The steps you have to take to migrate to the Microsoft 365 cloud.
1.DOMAIN
A domain is your cloud address, if your business has a custom email address like yourname@yourcompany.co.za, then you have a domain, or if you have a basic website address then you have a domain. At this stage you can think about if you want a website or if are happy with your existing website or if you want to overhaul/improve it.
You will need to recall where you bought it from. Then you have to provide us with authority to access the domain. If you can’t remember where you bought it from…No hassles, we will sort it out. If you are happy with your existing website that’s great or we can help overhaul/improve it.
No hassles, if you don’t have one, we can buy one for your business on your behalf. We can also build a website for your business.
2.EMAIL
Email mailboxes can be migrated to Microsoft 365. We need a list of all existing emails addresses.
If you would like to move existing emails to the cloud, mark it, on your list, if you are worried a few old out of use mailboxes migrating to the cloud and its cost, don’t, we can still migrate it and you can still have access to it with no extra cost.
Depending on how much email an employee has, the migration may take from a few minutes to hours. The longer it takes the longer the employee will be without their inbox. Employees must be prepared for this. Usually, we perform migrations in the evenings or on the weekends, this minimizes employees being without their inbox. Depending on where your current email resides, your employees may have to provide a few configuration changes in their personal settings, but we will advise you if this is the case.
Another important consideration is that not all email providers grant us access to calendar entries. if this be the case all historic calendar entries cannot be migrated. The calendar entries for the future will also have to be recreated in the Microsoft 365 cloud. Again, we will advise you, if this be the case, so you may communicate this to your employees.
3.FILES
Microsoft 365 cloud can store files in any arrangement that you can think of, however our advice is to divi up your locations for files by permissions. For example, if your marketing department has sets of files, they have work on then only marketing employees should have permissions to those files, The same goes for accounts departments and Sales and HR. Even if you are a start-up this about your files like this. when your business grows then you can assign permissions to these locations much easier, and you can be assured that employees can only see what they are supposed to see.
If your files are located on your machine, make sure they are in one folder, zip them and copy them to a USB drive or an external hard drive and provide them to us. We will a load each drive individually.
If your files are on a cloud drive, advise us where they are, and we will do the rest.
If your files are centrally located on a server, we have a tool to migrate those files to the Microsoft 365 cloud.
then…
Determine where you want your files located. By this we mean we can place your files in different directories in the cloud, this aids better security, and easier collaboration. The marketing files can stay in a marketing folder and only marketing employees can see those files and then the same for your other departments.
Depending on how many files you have, the migration may take from a few minutes to hours. The longer it takes the longer the employee will be without their files. Employees must be prepared for this. Usually, we perform migrations in the evenings or on the weekends, this minimizes employees being without their files.
4.APPS
If you have an app that you use from an on-premises machine, we can migrate it to Microsoft’s infrastructure cloud called Azure. But perhaps is a time to reflect to see if you can do things better. Maybe there is a better way which is born in the cloud. Maybe we have an app for that already. Regardless of your choice we can help. Even if you do not want to migrate, and remain on-premises, we can help configure your network to ensure that your employees can securely connect.
Remember to always prepare your employees for change.
If you don’t have an app that you use from an on-premises machine that’s great, it makes your move more the easier. Perhaps it a could time to think how you could streamline your business by automating some of your processes. We can help with that! Talk to us.
5.CONTACT US
Your business is unique, so too must your plan for moving to the cloud be. we will schedule calls to thrash your high-level needs and solutions. We will provide indicative pricing.
Now will dig deeper into your needs and assess each subcomponent to the plan, our experienced engineers will guide you every step of the way.
After assessing, we will finalise the plan, change any pricing if we have to and then present the plan for your go-no-go approval.
In our world onboarding means a few things…
- Finalising information for the migration from your employees and you
- training your employees
- deploying Microsoft and other new apps to your employees
- run any background task that may assist in speeding up migration and
- any other preparation work that needs to be done to ensure smooth migration for your business and your employees
When the day come for migration, make any final checks and begin migration. Generally, when the migration is complete, we cut over to the Microsoft 365 cloud.
On the first day after migration, we will be there for you and your employees to help ease the transition. we will assist in your employees adopting Microsoft 365, from the familiar apps to the new apps and all that it can do. Then, we will formalize and finalise reinforcement learning programmes for your employees, and we will leverage resources at our disposal for driving adoption.
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