The Office of Information Technology is continuing with the Microsoft O365 mailbox migration project. The project, announced in February, was briefly put on hold while the University transitioned to remote work.
“Faculty and staff are relying on email communication now more than ever before,” said Deputy CIO Mike Shelton. “We were very cognizant that we did not want to perform any action or change that could disrupt their email – which right now is their lifeline to campus.”
The College of Education was the last group to make the transition to the cloud in early March before the University entered limited business operations. OIT resumed the project this week by migrating the College of Engineering on May 6.
“We’re excited to pick the project back up with some huge momentum,” said Shelton. “We’ll be migrating the College of Engineering, the College of Arts & Sciences, and the College of Continuing Studies in May.”
To prepare for email migration, OIT encourages faculty and staff to upgrade Office software to the latest version, Office ProPlus. By upgrading Microsoft Office to ProPlus, users ensure real-time software updates from Microsoft. UA faculty and staff can log in to the Microsoft Office portal, portal.office.com, with their mybamausername@ua.edu email address and myBama password to download Microsoft Office ProPlus.
“Each faculty and staff member is licensed to install Office software on five different devices,” said Shelton. “We encourage faculty and staff to use this benefit on both personal and University-owned machines.”
OIT is working with IT partners across campus to schedule migrations for the summer months. Larger migrations, such as the College of Arts & Sciences, will extend over a few days.
The O365 mailbox migration schedule:
- College of Engineering – May 6
- College of Arts & Sciences – May 10-13
- College of Continuing Studies – May 18
- College of Communication and Information Sciences – June 8
Once a mailbox is migrated to the cloud, individuals will be prompted to log in to their account within the Outlook application. Mobile devices require some configuration; step-by-step video instructions are available on the OIT website.
Hosting email in the cloud offers benefits including business continuity, infrastructure cost savings, real-time updates without system downtime and email accessibility with an internet connection. Learn more about the O365 mailbox migration project on the OIT website.