With the release of Office 365 beta, Microsoft has provided a wizard to assist customer to implement Office 365 scenarios.
The wizard will provide step by step for Office 365 implementation based on scenario defined by the administrator.
Connect to the Office 365 administration portal (https://portal.microsoftonline.com/) and logon with administrative account
Once the home page has been loaded, click on the Admin link available at the top of the window (if you don’t have it, you’re not logged on with an administrative account)
Click on Custom Plan available on the left menu, below Setup section
Follow the wizard:
- 2 start options: Pilot or Deployment. It’s pretty clear to understand the objective of both options
. Let’s start with Pilot
- choose Online Service to enabled
- define your existing messaging solution (from no messaging solution to On Premises Exchange 2010); note: if you want to evaluate Office 365 without impacting your existing messaging platform, choose We don’t have email or I don’t want to use my existing environment for this plan – off course, this option should not be used if you have chosen Deployment option at the beginning
Next step depends on the choice of existing messaging solution:
- On Premise Exchange 2003 or later will provide option to define coexistence (simple or rich), and then goes to define Users and Credentials
- Hosted Exchange, IMAP or Exchange 2000 or earlier / Internet email (POP) / Other options is going directly to define Users and Credentials
Options available at the Users and Credentials depend also of your choice at the existing messaging step
In case of you choose Exchange 2003 or later you have only 2 options
- Single Sign On, which requires ADFS
- On Premise users with Online Service ID authentication, which requires only Directory Synchronization tool
You have finished with the wizard.
The wizard generates a plan with a steps by steps depending of your choice done during the wizard and you just have to follow this plan
Great, isn’t it?