I printed out flyers and business cards and put them at the reception desks (Joanne/Hannah’s desks). The flyer is also available here for those of you who wish to print it at home. I encourage you to pick up a flyer/business card and put the business card in your wallet, as it contains instructions on how to immediately access your email once your account has been migrated to o365, should you need access to it in an emergency. It also contains information on who to contact for removing and re-adding your email to your devices for a permanent solution once your account migration is complete.

You can also find these instructions, as well as any other information about our o365 migration, on our staff intranet website at https://crestaff.mit.edu/o365.

Our final information session on o365 Migration is on Dec 9, 2022 at 10:00 AM, where members of the IS&T Exchange Team will be available to answer your questions. The URL to join this session is https://mit.zoom.us/j/97797236870. The session will be recorded for those unable to attend.

The final list of migration dates is available here. Your account will begin migration at this time, and will cutover sometime after, usually 30 minutes to a few hours later, once the migration completes. Once migration has finished, your email may stop working on some or all of your devices. You may access it on the web by signing into outlook.com using your @mit.edu email address. You should utilize one of the support options in the flyer/business card to get your email account removed and re-added to your devices. Please note, we cannot re-add your email account to your devices until after your account migration has completed (which may be a few hours following your migration start time).

If you have any questions, please attend the session on Dec 9 at 10:00 AM or contact me at ce2@mit.edu.

The proposed list of migrations has been updated. Several accounts, including all those scheduled for Dec 20 and Dec 21, have been moved up to an earlier week as IS&T is not doing migrations the week before winter break. Please confirm your availability at the new time. If this does not work, please let me know an alternative date no later than Monday, 12/5 at 3PM. Available alternative dates/times are:

Monday, December 12: Afternoon

Tuesday, December 13: Afternoon

Wednesday, December Afternoon 14: Morning and Afternoon

Thursday, December 15: Morning and Afternoon

Friday, December 16: Morning

If none of these dates work for you, we will need to schedule your migration to occur sometime after January 10, 2023.

I have also compiled the following FAQ (posted below as well), as I have received a lot of questions surrounding this migration:

Why are we doing this migration?

There are several reasons we need to migrate, and several benefits for CRE gained. These are discussed in this initial information session video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBy7nvel65E and will be discussed again at the Dec 9 training/information session.

The quick answer is: Most user account mailboxes are hosted on a physical server at MIT somewhere. This is difficult to upgrade, difficult to secure, and expensive to maintain. The software MIT is using is also nearly a decade old. MIT is migrating email accounts to Microsoft’s cloud called “Office 365”, which means that security, upgrades, and maintenance become Microsoft’s problem instead of MIT’s, and consequently, it will be easier and cheaper to maintain. There are additional benefits for us, including the ability to use features like Calendly, web-publishing of calendars, send later, and other features which make collaboration easier. This is also a necessary precursor to getting the booking process for meeting rooms and equipment more streamlined and automated.

Can I have my account migrated at [specific] time?

Not exactly. Migration a process that is performed by IS&T – there is nothing that I do, rather, IS&T schedules a time for each account to begin migration. At your scheduled time, a script is initiated by IS&T to migrate your account over. This may take between several minutes to a few hours to complete. Because we’re unable to identify how long it will take or what time it will finish, it’s not beneficial to schedule the migration at a specific time, because the completion time is unknown.

Once the migration is complete, your email may have problems connecting, in which case I can help you reconnect it. Instructions are available for people to reconnect accounts on their own, but many people may have difficulty with it, which is why I am making myself available during these times to help.  The IS&T service desk is also available to help you.

Do I need to be in your office/physically present during the migration?

No. The migration is a script that moves your emails from MIT’s servers to Microsoft’s servers. The script runs at the scheduled time you have been assigned. Once the migration is complete (which could take several minutes to a few hours), your email may stop working, in which case you will need to reconnect your account. I can help you reconnect your account if you are on-campus, but reconnecting your account remotely may be more difficult, especially for devices like smartphones and tablets where screensharing is not as easy to perform.

If my email stops working after the transfer and I need to get access to it in an emergency, is there a way I can access it?

Yes, you can use the webmail client in your browser. We will go over how to access this during the Zoom session on Dec 9 @ 10AM, and instructions will be provided in a later email.

What if I have more questions?

Please contact me. You are also encouraged to attend the Zoom Office 365 Migration Information Session on December 9 @ 10:00 AM. IS&T will be present during the meeting to answer any questions you have. The meeting URL is https://mit.zoom.us/j/97797236870.

The list of proposed migrations can be found at the following link. Please be aware that migrations can take several minutes to a couple of hours to complete, depending on the amount of data that needs to be migrated. What this means is that although your migration will start at 1:00PM, it may not complete until 1:15PM, 2:00PM, or even later. Once complete, your email may automatically switch over, or you may be prompted to restart your email client, or you may not receive any such warning whatsoever and your email will silently stop working until your account is manually removed and re-added to your email client (which I will be available to help you with).

As a reminder, we will have a final information session on December 9, 2022 at 10AM with the IS&T Exchange Team to answer any questions you may have about account migration. You should have received a calendar invite for this session, but the URL to join is https://mit.zoom.us/j/97797236870.

