Educause Coffee Shop: Office 365 discussion

Presenters:

Dwight Snethen, Purdue

Brian Rust, University of Wisconsin Madison

Beth Goezler Lyons, Cornell

Paul Reeves, GSU (moderator)

Notes:

Going to talk about Office 365 and strategies for communicating.

Dwight @ Purdue: We are in early stages of planning for student email migration. Where did your rollout begin and how far are you?

Brian @ UW: We started in 2011. Campus efficiency report recommended we move to common email and calendar system. We had over 50 systems in use on main campus. After selecting Office 365, we started with a pilot in mid-2012. About 71% now converted – includes all faculty, staff and students.

Beth @ Cornell: Fully in Office 365. We did our migration in 2012. Been turning on the rest of Office 365 this year. This means whatever Microsoft delivers. Yammer, OneDrive – the whole suite.

Brian @ UW: We only rolled out mail and calendar. The other components still need work connecting with Shibboleth directory.

Dwight @ Purdue: When you rolled it out, what products did you offer and now offer?

Brian @ UW: We started with email and calendar as one combined product because those were the two fundamental issues for improvement. We’ve just chosen to disable other products. Does cause problems when Microsoft announces new products. We follow up and explain what we’re providing to audiences and what Microsoft is providing and why they should wait to use tool until we implement them.

Beth @ Cornell: Did something similar. Started with Exchange system. We decided we didn’t know enough about rest of suite. In 2014, began turning on other services, like Sharepoint, because of demand. Went with Office Suite as one of the first ones. On our campus, email and calendar is only used by faculty and staff. Students are on Google apps.

Dwight @ Purdue: What can students, faculty and staff access through Office 365?

Brian @ UW: Just mail and calendar.

Paul @ GSU: Anyone experienced issue with students and faculty and staff using different platforms?

Melanie @ UTEP: We’ve been on separate systems for 7 years. Faculty use Exchange. Students use Microsoft. Two complaints – can’t share calendars between them. Global directory in Exchange is not available to students. But those are only major problems.

Sherry @ LSU: We’ve had separate systems for 9-10 years. Moving students to Office 365 this fall. Faculty and staff have been on it a while. Just doing it so students can access more Office 365 resources.

Paul @ GSU: We’re rolling out applications, not email portion of Office 365. Had a few hiccups.

Brian @ UW: We’ve had some challenges with using Shibboleth with some of the other tools Microsoft offers. Technical staff has been working with them.

Sherry @ LSU: Another issue -- Microsoft not admitting to bugs from time to time.

John @ Marshall: Issue with authentication. Students have Office 365, Faculty have Exchange. Sometimes, there’s confusion about whether to use username or full email address. Hoping to simplify.

Paul @ GSU: Our focus with communications is how do we promote and communicate migrations? How do we translate into end-user vocabulary and get buy-in?

Brian @ UW: Our department transitioned first, then we used that as example as we rolled it out to other departments. Started with most enthusiastic. Did it department by department. Moved all the students at once over holiday break. Students notified in batches they could move themselves by a certain date. If they didn’t they were moved.

Provided training and online help, as well as face-to-face assistance for departments.

Sherry @ LSU: We always marketed it as an improvement. Included the highlights and benefits. Faculty like having bigger mailbox and mobile app. Put a positive spin on it.

Beth @ Cornell: Worked with IT leaders in each department. We went to their meetings. Microsoft had offered to do automated messaging – did not use that aspect of it.

Allison @ Univ of N. Fla: Just migrated students. Faculty and staff are on Exchange. Offered early migration to students and anyone who migrated early went into drawing for xBox. Toted the benefits. Also promoted that you can download it on five devices.

Dwight @ Purdue: Did any of the products in the suite replace anything you had already? We’re you able to get rid of existing systems?

Ian @ Univ of Toronto: Number of areas looking at using OneDrive. Does it map drives?

Allison @ Univ of N. Fla: We are doing that at University of N. Fla. If a student goes into a lab, and logs into the OneDrive, it does map.

Paul @ GSU: At GSU, still using Google Drive, and using something from Indiana University called Kumo to map drives.

