User focused email archive migrations
So far, we’ve considered the Security & Compliance implications of email archive migrations, along with the Financial benefits, but you won’t fully realise the overall benefits of your migration until your users are up and running in Microsoft 365. In this blog we look at the reasons why it’s important to deliver an excellent user experience as you migrate to Microsoft 365.
Why should I focus on the user?
In order to do their job, your users expect to be able to locate and retrieve their email and email archives quickly and easily. This expectation is the same after you migrate the business to Microsoft 365. Just imagine how frustrated your users will be if they can’t locate their emails either during or post migration, or they access a shortcut which fails to retrieve the message. It could jeopardise the whole success of the migration and create new business risks for efficiency and compliance.
Often, a core reason to migrate is to reduce operational costs of maintaining a legacy email archive. This cost saving will not be realised if your operational costs increase as a result of inefficient working and higher demand on support services to resolve issues.
To deliver a successful migration outcome, you need to carefully plan the process with your users in mind to ensure they are fully informed about the migration and any potential impact on their working lives. Successfully enabling users in Microsoft 365 also allows you to exploit the constantly growing range of free or add-on capabilities which best suit your business and users’ needs.
What’s the main challenge in delivering an excellent user experience during the migration?
A huge challenge in ensuring a seamless user experience is in correctly handling mailbox shortcuts during the migration. The use of ‘stubs’ or shortcuts to access the content of archived emails is commonplace. In fact, many vendors work hard to make their shortcuts ‘look and feel’ like regular emails, which means users will delete, folder, re-folder, forward, and even put shortcuts into PST files, just as they would regular emails. Herein lies a problem, as very few legacy archives are able to keep an accurate track of what happens to mailbox shortcuts after they have been created. This means that many migrations are driven by the contents of an archive database alone, and do not take into consideration the contents of users’ mailboxes, which can result in very unhappy users’ post-migration.
How we can help!
Here at bluesource we’ve partnered with TransVault to deliver user-focused migrations. Advanced shortcut handing and status preservation by TransVault’s Migrator tool ensures email archives remain seamlessly accessible to users post migration, vastly improving message fidelity, end user satisfaction and business continuity.
If you’re considering moving your email archives to the Cloud, contact us today. We will be happy to discuss your business requirements and design a Managed Migration Solution that meets your needs – enabling you to quickly get your users successfully working in Microsoft 365.
Learn more about our Email & Email Archive Migration service