If the proposed date/time below does not work for you, please let me know an alternative date/time prior to 12/2/2022 at noon. After 12/2, we cannot change your migration date/time. Alternative dates/times are listed in the Nov 21 status update. I suggest picking a day/time where you will be physically present on campus if possible, so that it will be easier for me to help you.

We will be migrating all user accounts to Office 365 beginning the week of December 12, 2022. You will be assigned a date and either a morning or afternoon slot. Your date/time will be emailed to you no later than December 2. Doing things this way will ensure my availability to assist you, should you encounter any issues. I intend to migrate users in batches of 5 or 6 accounts at a time.

If you have a preference for a specific day/time, please let me know. I suggest picking a day/time where you will be physically present on campus if possible, so that it will be easier for me to help you. I have the following times open:

Monday, December 12: Afternoon

Tuesday, December 13: Afternoon

Wednesday, December Afternoon 14: Morning and Afternoon

Thursday, December 15: Morning and Afternoon

Friday, December 16: Morning

Tuesday, Dec 20: Afternoon

Wednesday, Dec 21: Morning and Afternoon

Unfortunately, I cannot provide an exact time for the migration to occur, because the process can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the size of your mailbox.  Once the migration is complete, your email may cutover automatically, or it may produce an error, or it may just stop working without a clear notification why. If it stops working, we simply need to remove and re-add your email account from your device to get it working again, which I can help you with. I will go over more about what to expect in the final information session (more below).

There will be a final information session with the IS&T exchange team doing the migration on Friday, December 9 @ 10:00AM-10:30AM. They walk us through the process, and answer any questions you may have. This will be similar to the introductory meeting we had on Oct 18. I will send an Outlook invitation with Zoom details enclosed. The session will be recorded, but I would encourage you to attend if you are able to do so.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

Monday, Nov 14, 2022

We are continuing forward on the path to migrate users to Office 365. We need to know if any of you collaborate closely with members of the DUSP community. Specifically, we are interested to know if:

1. You frequently view a DUSP member’s Outlook calendar (for example, to schedule meetings); or if

2. A DUSP member frequently views your Outlook calendar (for example, to schedule meetings); or if

3. You have delegation set up so that someone in DUSP can view your email and respond on your behalf; or if

4. You are a delegate for someone in DUSP and can view their email and respond to emails on their behalf.

Once your account is migrated to o365, you will not be able to view a DUSP user's calendar, and vice-versa, until that DUSP user’s account is migrated to o365. As a result, we are attempting to identify any CRE/DUSP users who will be affected by this change so we can mitigate them in tandem with CRE, or otherwise mitigate any potential disruption to the maximum extent possible.

If you are a former CRE member, your account will be migrated during this process with current CRE members.

Why are we doing this migration?

There are several reasons we need to migrate, and several benefits for CRE gained. These are discussed in this initial information session video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBy7nvel65E and will be discussed again at the Dec 9 training/information session.

The quick answer is: Most user account mailboxes are hosted on a physical server at MIT somewhere. This is difficult to upgrade, difficult to secure, and expensive to maintain. The software MIT is using is also nearly a decade old. MIT is migrating email accounts to Microsoft’s cloud called “Office 365”, which means that security, upgrades, and maintenance become Microsoft’s problem instead of MIT’s, and consequently, it will be easier and cheaper to maintain. There are additional benefits for us, including the ability to use features like Calendly, web-publishing of calendars, send later, and other features which make collaboration easier. This is also a necessary precursor to getting the booking process for meeting rooms and equipment more streamlined and automated.

Can I have my account migrated at [specific] time?

Not exactly. Migration a process that is performed by IS&T – there is nothing that I do, rather, IS&T schedules a time for each account to begin migration. At your scheduled time, a script is initiated by IS&T to migrate your account over. This usually takes several minutes to a few hours to complete. Because we’re unable to identify how long it will take or what time it will finish, it is not beneficial to schedule the migration at a specific time, because the completion time is unknown.

Once the migration is complete, your email may have problems connecting, in which case I can help you reconnect it. Instructions are available for people to reconnect accounts on their own, but many people may have difficulty with it, which is why I am making myself available during these times to help.  The IS&T service desk is also available to help you.

Do I need to be in your office/physically present during the migration?

No. The migration is a script that moves your emails from MIT’s servers to Microsoft’s servers. The script runs at the scheduled time you have been assigned. Once the migration is complete (which could take several minutes to a few hours), your email may stop working, in which case you will need to reconnect your account. I can help you reconnect your account if you are on-campus, but reconnecting your account remotely may be more difficult, especially for devices like smartphones and tablets where screensharing is not as easy to perform.

Is there a way I can access my email in an emergency if I'm unable to contact support after the migration?

Yes. Go to https://outlook.com and sign in using your @mit.edu email address. You should see all of your email from your account in there.

What if I have more questions?

Please contact me. You are also encouraged to attend the Zoom Office 365 Migration Information Session on December 9 @ 10:00 AM. IS&T will be present during the meeting to answer any questions you have. The meeting URL is https://mit.zoom.us/j/97797236870.