Melanie @ UTEP: Use OneDrive – when students log into One Drive, it automatically shows up as the place to save stuff.

Jen @ Penn State: Microsoft offering free stuff and students wanting to jump on before it’s adopted?

Brian @ UW: We’ve found that thing that works best is to repeatedly make it clear that more is coming and they can choose to supplement what they are using through a boxed version or some other version, but it’s not the same as we’re offering and won’t be compatible with what we released in future.

Carlyn @ Rice: Able to configure tenant and not move people before we’re ready?

Mike @ Denver: Yes. Able to set tenant before migration. Anyone who tried to register got message asking to contact IT department. Had about 50 slide in under wire, but contacted them after migration.

Melanie @ UTEP: Some wanted to check it out before we pushed the button. Explained it was not part of UTEP.

Carlyn @ Rice: Have poster child or key stakeholder to promote services?

Brian @ UW: We did at Madison. Our division went first so we could say we did it collectively and here is what we learned. Talked about how easy it was. Also had chancellor and provost migrate. Chancellor said it would be for greater good of campus. It will be easy, I’ve done it, you can do it too.

Rurik @ Colby College: Any luck stopping leakage into DropBox and directing users back to OneDrive?

Beth @ Cornell: We haven’t been successful in stopping it. Trying to increase awareness of services we offer. There’s a lot of choice.

Melanie @ UTEP: We tell faculty and staff DropBox is not secure and OneDrive is more secure. Students are sharing stuff that’s more personal. Faculty and staff could have sensitive info about students. Cannot guarantee protection of stuff if you don’t put it in OneDrive.

Jen @ Penn: Any experience deprovisioning accounts or taking accounts down?

Mike @ Denver: Just started doing soft-rollouts. For faculty and staff we simplified it – let them know that they will no longer have access once they leave. Blame Microsoft.

Question: Can they convert to personal account?

Brian @ UW: We don’t offer that at UW

Melanie @ UTEP : When students leave, they lose rights to log in to services.

Beth @ Cornell : We do point people to Microsoft’s free version.

Paul @ GSU: Publicity campaigns for Office 365?

Brian @ UW: Started with outlining communication plan, focused on high level content – who were audiences, channels used to communicate, what to share with people as process rolled out. Have a communications subteam that meets weekly to talk about issues. Publish an e-newsletter to core audiences every other week. Training teams have one-to-one meetings with departments as the roll out happens. No print materials, no contests. Just something “we’re all going go through together” mentality.

Carlyn @ Rice: Any Microsoft haters?

Brian @ UW: Just explain that our requirements could not be met by Google or other providers. Just say we have a contract with them. To a large extent, it’s a matter of – “you have to get over it.”

Paul @ GSU: Channels using to get word out about Office 365?

Melanie @ UTEP: We have done surveys – students don’t want emails. We put a wallpaper on all lab computers. We have meetings with managers. Landing page in Internet Explorer. Had Microsoft come in during an open house.

Paul @ GSU: In Student Portal, we have used a page to alert them.

Melanie @ UTEP: We put little ads and link it to page that has info about service. academic technology.

Mike @ Denver: Leveraged distributed IT folks heavily. Included it any communication to them.

Brian @ UW: We do same thing. We communicate with “tech partners” in community first and foremost.

Beth @ Cornell: We also have a weekly IT newsletter that goes out. In middle of migration, we had an open conference bridge for IT to discuss problems and what we were doing. Every day during the migration, for the three months it took to get through entire campus.

Also involved executive administrative assistants heavily in migration. They became experts in the calendar. Became a second level of advocates for calendars.

Paul @ GSU: Set up a heads up group. Group that is our IT directors and assistant directors, send out things that are technical as well as heads up items. Use that channel extensively.

Carlyn @ Rice: Anyone gone Google and then gone Office 365?

Paul @ GSU: GSU is in the midst of it.

