Below is an update on the upcoming April 10th university migration from our local email and calendar service to Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud service and to share strategies ITS is employing to ensure a smooth transition.
Pre-migration preparation
ITS, itself, migrated to Office 365 early to verify the transition process, identify problems, and develop solutions. We discovered that this migration is easier for machines utilizing up-to-date versions of Microsoft Office. The 2013 Office suite displayed fewer problems and could access all of the Office 365 features once the migration was complete. Based on this experience, we recommended that individuals upgrade to Office 2013 prior to the migration. ITS User Support Services has been coordinating Office upgrades through our managed workstation program and in concert with local IT support staff. These upgrades are scheduled to be complete before April 10th. If you have questions or concerns about this upgrade, contact the ITS Technology Support Center at techsupport@uconn.edu or at 860.486.4357.
Migration support
ITS will migrate university email and calendar services from our local Exchange environment to Microsoft Office 365 starting at 5:00 p.m. on April 10th and concluding the morning of April 13th. Typical accounts will experience a brief five to ten minute outage sometime during the migration window. Mail will continue to be delivered during this short outage even though your mailbox will be temporarily unavailable. If you have problems over the weekend with your email and calendar service, please contact the ITS Technology Support Center at techsupport@uconn.edu or 860.486.4357.
Post-migration impacts
Once your account has been migrated, how you login to the university email and calendar service will change. Today, you login using your NetID username and NetID password. After the migration, you will continue to use your NetID password but will enter your official university email address for your username instead of your NetID username. This username change will require you to reconfigure mail clients on your mobile devices. Instructions will be available on the UConn Office 365 website if you prefer to configure your devices yourself. We are also offering broad on-site support to assist you. On Monday, April 13th, staff from the ITS Technology Support Center and other institutional IT professionals will be present at seven locations on the Storrs campus to reconfigure your mobile devices. Once we have finalized the support locations with local IT staff, we will publicize their location. Our Office 365 site, office365.uconn.edu, will be the central source for news and updates about the migration and related changes to university email.