Lotus Notes to Exchange Migration with Office 2007
Exchange: Status
November 7, 2008
The migration is now done. We have migrated every faculty & staff department to Exchange. We now have over 4830 user accounts on Exchange. We are still migrating stragglers who have not activated their MIDAS accounts yet, but the main phase of the migration is done. On November 10th we plan on shutting down access to the old staff Lotus Notes server Ruby, which hosted admnotes.odu.edu. And on November 17th we will be shutting down access to Pearl, which hosted fsnotes.odu.edu. We are now working on resolving some of the ongoing bugs and providing improvements to the messaging service.
September 8, 2008
We now have over 1800 users on Exchange. We have also turned on the automatic archiving system, and now have nearly 200 Gigabytes worth of data in the archive. We have also recently updated the migration schedule. If things proceed as scheduled, all faculty and staff will be migrated from Lotus Notes to Exchange by the end of the first week in November.
August 27, 2008
"We now have over 1600 users on Exchange. We have enabled automatic archiving for OCCS staff, and soon we will be turning on automatic archiving for all Exchange accounts. Our offices are buzzing with excitement now that the Fall semester has begun, and all new Faculty & Staff email accounts are being created on the Exchange email system. The migration has been going so well that we are looking to speed up the pace and condense the remaining migration schedule, which we will be posting on the Schedule page soon."
July 24, 2008
The migration continues. Over 750 people are now on Exchange. The Archive and Retention standard was approved by ITAC, please see the Archive and Retention tab on this site for more information. Also, users have expressed concern about the format of the GAL (Global Address List or, in Notes terminology, the addressbook). It currently displays "first name middle initial last name" making it difficult to find a name without using the advanced features. This is further complicated by the fact that not everyone actually goes by their given first name. On Sunday, the GAL will be modified to be in the format of Last Name, First Name MI.
July 11
The migration to Exchange is underway. Over 400 people are currently using Exchange. To check the migration date for your office, please click on the Schedule Link. Training is also in progress and you can view those dates, as well as review what is available through online training and see other documentation, at the Training page.
Remember that if you are running Windows XP, you will have the Office 2007 pushed to your desktop prior to the Exchange migration (see the Office related links.) Those of you with older machines running operating systems such as Windows 2000 or prior versions, will be using Outlook Web Access to view your mail. Your department's Shared Email and Shared Calendars will be migrated along with your department's rollout.
June 10
Email routing is now working.and we're now working on coexistence. This is the part that will allow the university to work together while some users are on Notes and others have already been moved to Exchange. Free-busy information (checking calendars) between the two systems has been tested, though there is a bug when scheduling a meeting with only one user and that user is on the different platform. Installing the certs (security certifications) was a challenge, but that is working now. The Quest migration system has been installed and we've begun moving users to Exchange, albeit one at a time. Our next test will be using the migrator tool on groups in preparation for moving departments at a time.
We're also working on the Training and Rollout schedules. The timing, specifically taking into consideration some of the more hectic times of the year such as Year-End and Beginning of Fall Semester, demands that we work closely with the departments to schedule their rollout. We hope to confirm the last few dates in the next few days and post the Schedules by the end of this week.
June 4
Mail routing between Exchange and Notes, Notes and Exchange, Exchange and the Internet and the Internet and Exchange are all functional.
May 28
SOW for Enterprise Vault signed.
May 20
Exchange installed.
May 6
Announcement to the University sent, website established. Found that a separate SQL server was required for archiving and retention. Switch for failover arrived. We're currently building the cluster and beginning to install Exchange software.
April 22
OS installed on all servers. Investigating clustering options, distribution of mailbox, some modifications to server allocations
April 8
Exchange Consultant kick-off meeting - work to start April 14th
Hardware Installed
April 1
Active Directory Review Completed
March 27
Begin to investigate Sharepoint capabilities
March 24
Initial meeting for Archive and Retention Committee
March 20
Attendance at UVA's Lessons Learned for Microsoft Exchange Rollout showed that Office 2007, previously scheduled for fall deployment should precede the Exchange deployment.
March 1
Ordered hardware, software. Issued SOW for Exchange consultants; staff training.
February 13
Project funding approved.