Supplemental Notes:

Ideas for Communicating and Promoting O365

Educause IT Communications CG Coffee Shop

June 2, 2015

Guests:

Dwight Snethen (questions)

Director, Communications and IT Service Management

ITaP Customer Relations

Purdue University

Brian Rust

Communications Director

Division of Information Technology

University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM)

Beth Goelzer Lyons

Manager, IT Communication & Knowledge Management

Cornell University

Resources:

University of Wisconsin-Madison Migration site: http://www.365transition.wisc.edu/

Notes:

When did your roll out of O365 begin and how far along are you?

· Brian and UWM began the process in 2011 with the pilot beginning in mid-2012

· Now 71% of the campus is converted

· The roll out is for faculty, staff, and students

· Only rolled out mail and calendar, not the other O365 applications

· Other components still need work in terms of connecting with their Shib directory

· Beth and Cornell started in 2012

· Additional apps including SharePoint, Microsoft Office suite, oneDrive, Yammer have also been rolled out

When you started with O365 what products did you roll out as part of your offering?

· UMW started as email and calendar as one combined product because they were the main issue for efficiency on campus

· UMW chose to disable the other tools

· It has caused problems for UMW when Microsoft has announced a free versions of something or something new

· UMW follows up immediately to explain to their audiences what Microsoft is providing, what they’re providing, and why their users should wait to adopt until it is offered by the institution

· Cornell rolled it out in the same way

· Moved from Exchange as email only at first because in 2012 the additional applications weren’t mature enough

· Started turning on additional applications in 2014

· The applications enabled them to change their license with Microsoft, get better value for dollar

· Email and calendar is only for faculty and staff at Cornell

· Students are on Google apps

How do we promote this migration? How do you translate the needs and benefits to the end user language? (Including examples of what other universities did)

· Rolling things out to students not, faculty and staff, some challenges there.

· One example is that an IT division has 700 people, so all of those employees moved first. They then used this as a test case/example as we went out to all the other departments

· Another example is that one university moved all the students at once on the holiday break

· Students were notified in batches that they had 2 weeks to move themselves, and if they didn’t move themselves, the University would move them

· Provided online help, training, documentation, and face-to-face assistance for departments that had people embedded

· Students weren’t a problem to move; many of them were fine with it

· Many places approached communications around O365 as marketing it as an improvement

· At one University, Microsoft offered to do messaging, but the institution opted not to go in this direction because they didn’t have as much control this way.

· An example of a comm plan we starting the first communication three weeks out then following up in a series of steps including the day before migration and the day after migration. They shared resources throughout the process.

· Another example is that one college offered early migration for students. Any student who migrated early, went into a drawing for an Xbox.

· Students really like the ability to download the office suite client on up to 5 devices.

· Similarly, another organization communicated out a month before, a week before, and a day before, emphasizing all of the fun stuff (applications) users would get.

· Univ of North Florida created and executed a big comm plan - included incentives for early migration, email messages, face to face events, meeting with student government, social media, posted notices on our portal, etc.

· At UGA they promote Office 365 heavily at freshman orientation, not only to students, but to parents. They love the free software aspect.

· Several organizations had success with the college newspaper and promoting there

Did any of the product suite replace anything you had in particular, for example, OneDrive storage?

· Some said yes; decommissioned storage servers after they moved to OneDrive

· There was discussion around mapping lab storage to OneDrive. This link was shared: https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/download/

Any security concerns about Microsoft hosting data?

· No, it’s all in the SLA.

Some faculty/staff/students want to jump onto O365 products before they are rolled out by the university. How have you encouraged them to wait until you deliver it at an enterprise level or helped them understand why they can’t do it early?

· Things that have worked best: make it clear to fac, staff, students, that more applications are coming,

· Indicate that they can choose to supplement what they’re using with Microsoft, even through the college’s tech store

· Letting them know that what they get on their own will not be compatible

· Always just saying it over and over again. It’s a tough position to be in.

· Many places were able to configure their tenants so that it people with an @____.edu email couldn’t sign up until the campus rolled it out.

Have you used or created “poster children” or use case examples to help promote the migration?

· Some places created post children of people who liked it and said it was easy.

· At one institution the Chancellor and Provost moved over and they shared their migration and why they were doing it.

