I have recently began using a product called CloudAnywhere from CloudiWay which has some really excellent features like:
I recently had to activate 2000 Exchange Online P1 users and 100 Office365 E4 Users.
So how can we do this quickly?
Powershell to the rescue.
Ensure that the Windows Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell is installed. Launch the module and run the following commands.You can download the module HERE
I need a CSV file for Exchange Online Plan 1 users and Office365 E4 users. To do this I run the following powershell commands to export all unlicensed users to a csv file.
Get-MsolUser -all | where {$_.isLicensed -eq $false} | select-object userprincipalname | out-file c:\users.csv
I can then review the contents of this csv file and create two csv files.
Exchange Online Plan 1 users : p1.csv
Office365 E4 users : e4.csv
Connect-MsolService (Enter Global Administrator credentials)
Get-MsolAccountSku (Take note of the account skus)
Assign a usage location to each set of users with the following powershell commands. The usage location in this example is Ireland IE
Import-Csv -Path c:\P1.CSV | foreach {set-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName $_.UPN -UsageLocation IE}
Import-Csv -Path c:\E4.CSV | foreach {set-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName $_.UPN -UsageLocation IE}
Then assign a license to each set of users.
Import-Csv -Path c:\P1.CSV| Set-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName {$_.’UPN’} –AddLicenses “Contoso:EXCHANGESTANDARD”
Import-Csv -Path c:\E4.CSV| Set-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName {$_.’UPN’} –AddLicenses “Contoso:ENTERPRISEWITHSCAL”
And there we go all users activated.
You can then migrate to the following targets
Microsoft Exchange 2010/2013
Office365
Microsoft Live@edu
So why would you use this service?
A couple of reasons, It is hosted in Windows Azure and can allow for zero touch migrations.Exchange 2007 messaging platforms upwards give us the ability to implement hybrid environments which can then create a platform which will allow rich co-existence and migration.
Its a hell of a lot cheaper than the full email migration products from quest.
It can migrate from Lotus Notes!!!
I have worked on quite a few corporate companies that acquire companies. Extracting email from a business first before an AD consolidation project makes the AD consolidation project a lot easier and a tool like this allows zero touch email extraction into a companies own on-premise exchange messaging environment or into my preferred platform Office365.
I have taken some screen shots of how easy the wizard is to begin a migration. In this example I wanted to migrate from Exchange 2010 to Office365 wave15. So before I did that , I created an application impersonation role in the exchange 2010 on-premise environment and one in the Office365 environment.
When using DirSync and ADFS it can take a long time to activate thousands of users. So here is a really quick way of doing it.
Firstly HERE is a great article on msexchangeguru.com on dirsync filtering. So there are plenty of organisational units in Active Directory that do not need to be syncronised to Office365.
So I always filter the OU’s that are synchronized to Office365.
Within the organisation section of the Office365 portal make your external domain which has been verified the default domain.
Ensure all user’s have the correct User Principal Names as per one of my previous BLOGS
So once all the user’s have been synced to Office365 , they need a license assigned to them.
So connect to Office365 via the Windows Active Directory Module for Windows Powershell and do the following.
connect-msolservice # and enter an Office365 Global Administrator’s credentials.
As all of the users are currently unlicensed , we will set a location for the users as per the command below and the location will be us.
