the Teams instance on the Source tenant and rehydrate those conversations in their proper Channels on the Destination. This even includes timestamps (in UTC) to preserve an audit trail for legal departments and the fun stuff like emojis, GIFs, and more for end users. MigrationWiz will also indicate which discussions migrated from the previous tenant (see screenshot below). MigrationWiz is the only solution currently able to rehydrate threaded conversations and metadata directly into the proper Channels on the Destination.

Conversation History older than the most recent 2,500 messages will also be migrated in HTML format for data retention. These threads will be made available in the corresponding Channels on the Destination with a tab at the top labeled “Files.”

What’s the Flow for Teams Migration in MigrationWiz?

Configuring the Project

Teams migration projects will follow the same simple setup process as other workloads in MigrationWiz. For Teams projects, we’ve created a new project option: “Create a Collaboration Project.” This will now be presented alongside mailbox, document, archive, and public folder options in the “Create a Project” window.

Here the traditional MigrationWiz flow takes over: select Microsoft Teams as your Source and Destination endpoints, provide Global Admin Credentials, and move to the pre-migration assessment.

Teams Assessment

Built into the pre-migration flow for a Teams-to-Teams scenario is an assessment of the Source instance. This assessment will collect information such as the number of users, number of Teams, total file size, and the MigrationWiz licensing necessary to complete this project. The assessment will help gauge aspects of a Teams migration project, including timelines and number of licenses required, to better estimate overall project costs. This assessment is free and can be run multiple times on the Source environment prior to migrating.

Once that is complete for all Teams on the Source, MigrationWiz will display information about your entire instance, including the number of licenses needed to migrate (more on that below).

Introducing the Collaboration License

For Teams migration projects, we’re introducing a new license type: MigrationWiz Collaboration. This license will allow the lift-and-shift migration of a Teams instance from one Office 365 tenant to another. The Collaboration License will be priced at $15 per user within the Teams instance and with a data allowance of 10 gigabytes per license. Should the total amount of data in the Source exceed the shared data allowance of 10GB per user, additional licenses will be required.

Start Your Migration

Once the assessment has been performed and licensing requirements met, MigrationWiz is ready to go. You can launch your project immediately or schedule for a later date. Once a project is launched, MigrationWiz will:

• Recreate Teams and Channels on the Destination tenant
• Create a SharePoint Site for each Team and Subfolder for each Channel in that Team
• Populate those Teams, Channels, and underlying SharePoint site with data from the Source tenant’s Conversations and Files
• Assign Permissions to Users on the Destination

Note that the Teams and Channels will show the administrator account as having added the users and then leaving the group. This is normal behavior from Office 365.

MigrationWiz in Action: Teams Demo

Learn more about Teams migrations with MigrationWiz in the short demo video below. Our technical experts walk through project setup, the new Teams assessment tool, and other best practices to ensure your first Teams migration is a success.

Watch the demo now!

The post Feature Spotlight: Migrate Microsoft Teams with MigrationWiz appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

BitTitan, the developer of MigrationWiz and a global leader in managed services automation, today announced the introduction of new capabilities to its popular cloud office migration solution to support the migration of the Microsoft Teams collaboration platform.

According to growth figures from Microsoft, more than 500,000 organizations have adopted Teams, including 91 percent of Fortune 100 companies, with that number expected to climb as more end users move to Microsoft Office 365. While MigrationWiz has been the preferred tool for IT professionals to migrate users and data to or between instances of Office 365, the addition of Teams migration capabilities enables these professionals to support this growing workload demand and deliver an end-to-end Office 365 migration experience.

With the introduction of these new capabilities, IT professionals using MigrationWiz can now migrate a Teams instance and the individual components including Teams, Channels, Conversations, Permissions and Files within that instance. In addition, IT professionals can conduct a pre-migration Teams assessment for this scenario in MigrationWiz to analyze the number of Teams, amount of data and number of users needing to be migrated. The assessment will help gauge aspects of a Teams migration project, including timelines and number of licenses required, to better estimate overall project costs.

“Microsoft Teams is emerging as a key application in Microsoft Office 365 and we’re seeing demand from our customers to support this new workload between Office 365 tenants,” said Mark Kirstein, BitTitan’s vice president of products. “Prior to today, there wasn’t a clear path to migrate Teams. By introducing these new capabilities to MigrationWiz, IT professionals can deliver a fast, easy and secure migration experience and enable their end users to take advantage of the collaboration features present in Teams.”

“With the continued proliferation and explosive adoption of Microsoft Teams, customers are expecting to be able to migrate their Teams content in a similar fashion to other Office 365 services. As an early adopter of BitTitan products to provide leading-edge solutions to our customers, we were eager to leverage MigrationWiz for Teams projects and incorporated them into our existing tenant to tenant migration toolkit,” said Jim Banach, Practice Group Lead at New Signature. “This enables us to address the entire scope of this particular migration scenario and ensures our customers have a much more comprehensive transition to their new tenant.”

To support these projects, BitTitan is introducing a new Collaboration License. This license will allow the lift-and-shift migration of a Teams instance from one Office 365 tenant to another. The Collaboration License will be priced at $15 per user with a data allowance of 10 gigabytes per license. Licenses may be purchased directly from BitTitan or through a distribution partner. As with all other workloads, Teams migrations can be configured, launched and managed from the same unified interface in MigrationWiz by selecting “Create a Collaboration Project.”

Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, One Commercial Partner, Microsoft Corp. said, “Microsoft Teams is rapidly expanding as a central collaboration hub in Microsoft Office 365, becoming a core part of a company’s digital workplace strategy. This also means when a larger IT transformation project takes place, such as a migration between Office 365 tenants, it’s critical that valuable information inside Teams is preserved for users. I am pleased to see BitTitan invest in delivering new capabilities for MigrationWiz to support our customers in their Teams adoption.”

