Office 365, personal domain, free vs office 365 mailboxes.

[Jurasik]

Hi.

We have just received the `upgrade your business email' from BT. Upon Logging in & going to to upgrade page I see two options:

1. Manage your mailboxes on a personal domain, with the following text underneath: "If you've got a personal domain, you can't have a combination of free mailboxes and Office 365 mailboxes on that one domain. Make sure they're all the same type by upgrading or regrading your licences."

2. Password Security & "We take your security seriously. So we need you to update these passwords so
they're in line with our password policy."

With respect to point 1: We have our own domain name & a mix of Pop3 & organise & share accounts/licences. The text appears to state that this is now no longer possible & we have to have all our accounts either pop or full office 365.

This is not acceptable, as 3 of the licences (the organise & share ones) are so the users can access the emails on their mobile devices without getting into a mess with emails. We don't need the functionality of O&S on any of the other licences. If we have to upgrade all of our other licences to full 365, this could cost us another £1000 per year!

We do not wish to be forced into paying an additional amount for what is effectively the same service.

With respect to point 2: Can somebody point me in the direction of BT's password policy? I really don't relish having to go through all our licences to change every single password.

The email stated that our upgrade is due on 29/10/12. I take it that this is a deadline that we must upgrade by?

Can somebody from BT business email support please answer asap? I need to be recommending & implementing a course of action to our management before the deadline.

[DaveA]

Hi,

1. Unfortunately that's the way it is.  It's either all or nothing, at least as far as I'm aware.  If SteveC is about I'm sure he would be able to confirm or deny that.

2. As long as you have a capital letter and a number in your password then it'll pass the test.  Microsoft are actually more strict on their own version of the package, as they request a special character (e.g. an exclamation mark) as well.

Dave

[Jurasik]

I have also read in this forum that there is a possibility that email passwords may expire after 3 months. Can you confirm this?

[Stephenc]

Hi Jurasik,

Dave's pretty much spot on with the above answer.

1)  All licences on a domain need to be premium or light, the only other way round it is a tad complicated.  But you could, register another domain (doesn't matter what it is, your clients won't see it anyway).

Setup the number of premium users you need on the new domain, login to each user and select connected accounts in options, you can then link each user to a light account from your original domain name (the one you want to use) and they will effectively be exchange accounts whereas all other mailboxes will be pop accounts.

2)  You will need to change all the passwords to conform with the new policy.  I've not seen any lite users have to change their passwords periodically.  I still haven't seen a great deal of preimum users, but the ones I have seen haven't needed changing either.

As far as I am aware this is just required if you take the product from Microsoft direct.

Thanks,

Steve

[Stephenc]

Hi Jurasik,

I should have added, if you login to http://myoffice.bt.com click on manage services - email - click upgrade centre, you can change the date of migration usually by pushing this forward or backwards, it will happen at some point, it can't be delayed indefinately, but if you need more time, that would be an option.

Thanks,

Steve

[Jurasik]

Thanks for all of that steve. We are currently looking at using Gmail as a piggyback for the exchange users in Imap mode. That way we can change all licences to the lite version & be done with it.

[Jurasik]

Just another thought - will the office 365 lite support IMAP natively?  if so this will be a good step forward.

Also, those licences which are currently O&S - how will this work when we re(down)grade that to a lite account with regards to the emails currently stored on the exchange server? Will they be lost or will they migrate across to the lite account's storage?

[Stephenc]

Hi Jurasik,

No problem on the advice.

That would have been good, but unfortunately BT have decided to keep the lite accounts as pop users, without IMAP.

If you downgrade your O & S licences, teh emails will stay on the server, but you need to ensure that the mails on the server add upto less than 250Mb as this is the maximum storage limit for a lite user until it is upgraded.

Thanks,

Steve

[Jurasik]

Thanks steve.

Looks like Gmail imap access + mail fetcher for office 365 lite is the way to go.

Can you confirm if Gmail mail fetcher will work with MS office 365 lite? All my research appears to indicate that it will work with the pop settings for office 365 but I am not sure.

[Stephenc · Accepted solution]

Hi Jurasik,

Offhand I couldn't confirm 100%, but I can't imagine there would be a problem with it as long as you use the right settings, next time I come across a migrated account I'll give it a try, but I imagine it'll be fine.

You could always forward the mail to the gmail address if there is an issue with this anyway.

Thanks,

Steve