EdbMails software for BigRock to Office 365 migration

BigRock is one of India's leading domain registration and web hosting platforms, offering services such as Windows and Linux hosting, Wordpress hosting, DIY website builder, Sitelock, Cloud and VPS hosting, and email service. It is appropriate for small businesses and professionals, and their Advanced and Business plans offer unlimited email accounts with 5GB and 30GB mailbox storage, respectively. Another thing to note is that the email service from BigRock is part of the web hosting package and not a separate service. Many BigRock email users would like to retain their domain name with the web hosting but migrate all their emails to Office 365. Furthermore, users with Office 365 tenants hosted on BigRock would like to migrate to Microsoft's servers. Many users who are planning to migrate to Office 365 have their domain with BigRock and would like to benefit from a more robust email application for their communication needs. Given the complexities involved in transferring large amounts of data between cloud services, this appears to be a daunting task in the absence of guidance and support. EdbMails IMAP to Office 365 migration tool is a Microsoft partnered software that can help you migrate all your emails from BigRock to Office 365. In this article, we describe the pre and post-migration activities and the actual migration with the application.

1. How to plan migration from BigRock?

   Before you actually start with the operation, you need to have a proper plan and ensure that you are prepared for the migration. Here is a quick checklist of items for your convenience.

   1. Decide if you want to retain the same domain on BigRock or change to another hosting provider.
   2. Decide if you want to migrate your data all at once or in stages.
   3. Create a CSV file with a complete list of mailboxes to be migrated along with the user credentials.
   4. Verify if the CSV file format and user credentials are correct.
   5. Make a complete backup of all the mailboxes and export large attachments or files to your local drive.
   6. Remove unused and unnecessary mailboxes on the source.
   7. Inform the end users and stakeholders about the migration plan and the upcoming changes.
   8. Select an appropriate Office 365 licensing plan and assign licenses to user mailboxes.
   9. Perform a test migration to ensure everything works as expected.

2. Pre migration activities for BigRock to Office 365 migration

   1. Make sure you have admin access on the source and target server

      The admin account that has all the necessary permissions to migrate mailboxes on behalf of all the users in your organization. Also assign the Organization Management role group and impersonation rights to the admin user on Office 365.

   2. Create a list of users in a CSV file, which you want to migrate from BigRock.
   3. Find the name of your source email server from an email client
   4. Purchase a suitable Office 365 licensing plan. You can also sign up for a 30 day free trial and decide to go with a suitable one later. Compare Office 365 business plans and Compare Office 365 enterprise plans
   5. Create Office 365 mailboxes and assign licenses to them

        Add users and assign licenses to Office 365 users

        Assign Microsoft 365 licenses to user accounts

   6. If you plan to migrate your mailboxes to Office 365 Public folders, ensure that you create and configure the Public folder mailboxes on the target server.

       Create Office 365 Public folder and assign mailbox user

   7. Similarly, if you want to migrate mailboxes to Office 365 In-Place archive, enable them from the admin center.

       Steps to enable archive mailbox in Microsoft 365.

   8. If you have a custom email domain from the source which you want to retain and receive emails to, you must add and verify the domain on Office 365.

       Steps to add a custom domain to Office 365 and steps to add DNS records to connect your domain.

   9. Configure Office 365 to send and receive large messages.

       Follow the steps to increase the message size on Office 365 to 150MB. See message size limits on Office 365 for more information.

3. BigRock to Office 365 migration using Edbmails

   You can perform the migration with the following three methods.

   1. Migrate BigRock to Office 365 from the Exchange admin center (EAC)
   2. Migrate mailboxes directly to O365 with EdbMails IMAP migration

   BigRock supports the IMAP protocol for email access. As a result, you have two options: add your email account to Outlook, export the PST and migrate the PST file to Office 365, or use the IMAP server details to create a migration endpoint in the Exchange admin center. Another alternative is to use EdbMails, which is an automated tool to migrate your emails to O365.