Representatives from BitTitan will showcase Teams migration capabilities at Microsoft Inspire in Las Vegas from July 14 through July 18. To see a demo of the new Teams migration features, visit the BitTitan website.

The post BitTitan Introduces Microsoft Teams Migration Capabilities to MigrationWiz appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

In the video below, BitTitan experts outline the flow for configuring and launching a tenant-to-tenant migration that includes Microsoft Teams. This video includes a look at our built-in, pre-migration assessment of the source Teams instance, the simple flow through the MigrationWiz UI, and how to monitor, manage, and report on projects in-progress.

Learn more about Teams migration projects here.

The post Demo Video: Migrating Microsoft Teams with MigrationWiz appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Product Release Notes contain information about updates, upgrades and new features for BitTitan solutions and services. For the most current information, visit the Product Announcements section in the BitTitan Help Center. For additional questions, visit the Community Forums.

MigrationWiz New Feature: Guided Tutorials

We are excited to announce the release of guided project creation tutorials! These guides are intended to assist customers through the initial steps of their migration project, with a focus on project creation. Naming a project, creating a customer, and setting up endpoints are all included within these modules! Please see the below list of project creation modules being released:

• Mailbox Project Creation
• Document Project Creation
• Personal Archive Project Creation
• Public Folder Project Creation

We are also releasing two additional tutorials to assist customers with their generation and redemption of coupons within MSPComplete:

• Generating a Coupon Code
• Redeeming a Coupon Code

All of these tutorials can be found under the ‘Guides’ button in the upper right-hand corner of your MSPComplete or MigrationWiz pages.

MigrationWiz New Advanced Option: “MapPermissionEmailByPairsInCustomer”

In an effort to continue expanding MigrationWiz Advanced Options, we’ve introduced a new feature to help map permissions within your project. Previously, the user could only set the Advanced Option “MapPermissionEmailByPairsInProject” but this only uses a single project as the mapping file. With this update, when a user sets the new option of “MapPermissionEmailByPairsInCustomer”, it will take all document migration projects for that specific customer and create a mapping file using all document projects under that customer. This is applicable when OneDrive or SharePoint is the Destination.

Note: If both MapPermissionEmailByPairsInProject and MapPermissionEmailByPairsInCustomer  Advanced Options are added, it will only map email permissions by pairs in the project (not specific to the Customer). Hence, it is recommended to only use one of the Advanced Options at a time.

MigrationWiz Error Message Improvement: T2T Coexistence Scenarios

MigrationWiz will now display more useful details about the error encountered during tenant-to-tenant coexistence setup.

We have also changed MigrationWiz behavior with migrating timezones. Previously, timezones were not migrated correctly causing calendar times to be off at the destination. After the fix, the timezone will be migrated after the mailbox is created during the pre-migration workflow.

MigrationWiz Bug Fix: Knowledge Base

Updated link to the correct KB article for “What will be migrated” on the “Start Full Migration” fly-out page
https://help.bittitan.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008107667-What-items-are-migrated-with-MigrationWiz

Previously, the link was incorrectly directed to another KB article for “How to run a pre-stage migration?”

The post May 2019 Product Release Notes appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Microsoft’s annual global partner conference wrapped up last week in Las Vegas. As in previous years, Inspire featured major announcements from the Redmond giant and its vast network of partners, including BitTitan.

We know not everyone can (or wants) to make a trip to the Strip, so here are the top pieces of news from BitTitan and Microsoft that present new opportunities for partners in the coming year.

BitTitan Announcements at Inspire

Introducing Teams Capabilities to MigrationWiz

To keep pace with the growing adoption of Microsoft Teams, BitTitan now supports the migration of Teams instances from one Office 365 tenant to another. This includes the migration of Teams, Channels, Conversation History, User Permissions, and Files: the key components of an organization’s Teams instance that enable them to be productive on day one in a new environment.

Learn more about our Teams migration capabilities in this feature spotlight or check out a short demo of these projects in MigrationWiz.

Debuting Hybrid Exchange Migration Management

For many organizations, moving completely from an on-premises Exchange server to Exchange Online may not be an option. A coexistence scenario is often a middle step toward a 100% cloud environment, but the configuration and management of such coexistence has always been highly manual and conducted mostly through the Exchange Admin Center (EAC).

At this year’s Inspire, BitTitan showcased new hybrid Exchange management capabilities within MigrationWiz to automate this manual pre-migration work and simplify the handoff from service provider to end customer.

Currently in beta and set to be released this fall, BitTitan is currently accepting applicants to our pilot program. Reach out if you would like to learn more or be an early member of this program.

Presenting Voleer: Codeless Automation for IT

The third piece of news from BitTitan is actually a new product!

Voleer is a powerful, first-of-its-kind platform to help centralize and automate the day-to-day needs of engineers, system administrators, and front-line helpdesk technicians. It provides a vast library of automated templates that can be launched in the cloud or on-premises and supports the creation and hosting of your own custom templates based on your existing business processes or scripts.

Many of the Voleer features are free – sign up today at https://www.voleer.com.

Microsoft Announcements at Inspire

Internal Use Rights Are Here to Stay (For Now?)

In the weeks leading up to Inspire, Microsoft announced that the internal use rights for reseller partners – providing free product licenses and access to certain services – would be ending. After an uproar from partners ahead of the event, Microsoft backtracked and reverted the changes, which reportedly cost the company nearly $200 million annually.

It was a good decision ahead of the largest partner event of the year. Not much would have been accomplished with a rightfully angry crowd and the reversion allowed Microsoft to focus on other important topics at the event. Skepticism remains about the longevity of this decision and whether the company will seek to make this change eventually, especially given the losses it takes on providing free licenses. Analysts we spoke to at Gartner earlier this week say it’s a wait-and-see situation but would be surprised if Microsoft did pull this benefit entirely.

