Exchange Online is just one of the new services offered by Microsoft in the standard version of its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). Other services include SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online, Office Live Meeting, Exchange Hosted Filtering, and Customer Management Dynamics CRM Online. If your organization is looking to migrate its existing Exchange 2000, 2003, or 2007 messaging services to Microsoft Online they can continue to use or co-exist with the existing Exchange environment while migrating to Microsoft Online Services. MSONLINE also allows for permanent co-existence with internally hosted Exchange environments providing for some of your organizations users to utilize MSONLINE and others to remain in the internal Exchange deployment.
Few companies can migrate their messaging services overnight. Thus co-existence will need to be established for either the short or long term. In this first part of a three part series I will provide you instruction in how to add your organizations domain to Microsoft Online Services.
In part two we will discuss "Establishing Email Flow" and in part three "Enabling Directory Synchronization". Later topics will include migration to Exchange Online.
Once you have established a subscription with Microsoft Online Services found at https://mocp.microsoftonline.com/Site/Default.aspx you can begin the process to set up co-existence with Exchange Online Services.
E-mail coexistence will enable the users with mailboxes in your internal Exchange Server environment and users with Exchange Online mailboxes to see one another in the Global Address List (GAL), and to send, receive, and reply to e-mail regardless of which system is home to their mailbox.
Adding the Exchange Domain to Microsoft Online Services
Your existing Exchange Organization will already have a registered Internet domain. To establish the first part of co-existence you will need to do two things.
- Add the domain to Microsoft Online Services.
- Verify ownership of the domain.
To add the domain to Microsoft Online Services
Sign in to the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center using your administrator user name and password at https://admin.microsoftonline.com/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fDefault.aspx .
- Go to the "Users Tab" and select "Domains" pane
- Select "New" under "All Domains" from the right side of the screen.
- In the Name field of the "Add new domain Wizard", type the domain name. In this example we are using "oswegohomesil.net"
- As this will be for co-existence select External Relay
- Click Create
- On the Confirmation page select Finish.
You will now need to verify the domain name before you can add users or send and receive email
To verify ownership of the domain
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Go to the "Users tab", click Domains, and then in the Status column next to the domain in the Domains pane, click Verify now.
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You will now be presented with the following dialogue box
- In the "Verify Your Domain Wizard" you will be presented with a CNAME record that you will need to add to your registrar's Web portal. In this instance I have previously registered the oswegohomesil.net with Godaddy.com.
- Based on the CNAME record presented I have added the following to the Godaddy.com registrar. From here I would suggest that you hit cancel on the "Verify Your Domain" wizard" as it will take at least 15 minutes to 48 hours before the domain can be verified. Using "Go Daddy" I have seen this take from 20 minutes to 2 hours.
- After at least 15 minutes, sign in to the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center again, using the Administrator user name and password.
- Go to the "Users tab", click Domains, and then in the Status column next to the domain in the Domains pane, click Verify now. Success will result in the following dialogue box.
- Click Finish.
- You will now see that the domain has been "Verified" in the Status column.
If the verification fails, it is most likely due to the fact that the changes made to the domain registrar need more time to propagate throughout the Internet. Cancel the Verify Domain Wizard and come back to verify the domain at a later time. If it has been more than 48 hours since the changes to the domain registrar, log into the domain registrar, and verify that you entered the CNAME information correctly.
In part two of this three part series, we will discuss "Establishing Email Flow" and the testing of email flow between the Microsoft Online email account and the internal Exchange infrastructure.
Forrest McDuffie
Senior Consultant
Project Leadership Associates
