While we realize that many BPOS customers are eager to move onto the new Office 365 service and start using all the new features, we strongly recommend that you wait until we are ready to transition your tenant for you. We have received a number of Support calls from customers and partners who have tried to migrate their data from BPOS to Office 365 by themselves. Please be aware that if you attempt a manual migration, emails sent to your domains will be returned to sender as undeliverable until Support can delete your domain from BPOS and you can re-create in Office 365. This email outage could last as long as 24 hours (possibly longer if many customers are asking Support to delete their domains at the same time as you). What should someone do who is eager to move from BPOS to Office 365? Ideally, you would wait to be transitioned by the Office 365 team. However, if you are an expert in Exchange server migrations, comfortable with PowerShell scripts, and just can’t wait a couple of months, here’s what you need to do. (Please note that manual migration is not supported, manual migration will stop mail flow for at least 24 hours, and customers with Exchange Hosted Archiving will lose all archived data). Ensure all of your computers meet the Office 365 system requirements. Sign up for an Office 365 account. Do NOT add any other domains at this point Run the Office 365 online desktop setup tool on all desktop PCs. Back up all of your users’ mail to .pst files using Outlook. Remove all vanity domain information from BPOS. Remove all production domain e-mail addresses from any accounts using them. Here’s an example. Your production domain is contoso.com. You have a user, Joe, with the e-mail addresses Joe@contoso.microsoftonline.com and Joe@contoso.com. Remove the Joe@contoso.com e-mail address, as well as any other e-mail addresses in the system that end with contoso.com. Remove your production domain from BPOS. Contact BPOS Support, and Tell them you wish to have your production domain removed from FOPE. Ask them to check in the Office 365 environment to see if Microsoft has already copied your domain(s) and users to a pre-transition tenant. If this has happened, your domain(s) will need to be removed from Office 365 as well Wait 1 day for Support to remove your domains. You will receive no inbound email for this period. Sign in to your Office 365 admin account and add your production domain to Office 365. Add your users to Office 365. Import the .pst files you made in step 3 into the appropriate user mailboxes using Outlook. There will be a feature allowing domains to be deleted in FOPE without a call to Support, but it will take some time before this option is available. Please keep an eye on this blog for further updates. Final note: I have personally seen some creative workarounds in the BPOS community to the email outage that inevitably occurs while FOPE is deleting your domain. They’re not perfect, and Microsoft doesn’t support them (nor have we tested them).

Now that Office 365 has launched, we’re preparing to start transitions in September 2011, and we’ve updated the Transition Guide and Transition FAQ to provide you more information about what to expect between now and September 2012. Here’s a summary of the key actions you should take. 1)   Review the transition guide. This comprehensive overview covers all aspects of the transition process. Download the transition guide for in-depth information on everything from system requirements to the specific steps required for administrators and current users. 2)   Learn the key changes. Some of these system requirements may require you to upgrade your PCs before you transition. Make sure your business is ready for Office 365 and the new Microsoft Online Services by noting the following key changes: Outlook 2003 / Office 2003 is not supported Internet Explorer 6 is not supported Office Communicator 2007 R2 must be upgraded to Microsoft Lync Office 365 Desktop Setup is required (replaces the Sign-In Application) Review all of the Office 365 and Microsoft Online Services system requirements . In addition, make sure all your desktops are up to date for the necessary end-user requirements. You can find this information in the transition checklist for administrators. 3)   Understand the Office 365 password policy To make the transition to Office 365 as seamless as possible for your users, we will synchronize their current passwords with Office 365 whenever they change their password. This means that the new Office 365 password policy now applies to your existing subscription. Review the Office 365 password requirements to understand the changes. 4)   Download the transition checklist Start your transition prerequisites – The tasks required to configure your desktop environment can be found in the detailed transition checklist for administrators . 5)   Check out your new subscription offer The following table summarizes how Microsoft Online Services and BPOS subscriptions will map to the new Microsoft Online Services offerings after transition. All active subscriptions will be transitioned to the new offers while maintaining your current price through the end of your subscription term.  Learn more at the Office 365 website . Current Microsoft Online Services  Subscription   New Office 365 or Microsoft Online Services subscription BPOS Standard Suite >   Office 365 (Plan E1) BPOS Deskless Worker Suite >   Office 365 (Plan K1) Exchange Online >   Exchange Online (Plan 1) Exchange Online Deskless Worker >   Exchange Online Kiosk SharePoint Online >   SharePoint Online (Plan 1) SharePoint Online Deskless Worker >   SharePoint Kiosk (K1) Live Meeting Standard >   Lync Online (Plan 2) Office Communications Online >   Lync Online (Plan 1) What happens next? Microsoft will begin contacting customers and partners this summer with September and October 2011 transition dates. Each month, we’ll send out more transition scheduling notices. For more information about scheduling, please check out the transition FAQ . Processing timeframe The transition schedule is designed to best accommodate all customers and their needs, and that could mean your transition won’t be scheduled for several months. Don’t worry if you don’t receive a transition date immediately. Stay up to date 
 The transition center is the place to learn anything and everything about the transition process and all that Office 365 can do for your business. Microsoft Online Services is ready to support you through a smooth transition to Office 365. If you have questions, contact our IT-level support , which is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Also, be sure to take a look at the transition forum – the answers you need are likely already available.