Teams Daily Active User Count Disclosed

The collaboration arms race between Slack and Teams reached new heights at Inspire with Microsoft disclosing a DAU figure of 13 million. Slack’s last public statement on DAUs was 10 million in January 2019 before IPO’ing in April.

Microsoft has often hailed Teams as the fastest-growing application in company history. This is driven by strong Office 365 adoption, consistent and major feature additions, as well as an aggressive auto-install program for Office ProPlus users. With Teams adoption growing, the need to migrate in tenant-to-tenant scenarios will also proliferate. Read more about that business opportunity as a service provider here.

Additional Partner Specializations

Specializations are a great way for partners to differentiate themselves. Knowing this, Microsoft introduced the following advanced competencies:

• Windows Server and SQL Server Migration to Azure
• Linux and Open-Source Databases Migration to Azure
• Data Warehouse Migration to Azure
• Modernization of Web Applications to Azure
• Kubernetes on Azure

See a trend? Migrations to Azure – along with the introduction of Azure Lighthouse – were a central theme at this year’s event. This article from Tom Talk’s blog offers a good overview of those updates.

Missed us at the show?

That’s okay. Whether you’d like more information about our announcements at Inspire or want to discuss an upcoming migration project, we’re ready to talk. Contact us today to get that conversation started.

The post Inspire 2019 Recap: Here’s What You Missed appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

One of the best strategies to ensure a successful migration is effective planning during the pre-migration phase. Recently, BitTitan introduced new capabilities to support the migration of Teams instances between Office 365 tenants. You can learn more about that scenario in this feature spotlight. Our focus today, however, is on a specific component of this scenario in MigrationWiz: the Teams Source assessment.

For all the hype around the fast-growing collaboration app, Teams instances are susceptible to the same sprawling, poorly governed architecture as its close cousin, SharePoint. That sprawl becomes an issue when users, data, and permissions need to migrate. As adoption grows, so too does the need to migrate Teams as another workload when moving Office 365 tenants.

Through the same easy-to-use interface as all other migration workloads, IT professionals can use MigrationWiz to conduct an assessment of the existing Teams environment to understand critical factors like number of users, amount of data, and the proper licensing needed to complete the project.

Let’s look at how to run this assessment in MigrationWiz.

Running the Teams Assessment

Teams migration projects follow the same simple setup as other workloads in MigrationWiz. For Teams projects, we’ve created a new project option: “Create a Collaboration Project.” This will now be presented alongside mailbox, document, archive, and public folder options in the “Create a Project” window.

Here the traditional MigrationWiz flow takes over: select Microsoft Teams as your Source and Destination endpoints, provide Global Admin Credentials, and move to the pre-migration assessment. The assessment gathers the following information about your Source instance:

• Number of individual Teams
• Number of users
• Amount of data
• Number of licenses needed, based on the number of Teams and users in the project

After verifying tenant credentials, MigrationWiz will discover all users and the associated Teams, channels, and files within those channels to begin outlining the scope of this project.

During our testing and in some early Teams projects already completed, these assessments have taken roughly 30 seconds per Team. Like the migrations themselves, this is influenced by a variety of factors including Source bandwidth. Factor this into your pre-migration plan. This assessment is free and can be run multiple times on the Source environment prior to migrating.

Once complete, the assessment will display the information listed above, providing you with a holistic picture of the Source instance and the necessary Collaboration licenses to complete this project.

Benefits of the Teams Assessment

Like our other popular pre-migration tool, HealthCheck for Office 365, the Teams assessment can help identify roadblocks before they become bigger barriers in the middle of your migration. So why else should you take the time to run the Teams assessment?

Scope the project

Grasping the true size of the project, especially a new workload like Microsoft Teams, can help your team accurately gauge the time and resources necessary to complete this project. When taken to the end user, it forms part of that critical pre-migration plan that helps you stay on track and sends positive signals to customers that you have done your due diligence and understand their environment.

Simplify licensing

Understanding the necessary licensing to complete a migration shouldn’t be a complex process. MigrationWiz consumes a new type of license for Teams projects called Collaboration licenses. Using information from the Teams assessment, partners can easily identify the correct number of licenses needed based on the amount of data and the number of users in a project. No more double purchases, returns, or confusion. Buy licenses. Start migrating.

Expand existing tenant-to-tenant projects

As we wrote in a previous post, adoption = opportunity. Now that users have data and IP stored in Teams, it’s becoming an important component of tenant migration projects. The Teams assessment helps your team properly size and price the opportunity while allocating the appropriate resources. With the assessment in hand, you’re able to outline a new services agreement and beat out other bids with an end-to-end plan for recreating the end user’s environment in the Destination.

Want to learn more about Microsoft Teams projects with MigrationWiz?

Watch the demo now!

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Product Release Notes contain information about updates, upgrades and new features for BitTitan solutions and services. For the most current information, visit the Product Announcements section in the BitTitan Help Center. For additional questions, visit the Community Forums.

MigrationWiz New Scenario: Cross-Tenant Teams Migrations

MigrationWiz now supports migrating a Teams Instance and individual components such as Teams, Channels, Conversations, Permissions, and Files from one Microsoft Tenant to another. During project creation, select ‘Collaboration Project’ to get started.

Assessment
Once the ‘Collaboration Project’ has been created successfully, MigrationWiz will assess the Team environment to discover all Teams, Channels, Users, Conversations, and Files in the Source tenant before migration can proceed. Clicking ‘Start Assessment’ will start a Verify Credentials pass against the Source tenant.

Once the Teams Assessment has completed successfully, an assessment summary will be displayed with the tenant details including number of teams, total file size, total users, and number of licenses needed.

New Collaboration License
Migration can only proceed if there are sufficient licenses. The new ‘Collaboration’ license specific to Microsoft Teams migration can be purchased from the BitTitan Store. Each license costs $15 per user per 10 GB, valid for 12 months.

Migration 
If there are sufficient licenses, migration will start upon clicking ‘Start Full Migration.’

