Steps to accomplish Tenant-to-Tenant Microsoft 365 Migration

When Office 365 was first released, companies were sceptical that tenants existed in shared services. These concerns discourage many organizations from fully adopting cloud technology. However, over time, these companies have come to trust and accept that the controls in place can segregate their tenants.

As your organization’s adoption of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 grows exponentially, you’ll also need to migrate and consolidate your tenants. To complicate matters, some companies have multiple accounts. Integration within your organization reduces costs and operational complexity.

Let’s take a glimpse at the process of SharePoint Online Tenant to Tenant Migration between two Microsoft 365 organizations. Businesses with more than 500 users or large amounts of SharePoint data should consider a Microsoft solution provider during migration.

1. Table of Contents

   Planning

Migrating Microsoft 365 is a major task with many technical processes and permanent impacts on your organization. The plan involves taking steps to meet all migration prerequisites and ensure that you have purchased all required third-party migration tool licenses.

2. Tenants preparation

Schedule the target tenant to receive the migrated mailboxes. Make sure you can accommodate your new mailbox. Create objects such as rooms, groups, users, and resources manually from the source tenant of the target tenant from the Microsoft 365 admin centre or through Azure Active Directory integration.

3. Informing Stakeholders

Notify everyone affected by the migration. The notification should include migration details such as Estimated time to complete, steps that must be taken after the process, how to notify all end users of service changes, and contacts for assistance.

4. Preparing the Domain and User Accounts

You need to merge the source Microsoft 365 tenant with the target tenant. To do this, add the source tenant to the destination Microsoft 365 admin centre and create a TXT record for DNS validation.

5. Source Tenant Preparation

You must remove the source tenant domain from Microsoft 365 to complete the migration. To do this, you need to reset your email address, public SharePoint Online site, and other related objects to your original domain.

6. Target Tenant Preparation

Check the account and domain transfer in the Target Domain Administration Centre. Also, configure the Azure directory for the new domain and assign mailbox-enabled licenses to users. Also, assign the old email address as the primary address.

7. Moving Objects to the New Accounts

All items, such as contacts and calendars, must be moved to your new account to complete the migration. Use the appropriate migration method (stepwise, cutover, or hybrid migration) depending on your Exchange Server and Microsoft 365 tenants.

8. Migration Day Actions

If you plan your Office 365 Migration Tenant to Tenant properly, there will be little activity on the migration date. This includes stopping email from the source tenant, configuring the domain move from the source tenant to the destination tenant, validating the domain, and continuing with the optimal migration method of your choice.

9. Post-Migration Clean-up Steps

You will need to clear the Outlook to autocomplete list (nickname cache) to resolve any issues you encounter. E.g., If the reply to the migrated email is not delivered successfully.

Conclusion:

The move from tenant to the tenant in Microsoft 365 is often the result of a merger, acquisition, or sale. Proper planning and a competent IT team are required to efficiently complete the migration and overcome the inherent challenges of the process.

If you don’t have O365 Migration knowledge or expertise, let Apps4Rent take care of it for you. They also specialize in Azure Desktop as a Service and make sure all your migration process is achieved.