   • Steps to migrate BigRock to Office 365 from EAC

     • Step 1: Create an Office 365 tenant account and assign licenses to user mailboxes
     • Step 2: Make sure you login to the source and account as global administrator
     • Step 3: Verify your BigRock domain by adding TXT record and TTL values
     • Step 4: Export list of user mailboxes from BigRock’s Control panel
     • Step 5: Also note down the IMAP server details of your BigRock email
     • Step 6: From the Microsoft admin center create migration endpoint
     • Step 7: Upload the CSV report from Step 4 and create a migration batch
     • Step 8: Start BigRock to Office 365 migration and allow for mail synchronization
     • Step 9: Add DNS records (MX records) to point to Microsoft's servers
     • Step 10: Stop email synchronization and delete the migration batch

     The disadvantage of the native migration method is that each step requires manual verification, which is not very intuitive. There is little help and support if any steps are incorrect or something does not work as expected. In addition, it necessitates extensive technical knowledge and is unsuitable for large data migrations.

   • Steps to migrate BigRock to Office 365 with EdbMails

     EdbMails IMAP migration can help you easily migrate your emails from BigRock to Office 365 without any manual work. It assigns impersonation rights for Office 365 automatically and can even map mailboxes. It has built-in filter options to help customize the migration workflow and supports secure modern OAuth 2.0 authentication for login.

     Download EdbMails and install the application on any computer that is connected to the source and target environment. You can also perform the migration operation by installing EdbMails on a non-Exchange computer.

       See a detailed list of EdbMails system requirements for IMAP migration.

     Launch the application and click ‘Login’ or ‘Start Your Free Trial’Login to the application (if you have purchased a license and already have the username and password). The free trial version allows you to migrate 30 items from every folder of the source account to the target.

     Select the migration method as ‘IMAP migration’ in the main window

     • Step 1: Connect to the BigRock server with the IMAP connection

       Get your BigRock account's IMAP connection details before you migrate, which is located in the BigRock Control Panel under DNS settings. After you've obtained them, fill out the details with the information shown.

       • HostName/IP Address: mail.yourdomainname.com (Example: abc.bigrock.in)
       • Port: 993 with SSL/TLS enabled (If you have SSL for your IMAP connection)
       • Email address and password associated with your account.

       

       If you want to migrate multiple mailboxes, select ‘Multiple (bulk) Users/Accounts Migration’. Download the sample CSV file from EdbMails and fill in the required details such as mailbox name, password, host name and port. Load the CSV file into the application and verify the list mailboxes to continue.

         See steps to connect to single and multiple users in EdbMails IMAP migration

       

     • Step 2: Select the mailboxes from BigRock to migrate to Office 365

       Following a successful connection, EdbMails loads all of your mailboxes, folders, and items, which you can access on the left side.

       • Select the mailboxes and folders to migrate.
       • Click ‘Migrate to Office 365’ to set up the connection with the target server.

           See tips to optimize IMAP migration to Exchange online

       

       Tip: If this is the first time you’re migrating with EdbMails, the migration is a full migration. On subsequent migrations from the same source to the target, the migration is incremental to prevent duplicate items.

       EdbMails provides the following additional options to help you customize the migration task.

       • Additional Include and Exclude Filter Options
       • Filter emails by Date: Migrate to Office 365 by applying the Date filter
       • Filter emails by Size: Exclude emails from migration larger than a specified size.

     • Step 3: Connect to target Office 365 as Global Admin User

       EdbMails supports both modern and classic authentication. Connect to the target server by selecting Auto or Manual registration for modern authentication and the connection method as Mailboxes, Public folder or Archive Mailbox. You can also connect to the mailboxes by loading a CSV file of users from the Office 365 tenant.

         Connect to Office 365 server using secure modern authentication

     • Step 4: Map the respective folders from the source to the target

       The mapping activity in EdbMails can automatically match and map the mailboxes and folders between BigRock and Office 365. This activity saves time when you’re migrating a large number of mailboxes.

     • Step 5: Start the migration from BigRock to Office 365 and verify the operation

       Start and monitor the migration operation after you complete the mailbox mapping. Finally, verify the count of migrated emails, folders and mailbox items with EdbMails text-based log report. You can also pause and resume the migration.

         If you require further assistance, contact EdbMails 24x7 support. Try the free trial version today to start the migration!

4. Post-migration tasks

   Step 1: Update the MX records to point to Office 365

   If you have not done this step previously, change the DNS records known as MX records to enable and receive email messages on the target Office 365 server. After you complete this step, you will be able to receive emails from your customers and partners in your Office 365 account. In addition to this setup, configure the Autodiscover record to allow Outlook to connect to the migrated mailboxes.

   Step 2: Create a new Outlook profile for users in the new domain

   Configure and recreate the Outlook profile for each user in your domain if Outlook has problems connecting to Office 365 mailboxes.