Teams will be migrated over first, followed by channels, memberships, conversations, and files. Note that all teams and channels will be migrated. Users cannot specify which team or channel to migrate from the UI, but can do so via folder filtering.

Once the migration has completed successfully, User can click on ‘Teams Migrated’ to view the migration results summary page. Other useful links for this scenario are listed below:

• Product Demo
• Collaboration Migration Best Practices
• Knowledge Base / Help Center

MigrationWiz Usability Improvements

• Improved the navigation of MigrationWiz’s Help Menu for ease of access to other resources

• Help Center: Navigate to the redesigned BitTitan HelpCenter.
• Guided Tutorials: Enable guided/walkthrough tutorials available within MigrationWiz

• Product Feedback: Submit feedback related to MigrationWiz.
• Operational Status: View MigrationWiz system status.

MigrationWiz Advanced Options: Modern Authentication

• Previously, if the tenant had Modern Authentication enabled, ‘Verify Credentials’ would fail.
• With the new Advanced Options, Modern Authentication is now supported for Office 365 tenants. However, users are still required to provide their username/password credentials during the endpoint creation.
  Users will need to create an app on their AAD Portal and provide the client ID and tenant ID as Advanced Options to the project.
  Both source and destination tenants can be Modern Authentication (or a combination of them).
  -Relevant Advanced Options:
  ModernAuthClientIdImport=<clientId>
  ModernAuthTenantIdImport=<clientId>
  ModernAuthClientIdExport=<clientId>
  ModernAuthTenantIdExport=<clientId>

Note: The username and password will only be used to retrieve the access token through Modern Authentication. Future authorizations will only use the access token and refresh tokens.

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BitTitan, the developer of MigrationWiz and a global leader in managed services automation, today announced it has been selected as a cloud supplier to the U.K.’s G-Cloud 11 framework.

The G-Cloud framework is an agreement between the U.K. government and cloud software and service suppliers to encourage the use of cloud-based services within the public sector market. Buying through G-Cloud 11 enables public sector organisations faster and more streamlined access to cloud services, rather than having to enter into individual procurement contracts.

This G-Cloud 11 framework recognition is significant because it enables BitTitan to provide MigrationWiz to a vast pool of public sector resellers and service providers. The G-Cloud framework forecasted it has secured £1.9bn (~$2.3 billion) in public sector IT spending for this particular 11th iteration. All the service offerings of MigrationWiz that are provided on the framework can be found here.

MigrationWiz is the industry-leading solution enabling IT professionals to migrate email and other data from a wide range of Sources and Destinations. It works with leading cloud ecosystems like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Dropbox.

In early July, BitTitan added new capabilities to support the migration of the Microsoft Teams collaboration platform. According to growth figures from Microsoft, more than half a million organisations have adopted Teams, including 91 percent of Fortune 100 companies, with that number expected to climb as more end users move to Microsoft Office 365.

While MigrationWiz has been the preferred tool for IT professionals to migrate users and data to or between instances of Office 365, the addition of Teams migration capabilities enables these professionals to support this growing workload demand and deliver an end-to-end Office 365 migration experience.

“There is an ever-expanding need for reliable, dependable cloud solutions within the U.K. public sector and we are extremely proud to be a G-Cloud approved supplier,” said Mark Kirstein, vice president of products with BitTitan. “Being a part of the G-Cloud 11 framework enables BitTitan to provide quicker, more streamlined access to MigrationWiz’s cloud migration capabilities to further support the increasing demand of cloud services within the public sector.”

Since its inception in 2012 and operated by the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), the G-Cloud is in its 11th iteration and provides access to over 30,000 services and 4,200 cloud suppliers in its Digital Marketplace. The CCS is the largest public procurement organisation in the UK.

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Businesses still clinging to Exchange Server 2010 need to make a change.

End of support for Exchange 2010 is quickly approaching. As Microsoft’s typical lifecycle is five years of standard support followed by five years of extended support, January 14, 2020 is the deadline for support and updates to this Exchange instance.

For managed service providers, this represents an opportunity to help customers upgrade all their systems, not just email. In this post, we explore the implications of utilizing Exchange 2010 past that January deadline, options for a new Destination, and the broader service opportunity this deadline presents.

End of Support Implications

Once January 14^th rolls around, businesses still on Exchange 2010 will face:

• No more technical assistance: End of support means…well…end of support. Microsoft will no longer offer help for issues in Exchange 2010. No more documentation, phone support, or general troubleshooting.
• No more updates: the most critical components here are bug fixes or security patches to protect users and data within Exchange 2010. Without these updates, risk of ransomware or malicious attempts to access information rises.
• Compliance issues: running outdated or unsupported products could be an immediate ticket out of compliance. Depending on regulations in your industry, or regional standards, operating Exchange 2010 past the end of support date may pose a larger business and/or legal problem

Migration Options

The first question your business will ask is, “where are we going?” We suggest two main options:

• Upgrade to Exchange Online / Office 365: this is clearly the preferred option from Microsoft’s end. From feature enhancements to price changes, the Redmond giant continues to push organizations off-premises and into their cloud suite. By upgrading to Office 365, you’re guaranteed the latest version of Exchange in addition to all the functionality and applications without maintaining on-premises hardware.
• Upgrade to Exchange 2016 / 2019: moving email to the cloud may not be possible for business reasons. By migrating to a newer instance of Exchange, the organization is still protected against the implications of an out-of-date server. Note that, in order to move from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2019, a “double-hop” migration through Exchange 2013 will need to be performed first, unless you choose to use a third-party tool such as MigrationWiz.

The Broader Transformation Opportunity

Market scenarios such as this are a great opportunity for managed service providers to introduce a modern workplace plan, particularly for late adopters who are less than eager to make a change. Exchange 2010 is only one component of this plan and should be used as a foot in the door toward that bigger transformation project.

Windows 7 support also ends in January 2020. With Windows 10 now included in the Microsoft 365 bundle, it could be a good opportunity to perform both of those migrations at once.

