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Following our upgrade of the Teams application last year, and as part of our ongoing Smart Working for the future approach, we are continuing with our planned move to the Microsoft M365 suite of applications.
The next phase of the roll out of M365 is to move our email provider from IBM Notes, which we currently use, to Microsoft Outlook.
At the same time, we will also upgrade our Microsoft Office package (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) to the latest online version of these tools.
Timeline
This transition began with a number of pilot groups and the wider migration will be on a phased basis, beginning next week. The schedule is as follows:
Service | Month |
|---|---|
Pilot Groups (Business & Digital Change and ICT) | Completed |
Digital Champions | Completed |
Education, People & Business | 21-Feb-23 to 28-Feb-23 |
Place, Neighbourhood & Corporate Assets | 02-Mar-23 to 08-Mar-23 |
CMT, SMT, SMT Support | 13-Mar-23 |
Health & Social Care Partnership | 13-Mar-23 to 20-Mar-23 |
Leisure & Culture Trust | 21-Mar-23 to 22-Mar-23 |
Shared Mailboxes | 23-Mar-23 to 02-Apr-23 |
Committee Admin | 03-Apr-23 |
Councillors | 04-Apr-23 |
Archive Mailboxes | 05-Apr-23 to 27-Apr-23 |
Action to Take
In preparation for the move to Microsoft Outlook, all corporate users will receive a ‘one week to go’ email from the Council’s M365 migration mailbox (M365migration@eastdunbarton.gov.uk).
This will be followed by four emails from the Migration Coordinator mailbox (migrationcoordinator@eastdunbarton.gov.uk) which must be actioned in advance of the migration. These emails are in relation to private folders and encrypted files in both the current and archive mail. The action is necessary to ensure that all files and folders are effectively migrated from Notes to Outlook.
To begin the migration process, employees will need to access each of these four migration emails and follow the instructions in them. Two emails will go into your current inbox and the other two will go into your archive inbox. These must be actioned for the migration process to be successful.
Please note that on your scheduled migration day, ONLY your current email mailbox will be migrated. The emails in your archive mailbox (email older than 90 days) should still be actioned, but the archive mailbox migration will take place in April (see schedule above). Employees who need to access their archive mailbox following migration to Outlook will need to do so through IBM Notes and access will be ‘read only’.
Support and FAQs
To support this transition, we have developed an online information portal called the M365 Adoption Hub [opens in a new window]. If you are prompted to sign in, please use your EDC email address and your network password (the one that changes every 28 days). The Adoption Hub will be the central place to go to for support and help for all M365 tools. It includes online guides and videos explaining how to make the most of the new tools coming our way and there is an FAQs section which will be continually updated.
We also have a network of Digital Champions to support this change and your team leader will share with you who your Digital Champion is. This information is also available on the M365 Adoption Hub.
Booking Meeting Rooms and Resources
Because we will be operating two email systems as we transition, we need to take a different approach to booking meeting rooms and resources such as pool cars so that these are not double booked through two different systems. The new approach will be to use Microsoft Teams, which is available to both IBM Notes and Outlook users. From Tuesday 21 February all meeting rooms and resources such as pool cars must be booked through Teams and further information on how to do this will be issued on Monday 20 February.
Finally
Please note that when users migrate from Notes to Microsoft Outlook, they will no longer be available on Sametime. We recommend you use Microsoft Teams to chat with your colleagues. It operates in a similar way and you can have chat groups with multiple members as well as one to one chats. We all have access to Teams and there is still an indication in Teams if someone is logged in and available in a similar way to Sametime.
If you have any questions prior to your migration to Outlook, please visit the FAQs section of the M365 Adoption Hub [opens in a new window] in the first instance (using your EDC email address and network password if prompted to sign in). Any further questions should be raised with your line manager.
Thank you
Ann Davie
Depute Chief Executive