· They were then able to say that their administrators did it, everyone else should, too

How do you deal with the Microsoft haters?

· Some places explain the RFP, there were certain requirements that had to be met and Microsoft met them best.

· Communicate that they have a contract with them and it exists for a reason.

· At the end of the day they say (in different words), they have to get over it.

· Some places said that they had surprisingly few of these conversations

What channels did you use to communicate about the migration?

· Email is the number one

· Wallpaper on all of our lab computers

· Use distributed IT folks to help communicate the message across campus.

· Called the distributed IT people Tech Partners or Migration {artners. They are the individuals who are support people in all of the departments; we would communicate out to them first (you can find these on the UMW transition site).

· One organization had an open IT bridge during the migration for feedback (every day for three months), high resources but they found it very valuable.

· Executive Administrative assistants—involve them heavily. They became experts in the calendar. They really appreciated it, too. Second level of advocates.

· UMW did newsletters (the content can be found on the migration site)

· These newsletters included content like who has just moved, who is moving next, training opps, tips and features, testimonials

· UMW spun up a specific migration website (URL is in resources at top of notes)

· Comm sub team; they meet weekly

· They have a newsletter every two weeks

Additional conversation notes:

· For OneDrive, organizations are trying to share what the university service offers, especially working with researchers because of the added security (to keep them off Dropbox, but this approach is not working as well with other audiences. Main approach is trying to “scare them” out of it.

· Denver U right in the middle of working on deprovisioning. The whole process gave them 290 days of access before losing it. They will be able to retain email for life. For staff, on the day that they are not employed by the University they loose access

· One of main complaints is that you can share calendars in Exchange

· One challenge that is being faced is that they need to have two different UPNs for people using it for student mail and personal mail.

Additional Questions/Answers from the Chat Pod

Rurik @ Colby: Beth, why did you go to Office365 insread of move fac/staff to Gmail? Beth Lyons: Google has not yet been able to meet Cornell's legal counsel requirements

Rurik @ Colby: All presenters: do you use external authentication providers like Shibboleth/Okta/etc?

Beth Lyons: Cornell uses ADFS for Office 365

Brian Rust: UW uses Shib.

Steve M: Is anyone looking for implementation partners for O365?

Jeff Choo - William James College: Microsoft is very slow in responding reported issues - best to go thru a 3rd party implementation provider

Jeff Choo - William James College: we have good experience with OculusIT

Rice U 2: Did you say how many months it took from pilot to full campus implementation?

Brian Rust: UW isn't finished yet. Pilot in mid 2012, and we're planning to be "done" this Fall

Jon@Marshall: Please share any info on OneDrive mapping for computer labs

Mike @ Denver U: I'd love to learn more about mapping the drives, as well.

Alison Cruess - Univ of North Florida: acruess@unf.edu at UNiversity of North Fla (mapping OneDrive in labs) - pls send me an email and I will put you in touch with technical lead

Andrew Connell: OneDrive for Business (https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/download/)?

Jennifer @ Penn State: Another question- how has everyone handled the deprovisioning of accounts? Moving something from enterprise to personal accounts when someone leaves the University?

Kelsey @ Uni. of Oregon: We second Jennifer's question! Would love to hear more information on that

Amber McCoy: I don't believe you can actually convert from business to personal...same as converting personal to business

Mike @ Denver U: I don't *believe* it is an option to convert from business to personal

Amber McCoy: Governance & leadership seems to fix the issues when individuals are not on board.

Additional Questions that Were Asked in Chat

· QUESTION: Does anyone have any insight on utilizing Sharegate for transferring old SharePoint to the new O365?

· How do others handle compromised accounts & office 365? For example, when an account is compromised at the UO, we disable the user's email, network access, and other resources. We are talking about disabling Office 365 resources as well due to data being stored in OneDrive.

· Have you all delivered the system locked down (not allowing outside of your domain sharing and collaboration? Are the apps and add-ons allowed?

· I am being asked by administration to look at Google. I was wondering if anyone knew of some tools and or websites that can help in deciding which application is best and how to communicate that?

· Has anyone gone Google and then gone Office 365?