Another consideration to introduce is SharePoint 2010. Its end of support deadline is not far behind the others, and the migration options are similar: an upgraded on-prem instance or the full transition to Office 365.

Ultimately, organizations still using Exchange 2010 are missing out on a host of functionalities in Office 365 that have the potential to change their work environment for the better. As their trusted managed service provider, this end-of-support cycle is the perfect change to help them navigate the changing technology landscape and introduce more holistic options to help them be more productive, collaborative, and secure.

The post Planning Ahead for Exchange 2010 End of Support appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

The BitTitan team is less than a month away from another trip to Las Vegas, this time for Microsoft US Digital Transformation Academy. We’re proud to be a silver sponsor of the 2019 event, which will take place at the MGM Grand from September 17-19.

At Booth #310, our team will be answering questions about Microsoft 365 migration projects, including our work supporting public sector cloud migrations and our newly released Microsoft Teams capabilities.

Meeting slots during the event are filling up fast! If you’d like to book a meeting with the BitTitan team, contact us today! You can also drop by the booth and chat with a range of technical and business experts throughout the event.

See you in Sin City!

Let’s Meet at DTA!

The post Event Preview: Microsoft Digital Transformation Academy 2019 appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Over the past seven years I have been lucky enough to work for, and with, many great Microsoft partners and clients of all shapes and sizes who have been on the Cloud transformation journey to Office 365.

I have sat in on the migration of a global CEO’s mail box to Office 365 on a Saturday morning while they were flying from London to New York, expecting their iPhone, iPad, and yes, their Blackberry, to be working by the time they landed; I have seen projects delayed for months while two merging organizations needlessly debated what the new Office 365 domain name should be.

In truth, some projects are worth winning: the client gets a great outcome and so does the Microsoft partner, creating the classic win – win.

However, the opposite is true – sometimes I have won projects or had my partners win projects that by the end of it, we were all glad to have it finished so we could go our separate ways. Sometimes we had collectively underestimated the effort involved, sometimes the migration tooling didn’t behave as before in a new environment, sometimes we had spent three times longer putting in coexistence than the entire phased migrations took to complete; sometimes it can be a lack of strong project management that causes things to go sideways.

Looking back on lessons learned, I would like to quickly summarize two ways to win more profitable projects when migrating between Office 365 tenants.

Rule 1 – Office 365 tenant-to-tenant migrations are technically complex. They require an experienced, proven partner. Discounting devalues the work and devalues your experience.

You must be willing to walk away from an unprofitable project, or one that simply is not willing to pay what you are worth. This is illustrated by BATNA, a theory taught in negotiation schools: The Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement, which might simply mean that you do not need this business.

Microsoft Teams is a new niche in migrations as vendors have only been bringing it to market over the past year. Firstly, Microsoft Teams adoption in some organizations is very low when compared with Exchange, so you must do your due diligence and verify usage, either using PowerShell or a Microsoft Teams assessment. Be brave enough to ask if they do actually need to perform the migration this time around. Just because they have Microsoft Teams doesn’t always necessitate migrating MS teams – they may actually want to start over with better governance in place.

If the migration of Microsoft Teams comes into scope, and it might come in late in the discovery phase for whatever reason, then not all Microsoft Teams tools are created equal. The one thing I would say from experience is that the tool should be 100% SaaS-based and come without the need to purchase additional professional services from the migration vendor.

Purchasing additional services will up the price of your SOW to the client and decrease the profitability as you will likely have to pass through the vendor’s professional services at your cost price.

Which leads us to the second rule.

Rule 2 – Beware Migration vendors that ask to help scope your projects to include their own Professional Service and beware vendors that have a BYOL model – they will decrease your profitability.

Last year I got caught out when I thought I had purchased an Office 365 tenant to tenant migration SaaS, but upon purchasing the said licensing, we were sent download keys for software. Essentially we were then told – “It is SaaS but bring your own license for Azure”. Needless to say, we were not impressed as we had to now spin up and host in our own Azure IaaS at cost we could not pass onto the client because the SOW was signed and the order was booked.

And, finally:

Rule 3 – Remember – Win your first Office 365 Tenant to Tenant Migration project to get experience under your belt, not just money in your pocket. Mitigate your risk and exposure to loss by using FREE guides from BitTitan.

Sometimes you are paying to get experience so that in the future people will pay you for your hard-earned experience. There is a real dichotomy here – I strongly believe that you should stand by your price, you must not be a stalking horse for discounts and you must avoid professional services costs from vendors. But what if you have never undertaken an Office 365 tenant to tenant migration – how do you get that real-world experience?

While you may have to win a couple of projects at a break-even point or even take a small loss, the experience that you will gain is priceless. Migrating Office 365 tenant to tenant is not at all like On-Premise to Office 365 and it is the present and future of your migration practice. So, you may have to take a single loss to get to multiple wins. You can mitigate risks by reading our excellent Office 365 tenant to tenant guides here, we are a trusted Office 365 tenant to tenant migration vendor: https://www.bittitan.com/resources/allresources/.

The post Three Ways to Win More Profitable Office 365 Tenant Migration Projects appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Product Release Notes contain information about updates, upgrades and new features for BitTitan solutions and services. For the most current information, visit the Product Announcements section in the BitTitan Help Center. For additional questions, visit the Community Forums.

MigrationWiz New Feature: Modern Authentication for Office 365

BitTitan now supports Modern Authentication for Office 365 endpoints used for mailbox migrations. Modern Authentication provides a more secure authentication mechanism for registered applications to connect to Azure Active Directory and Office 365.

For more information on how to enable Modern Authentication, refer to the KB here.

MigrationWiz Error Message Improvement: Skipped Permissions

Previously, MigrationWiz would display the following error for skipped permissions: “Skipped permission for {smtpAddress} for folder {folderName} because it has been failed to be migrated to other folder before.”