Microsoft is identifying customers to participate in admin user experience interview sessions based on the nomination survey below. We are interested in customer feedback on planned Admin Scenarios for Office 365 with BlackBerry Business Cloud Services. If you meet these criteria and would like to share your feedback, please contact us using the self-nomination form below. Completing this survey does not guarantee participation, though we hope to speak with as many of you as possible who are interested. Self-nomination criteria: You are an employee of a company which has licenses for BPOS Standard or Exchange Online Standard as well as the current Hosted BlackBerry service from Microsoft. You are responsible for managing cloud email services and setting-up email on mobile phones. You are willing to spend 30 minutes with us on the phone between May 11th and May 20th, 2011 to provide constructive feedback on scenarios. Calls will be done using LiveMeeting and may include one or a few customer participants as well as participants from Microsoft and from Research in Motion. Click here to complete the nomination survey . Click here to see the original post.

Hopefully, you know by now that as an existing Microsoft Online Services customer, your subscription will be transitioned to the equivalent Office 365 suite or service after it becomes available. In anticipation of these upcoming changes, I wanted to provide some resources on what will be happening, what steps you will need to take, and what you can expect during the transition process. The transition process itself will be automatic. However, there are a few things you should do to prepare. Recommendation #1: Download the transition guide This guide is your go-to resource for all questions you might have related to your transition. Make sure to review this comprehensive overview to get a better understanding of the tasks you need to complete, the scheduling process, the system requirements for each of the products within the Office 365 suite, information on the transition experience for the administrator and your end-users, as well as detailed checklists to help you plan. I am calling out suggested resources with specific details within the transition guide that you should read: Detailed transition checklist Transition experience for customers Key decisions and actions You can download the guide at any time. Recommendation #2: Watch the Office 365 transition video This video explains the overall transition process to Office 365—the future of collaboration, communications and online productivity. The video is in English, but the presentation used within the video is available in other languages. Recommendation #3: Keep your team informed – create a distribution list The best way to keep your team updated about the transition is to generate a distribution list for all the key technical contacts in your organization. Create a unique alias for this list, and use the alias as your contact preference within Microsoft Online Services. Get started right away by adding your distribution list to your contact information on the Microsoft Online Services Administration Consol . Recommendation #4: Be sure you know the Office 365 system requirements Depending on your current desktop configuration, updates may be required to enable some of the Office 365 features. Check out the system requirements for more information on features such as synchronization of on-premises mailboxes and Active Directory, configuration services for Single Sign-On, and re-delegation for your email domain (MX Record) to enable email. Recommendation #5: Always stay up to date The transition center web site at www.bpostransition.com is the place to learn anything and everything about the transition process. Do you have questions still? Join the conversation in the transition forum . Next steps Over the next few months you will be hearing from Microsoft again with another update and this will include a personalized survey to let us know approx. when transitioning will work for your business. Once your business has filled out the survey, we will send you an email to your email address contacts on file – including the technical contact email address – to let you know about your scheduled transition date. This is why it is very important to ensure that your technical contact information is both up to date, and to add a transition distribution alias as this contact. It will help to ensure that we are communicating to the right folks in your organization to make this as seamless as possible. Is this helpful? Do you need other information? Let me know by providing a comment to this blog post. Michael O’Neill

The next generation of BPOS is here. Today, we are announcing a public beta of Office 365, expanding it to millions more people, in more regions, and languages – a total of 38 countries and 17 languages in all. You can secure your spot for the beta at www.office365.com .

Bonjour, in case you have missed it we made an important announcement today: Microsoft Office 365: The Power to Think Big and Be Small, to Be Big and Act Fast . How does it impact the Microsoft Project world? Check this post from Arpan: Enabling Better Collaborative Project Management with Office 365 and Project Professional 2010 More information on the official Microsoft Office 365: https://www.office365.com ; sign up for Beta!

Today, Kurt DelBene announced Office 365 , which we believe will define the future of productivity. Office 365 is a new cloud service that brings enterprise-grade productivity to everyone. This is an important announcement for the industry and Microsoft. I encourage you to watch today’s global press conference about Office 365 on the Microsoft News Center ( www.microsoft.com/presspass ). I wanted to blog about this news to explain what it means for Microsoft Project 2010. As many of you know, we offer Project Server 2010 cloud hosting through numerous partners that many customers are already taking advantage of today. With SharePoint Online as part of Office 365, we now deliver great collaborative project management in the cloud through the Project Professional synchronization to SharePoint just as we do today for our on-premise customers.