Faculty/Staff Mailbox Migration to Microsoft 365
During Spring 2023, OIT will migrate faculty and staff email accounts that currently reside on our on-premises Exchange servers to Microsoft 365's Exchange Online. This migration will provide easier configuration options for email clients, better security, and more mailbox storage capacity. These migrations will be done in phases and in collaboration with departments across campus to ensure minimal service interruptions.
What to Expect
The migration of on-premises mailboxes will be done in stages. The process will be as follows:
- You will receive an email ten days before your migration date. This email will provide you with details on any action you will need to take during this process. There will be no interruption to email service.
- All of your emails located in your mailbox, including any folders you have created, will be migrated in their entirety. Your mailbox will look and function as it always has.
- OIT is working to ensure that all departmental or otherwise "shared" mailboxes will be migrated at the same time as that department/group's individual mailboxes to prevent any interruption of service.
- After your migration is complete, sign out and back into your desk telephone using the new authentication method to ensure that all of your phone’s features work properly.
- No changes will be made to email addresses during this process.
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You will receive another reminder email with any additional information the day before your mailbox migration.
What will be different?
There are two main differences that you may notice once your account is migrated:
- Faculty and Staff accounts will upgrade to include a 50GB email quota with another increase to 100GB later this spring.
- If you currently use webmail.smu.edu, you'll need to use the Microsoft 365 address instead.
Migration Timeline
The phased migration process will begin in January of 2023 and is scheduled to be completed in early June. Additional details will be made available by the middle of January with the migration timeline.
Frequently Asked Questions
When you sign in to Outlook or M365 to access your email, best practice is to sign in using your @smu.edu email address in lieu of the school specific email (ie. @cox.smu.edu). Your school specific email is still active as an alias to your email inbox.
The Office of Information Technology is working diligently to migrate users at the same time who have accounts that share calendars and mailboxes. Should the dates for your migration not match the dates for a user or resource that is shared with you, or if there are issues post-migration, please reach out to the Help Desk at 214-768-4357.
Departmental accounts can be configured using your personal SMU credentials to sign in to the account. More information on accessing a departmental inbox can be located here: https://www.smu.edu/OIT/Services/Email/Departmental
Note: Access to departmental emails accounts on iOS and Android devices is not an available option using applications. Please contact the IT Help Desk if you need any assistance with configuring Outlook or Webmail for departmental account access on Windows or macOS.
Your recording and greetings will remain the same post- migration. You will still receive voicemails to the departmental email. Currently, after the migration is complete you may be unable to update your departmental greetings. This issue is under investigation by Microsoft. In the meantime, make sure you make any desired changes to your departmental voicemail before your migration takes place. Telephone management of voicemail will no longer be available.
Our mail encryption service will still function as usual when adding [smuencrypt] to the subject line of your message. Permissions required to use encryption system.
With the migration to Microsoft Online storage for emails, you will receive an increase in space for your mailbox. Users that are currently at or near the previous maximums should reference the OIT Knowledge Base article to begin archiving emails for offline storage. Archiving your emails to local storage keeps your emails available for search within Outlook, while clearing space for your mailbox storage.
Mozilla Thunderbird with the most recent Owl add-on is our recommended email client for Linux devices. If you are currently using Thunderbird, ensure that the Owl add-on is up-to-date.
Users that have already utilized their mobile device to access email with Modern Authentication should not see any impact to their mobile app.
Users that have not configured their device to connect to their SMU email can do so with Outlook for both iOS and Android. Link: https://www.smu.edu/OIT/Services/Email
When launching Outlook for macOS after the migration you receive a prompt to allow the server to update the connection settings, select the check mark “Always use my response for this server” and then click Allow.
Your voicemail greeting will remain intact and will migrate with the rest of your mailbox. Currently, after the migration is complete you may be unable to update your voicemail greetings. This issue is under investigation by Microsoft. In the meantime, make sure you make any desired changes to your voicemail before your migration takes place. Telephone management of voicemail will no longer be available.