MigrationWiz will now display more granular information about the type of permission and user that failed: “Skipped {DisplayPermissionLevel} permission for user {UserFriendlyNameForPermission} at folder {FolderDisplayName} because there are failed permission migrations for this user. You may check existing error logs for more information.”

The post August 2019 Product Release Notes appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

With Microsoft Teams quickly gaining adoption in the Office 365 suite, tenant-to-tenant migration projects now include a new workload.

Not all organizations have made the leap to Teams – but those that have now store valuable business data and documents inside Teams that needs to be migrated alongside Exchange, OneDrive, and SharePoint.

Earlier this year, BitTitan introduced new functionality to MigrationWiz to support Teams migrations between Office 365 tenants. In a new white paper available now, we outline the best practices and pitfalls to keep in mind as you plan and execute this new type of migration. Get your free copy of that guide below or contact us today to start scoping an upcoming project.

Get The Handbook for Cross-Tenant Teams Migrations

The post The Handbook for Cross-Tenant Teams Migrations appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

We have all been there: you work with a potential client over a few weeks through a series of meetings, telephone calls, online questionnaires, maybe a rough order of magnitude which becomes a statement of work and maybe you even gave the client a half day discovery workshop to bottom everything out into a final statement of work ready for final review and signature. You send the SOW over via email or DocuSign, awaiting the client’s signature, and turn the provisional kick-off date into a reality as you do your best to manage your professional services team bench.

Then, like the Bjork song – “it’s oh so quiet” – they do not respond to your voicemails or emails.

You think you are there. A little concerned maybe with the silence, maybe, but you assume they are mulling it over, so you crack on with other proposals and time passes, but then you get that email that throws a potential spanner in the works.

That email typically says something along the lines of:

“We need to discuss your pricing – this is too eye-watering.”

This is a common problem: discounting requests from a part of the business that probably doesn’t appreciate how important a well-run but likely challenging Office 365 tenant-to-tenant migration is for the business, or the costs associated in such a migration.

Sometimes I’ve found myself giving away unpaid consulting in pre-sales and ended up doing all the work for another partner, or maybe for a migration vendor who supplies their own competing professional services. The potential partner then tries to get discounting through leveraging another potential supplier (“If you don’t offer this discount, I will have to go with X because this is just too expensive for me).

These days, to avoid this issue, I prefer to establish my potential competition up front. “If we scope this, will we get the business? Or am I competing with another bidder?” I ask in a nice, nurturing way so as not to put anyone on the defensive, of course!

It takes courage – but you only have to brave enough for a matter of seconds to ask the question. Then you just keep quiet, waiting for a response.

From personal experience, some customers can treat systems integrator partners (especially niche migration partners) with a level of disrespect, believing that they’ll only do this project once. Or they have underestimated the project budget and will ask the partner to discount with the promise of “If you discount it for us this once, we’ll make sure we keep bringing you back!” But if you give them one discount, they’ll keep asking for more and more.

Discounting needs to be avoided upfront, firstly, by building draw-down professional services time into your SOW from the get-go. This is not to build unnecessary fat into the proposal to be removed later, it is done because most projects, despite all parties working honestly toward an ideal workflow, will have unexpected delays and challenges. Understanding that, and building time into the schedule, reduces confusion and frustration later.

Secondly, and this is another part that takes courage: when discussing budget with the prospective client you should get a number in round figures from them BEFORE sending the SOW in. This gives you an idea of your budget and prepares you for discussions if you are significantly over their proposal (if you’re significantly under, you’re under-charging!). If your SOW is within this ballpark, then you must stick to your price, as they are already prepared to pay it.

However, if you submitted your SOW first without asking if they have the budget and if they are willing to spend it, then you are on your own as you left yourself open for the CFO or procurement to come back and ask for the discount, or for them to simply choose another provider.

The post Pricing Guidance: How to Navigate Office 365 Tenant Migration Discussions appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Misery – I mean migrations – love company.

That’s why BitTitan recently introduced added two key features to MigrationWiz that help teams collaborate on migration projects.

Project Sharing and Action Logging in MigrationWiz enable a greater level of visibility between multiple project owners by tracking changes to migration projects, number of available licenses, and other important information within the same Workgroup. You can read more about those features here.

In a new video within our on-demand webinar library, BitTitan technical experts dive into detail about these features and how to use them for your next project. View that webinar below or contact us today with questions about an upcoming project!

Watch this webinar now!

The post On-Demand Webinar: Project Sharing and Action Logging in MigrationWiz appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

A major benefit of BitTitan’s User Migration Bundle is access to DeploymentPro, our automatic Outlook configuration tool. This solution helps teams save time and effort post-migration while preserving overall margins on a project.

Recently, Customer Success Engineer and DeploymentPro expert Tim Huff led an ‘Ask Me Anything’ discussion on the BitTitan Community Forums to field questions about the tool and outline best practices. That discussion has been reorganized and copied below – see the original thread here in the BitTitan Help Center.

What Destination Domain name should be used – the alias @companyname.onmicrosoft.com or primary @companyname.com which also matches the current on-premises domain name?

DeploymentPro will only want the User Principal Name that will ultimately be used for that Mailbox. Outlook can only log into the mailbox with the UPN. The SMTP address can be different but is usually the same as the UPN.

In the case where you have a tenant-to-tenant migration while using the same domain name, there is no way to test it with the ultimate UPN. However, you can specify the .onmicrosoft.com address as the UPN and DeploymentPro will flip the profile. Once you have tested you can revert the profile creation using our KB and re-run it when the domain has been moved to the Destination.

For the full migration – does Deployment Pro reconfigure all of the workstations they use and have DMA installed or just the first one that they log into?

A user can have as many workstations or logins as they like and be covered by a single license. Example: you have your work laptop and a home machine, install DMA on them and they will check in under one user but show two devices. When you schedule DeploymentPro, it will pop up on both devices. You would need to log into every device.

