December 20, 2012
The ITU has made significant progress in preparing for the move of e-mail, individual and group calendar entries, and individual contacts to Office 365 (the new e-mail and calendaring system hosted by Microsoft). The estimated cutover date is March 8, 2013.
Completed Tasks:
- all the planning documents and specifications for moving the Mason e-mail to Office 365 servers have been prepared;
- all servers and network equipment needed to support Mason users using Office 365 have been purchased and installed;
- all servers and network equipment needed to support authentication on the Office 365 servers using current Mason credentials (NetID and password) have been purchased, installed, and configured
We are currently engaged in organizing volunteers for the upcoming pilot tests. Through these pilots and other means we will be testing:
- that Mason user credentials work properly on Office 365
- procedures for moving contacts on Mason e-mail servers to Office 365
- procedures for moving Thunderbird contacts to Microsoft Outlook
- procedures for moving Thunderbird local mail to Microsoft Outlook
- procedures for ensuring that the current Mason directory of faculty, staff and students e-mail addresses will be available on Office 365
- the process and the time it takes to copy Mason e-mail from the Mason e-mail servers to Office 365 servers
- procedures and accuracy of copying calendar entries from the Oracle calendar to Office 365
We are currently preparing training plans and materials that will assist employees in using Office 365 and those migrating to the Outlook client from Thunderbird or other client software.
The final phase of the project consists of migrating all e-mail, individual and group calendar entries and individual contacts to Office 365. This will happen the weekend of March 8th.
Although the final phase of moving employees to Office 365 will be completed on March 11, the ITU will continue to work with employees to assist them in moving local e-mail to Office 365, moving local contacts to Outlook, providing training that employees need to optimally use Outlook and Office 365 and providing support from the ITU Support Center and Desktop Support Services.
In order to help you prepare for this transition please visit Mason’s Office 365 website at http://office365.gmu.edu and select the “Preparing for 365” menu option.
For more information, contact David Robinson, O365Info@gmu.edu, Technology Systems Division, Information Technology Unit.