If my GPO deployment does not install the Device Management Agent properly, what should I do?

GPO is a tricky business but our instructions work for about 85% of our customers. MS pushes their customers toward SCCM or third party products like Kaseya, BigFix, and others to deploy packages. The biggest issue with GPO is we are asking you to run a Scheduled Task and scheduled tasks are pretty finicky. There are some environments that just won’t work but we don’t have a way to identify them. We will give a best effort to help you with GPO but ultimately it’s your AD and we expect you to manage it accordingly.

What are some best practices when setting up my users prior to running their profile cutover?

Great question. Schedule the cut over the minute you know that future date and time. The Agent checks in about every 60 minutes. If you Schedule it for Now it could take up to 90 minutes to pop up the User Interface. That is frustrating if you’re expecting it to be immediate. So, by scheduling that date ahead of time, it will pop up at the exact moment you want it to. Once the agent has picked up that future date the heartbeat for DeploymentPro will reduce to 15 minutes. What this allows you to do is re-schedule if you decide to push the date out or move it up.

When a customer has a single domain name, Deployment Pro works great. When the customer has 15 primary domain names (think hotel chain), you have to reconfigure DP, select the appropriate accounts, and then schedule that group of users, repeat…Is PowerShell the only real way to get DP to handle multiple domains if you are not going to do it manually? Is there something on the road map for handling multiple domains?

Every time you schedule a user, it assumes the domain part of the UPN on the Settings page, you have to go there for every “wave” of users you are Scheduling and change it, schedule those Users, change the domain, schedule the next batch, rinse and repeat. We do have a feature request to improve – in the meantime, PowerShell to the rescue.

With PowerShell you have a CSV with only two values. Value 1 = Primary Email Address that is in MSPC, it does not matter if it is right or not, that value is basically the title of that entry on the page. Value 2 is whatever the UPN is for that User. You would not need to go to the Settings page at all. You could have a different CSV for every domain so you can look at them in a glance.

What should I do if the reported users do not have the proper UPN when reported by the DMA tool?

Understanding how the Agent reports the User back to MSPC. If your users are in MSPC we try to match them but many times they do not.

We first look for the value in SMTP:proxyaddresses field in AD and use it whether it matches or not, if this is not present then we look for the Email Address on the General Tab in Active Directory Users and Computers, if that is not present then we default to the UPN they log into their computer with like a .local or .corp. Sometimes this will not match the address in the Users container in your project. It will not hurt anything but it will not match so the license is on the wrong duplicate entry.

A non-domain joined computer will come back as username@COMPUTERNAME.gen, same issue.

You do not need to edit anything in the Users Container in MSPC. When you go to the DeploymentPro page only computers that have DMA running on them will show up. The only address that matters is the Destination UPN they login to their mailbox with. When you Schedule them you can edit the UPN to the correct value.

What does DeploymentPro look for when trying to cutover the user’s profile?

When the UI has popped up for the end User they will see a window that has a “Next” button. They will click and enter their password and hit next. Here is what happens with DeploymentPro.

Our code goes to the following URL https://autodiscover-s.outlook.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml and passes the UPN and password using Basic Authentication. If MFA or Modern Authentication is enabled we will not be able to get the AutoDiscover information for that User and it will fail. You can manually test this by going to the URL and when it prompts for the UN and PW you will get an XML response of <ErrorCode>600</ErrorCode>. Once this is successfully accomplished Outlook takes over and creates a new profile. Our code then connects to the Source mailbox and gets the AutoComplete information in the hidden msg in the Inbox, we link the Signature to the profile and Outlook opens for the first time and downloads the new OST.

Do you any guidance or best practice advice on how long before migration should the DeploymentPro agent be tested and then deployed to the production environment ahead of a production cutover migration?

If I am wearing my Admin hat as a Customer using our product, I would say immediately and you couldn’t do it soon enough. Good Admins will test every possible scenario and would not believe anything they are told or read (they use our documentation as guidance). They Repro everything possible because when it’s time to configure the end user’s devices it is too late to fix the environment and would have to do the profile creation manually.

When you deploy the agent how does it know to report back into my console and not some other client? I have accounts in Outlook for about five or six different tenants. If multiple of those tenants have DeploymentPro projects, will my machine appear in all of them?

When you deploy the agent we use unique names for the setup file that looks like this – BitTitanDMASetup_42FB5DB4B82F1D68__.exe. Any device in the world that runs that setup file will report into the associated customer in MSPC. If you alter that name, it will fail to install. There is also an email version of the setup file that looks like this BitTitanDMASetup_U_E8C2F87A3B2E9F57__. This file is specific to that Customer AND User’s email address. While the email version is easier for the Admin, the end-user has to look for this email and click on the link to install the Agent. Another downside is if this User shares that link our system will believe it is the same person who it was sent to. I’ve seen someone share their personal email link to the entire company and they all ended up showing up as that one user. Yikes.

Outlook will only create the profile of the main account you are migrating and will not create the other accounts, they would have to be added manually.

If we keep the agent on the workstations then if a second or third user logs into that workstation who had an outlook profile to the old tenant, will the agent pop up for them and update their Outlook profiles too?

If other Users log in they will report to the Project but nothing will happen unless they are Scheduled. If they were scheduled, the pop up would run and it would create a new profile for them just like the first user. We do not update anything, Outlook creates a “new” profile and we never touch the old one.

The post DeploymentPro AMA: Outlook Configuration Discussion appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Purchasing BitTitan licenses through a distributor or redeeming a coupon code?

In a new video tutorial, we walk through the steps for adding and/or redeeming licenses in MigrationWiz. We also cover free BitTitan account registration, in-product guidance, and where to turn for additional support.

The post Video: How to Add or Redeem Licenses in MigrationWiz appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

BitTitan Customer Stories is a new series on Bits & Bytes highlighting successful migration projects delivered by BitTitan partners around the world. To view more case studies like these, visit the Customer Stories tab on our website. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Get in touch!

Meet the Partner: KiZAN Technologies

KiZAN Technologies, LLC is a Microsoft National Solutions Provider. Their innovative solutions to digital transformation initiatives and complex business problems are evidenced by their numerous gold and silver Microsoft competencies. KiZAN’s services include technology consultation, custom application design and development, managed support, and implementation of both cloud and on-prem solutions. Founded in 1991, the company is based in Louisville, Kentucky and maintains a strong presence in the Midwest with offices in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Nashville, while serving a global customer base.

In 2017, KiZAN began working with a Fortune Global 500 enterprise to support an aggressive acquisition and divestiture strategy that, combined with its innovative spirit, helped the organization maintain a position as the market leader over the course of its 150+ year history.

While this strategy is key to serve changing market needs, it also creates significant challenges for IT teams. One of these challenges involves the data migration itself – bringing users, files, and archives from a newly acquired organization into the company’s Office 365 environment or spinning them off following a divestiture.

KiZAN has proven to be a reliable partner for this organization in the execution of IT activities around this business case. These often involve a transition from one Office 365 tenant to another – a move we refer to as tenant-to-tenant (T2T). Since the start of their engagement, KiZAN has moved nearly 10,000 users for this specific partner across multiple acquisitions and divestitures.

KiZAN’s secret to success is three-fold: a deep understanding of the customer’s complex IT environment; KiZAN’s own technical capabilities and processes refined over years of service delivery; and their partnership with MigrationWiz, the leading cloud office migration solution.

IP + MigrationWiz = The Winning Formula

KiZAN is the perfect example of a service partner that pairs their own domain expertise with a trusted technology solution to deliver on the needs of their customers.

“MigrationWiz helps us create a very large chunk of repeatable processes that save time for both KiZAN and our customers, and allows us to be more accurate in the migration,” said Bill Rieger, Principal Consultant at KiZAN. “The tool is rock solid. We know exactly what data we need and how to use it to deliver the best possible experience for the end-user.”

Bill points to two automation factors in particular: the PowerShell module and DeploymentPro. While scripting relieves the KiZAN team of manual, repetitive tasks and offers them more advanced control over the project, DeploymentPro automatically configures Outlook profiles for a “no-touch” experience on the destination.

KiZAN has a breadth of experience with these projects – but that doesn’t mean every migration goes exactly according to plan. Support from BitTitan Customer Success is another pillar of this partnership.

“At the end of the day, your support is excellent. You’re always available and listen to our feedback,” said Rieger.

The data migration itself is a small component of a larger transformation plan. KiZAN knows they can trust MigrationWiz for this part of the project, enabling their team to focus on other aspects of the migration, perform additional services like Active Directory migrations, and support end-users as they adapt to the new environment.

A Partner in the Long Run

Through this formula of the right people, processes, and technology, KiZAN has established themselves as a trusted technology partner of this powerhouse customer. By maintaining a record of highly successful migration projects and developing a thorough understanding of the customer’s environment, KiZAN helps them quickly integrate new users and data into their organization to drive larger business objectives and reduce time to value from their aggressive acquisition strategy.

The post KiZAN Combines IP, Experience, and MigrationWiz to Support Fortune 500 Enterprise’s Aggressive Acquisition Strategy appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

BitTitan now supports Modern Authentication for Office 365 endpoints used for Mailbox migrations. Modern Authentication provides a more secure authentication mechanism for registered applications to connect to Azure Active Directory and Office 365. For more information on Modern Authentication, see this page from Microsoft: How to authenticate an EWS application by using OAuth.

To enable Modern Authentication, the following prerequisites are needed:

• A Global Administrator account with access to Azure Active Directory and MFA disabled.
• A MigrationWiz mailbox project that has already been created and ready for configuration.
• The application will require admin consent. This process will include the steps for granting admin consent. For more information on granting admin consent, see this article from Microsoft.

BitTitan’s KB on enabling Modern Authentication is linked here. We plan to support Modern Authentication for additional workloads in the near future. Check back for additional news or keep up with updates via Product Release Notes. 

The post Modern Authentication for MigrationWiz appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Product Release Notes contain information about updates, upgrades and new features for BitTitan solutions and services. For the most current information, visit the Product Announcements section in the BitTitan Help Center. For additional questions, visit the Community Forums.

MigrationWiz New Endpoint: Teams Migration to US Government Tenant

MigrationWiz now supports Teams migrations to a US government tenant.

• How to migrate:
  • AdvancedOption:  “OneDriveProImportEnvironment=AzureUSGovernment”
• Known limitations due to API:
  • Images will not be migrated into the conversation but will still appear in the conversation history’s HTML file.
  • Conversation history will not be added as a tab. However, it will be posted as a message in the channel.
• New AdvancedOption: “AppendRootFolderName/PrependRootFolderName”
  • This allows users to easily bulk rename teams from the source to the destination by adding a prefix or suffix to their team nickname.
  • Change all the source root folder names from “abc” to “abc_text” or “text_abc” if you set PrependRootFolderName=”text_” or AppendRootFolderName=”_text”

MigrationWiz Improvements: Teams Migrations

• MS Team guest users are now excluded from license count during Teams Assessment.
• Folder tolerance added/supported when migration:
  • Fails to create team
  • Fails to create channel
  • Fails to connect to source SP site

Note: Folder tolerance not supported when migration fails to connect to destination SP site; workaround is to retry.

MigrationWiz Bug Fixes: Teams Migrations

• Email notification for successfully completed migration now shows the source and destination info. Before the fix, the email content was missing the source and destination info.
• A separate email notification will be sent to users once Teams Assessment has completed successfully. Previously, the email notification for a completed migration was erroneously sent to users.
• Minor UI bug fix for Teams Assessment results where text overlaps when the total file size is too large.

The post September 2019 Product Release Notes appeared first on Bits & Bytes.