Thursday, February 26, 2015

Another useful link on #MDaemon migration to #Exchange via Linux

Gentle Soon-to-be-MDaemon-free Migrating Reader,

Ms. Migrations recommends reading MDaemon to Microsoft Exchange migration for real-world experience going from MDaemon on Linux to Exchange. 

This article focuses on email using imapsync (for email, just use imapsync, really) and mentions nothing about calendars, but that of course is what we are here for.


Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Enterprise #Exchange to #Office365 Calendar Migration -- Now with Sync!

Things do not stand still at Sumatra.

With Exchange to Exchange full-state calendar migrations about to hit beta, we added and are testing Sync in our labs.  In the spirit of how things like email sync works, we've added sync to our full-state Microsoft Exchange to Microsoft Exchange calendar migration.  You get contacts and tasks as a by-product.

A few teaser images. starting with the Sync button (We're still discussing how we're going to make this work):

So the SOURCE Exchange server had this:

Which resulted in this on the TARGET Exchange account (note live meetings and recurrence!):

We leave the TARGET system alone while the SOURCE system evolves (1 additional item on the 27th and a modified appointment on the 18th, and a change in meeting response on the 26th).  After hitting SYNC these changes come in:

This capability will not be in this week's beta, but we'll roll it out as necessary when we deem it stable.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Migrating live calendars into #Exchange -- Manage Delegate Forwarding

Those of you who have been diligently following the workings of the mighty Sumatra bullpen know that we're nutcases about making sure migrations go well.

One thing in a full state migration into Exchange is that you need to turn off Delegate forwarding if you want us to recreate the meeting responses.

So to turn off forwarding for an entire domain, you use Set-RemoteDomain, like this: 

Get-RemoteDomain | Set-RemoteDomain -MeetingForwardNotificationEnabled $false



To turn off forwarding for an individual user use set-calendarprocessing:

Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity user email@yourdomain.com  -RemoveForwardMeetingNotifications $true


In the days of Exchange 2007/2010 you would have used set-mailboxcalendarsettings.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Enterprise-Level Calendar Migration #Exchange to #Office365

Last week (which is like forever in Sumatra Development time) we showed you the interface to our full state Microsoft Exchange to Microsoft Exchange calendar migration.

This week we'll show it working in a video:


This is showing the full state migration keeping recurrence patterns, guest lists, guest responses.  You know, everything that makes your calendar useful in an enterprise environment.  The stuff Microsoft does NOT do in a migration.  The stuff everyone else who claims to migrate calendars glosses over.

If you do not need or want all that utility we have an option that runs faster but still tells you who is supposed to be in your meetings.  Again, the stuff Microsoft and everyone else does not do.

Next week we'll release it to the sites we've got as early betas.

If you need Microsoft Exchange to Microsoft Exchange calendar migration after that, feel free to contact us.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Preview #MSExchange to MSExchange Calendar Configuration

Well  it finally happened,  We got folks realizing that bringing your enterprise calendars from on-premises Exchange to Hosted Exchange was not a trivial matter.

But we at Sumatra have radically simplified it and are giving you a preview of the application.

We are offering options to do a full-state migration or a flat migration which will insert your meetings as appointments in everyone's calendar (it's faster and easier, but it's probably not for your executive level).

Watch this space for more info as it becomes available.

And yes, we could theoretically do a Google Calendar into Exchange / Office 365 migration, but everybody who opted for Google is still too deep into denial to deal with that possibility.

Lone hackers and the calendaring connection

My best Internet read of the last few months has been How a Lone Hacker Shredded the Myth of Crowdsourcing.  

What's the calendar connection in this?  In the lesson that in any sufficiently large group of people (let's say a 1000 user calendar migration) you will see the spectrum of all types of behavior.  And this very much includes destruction for its own sake.

We see things like this in raw calendar data all the time: calendars booked through 2039 (no joke), people who have put birthdays in calendars starting in the 1960's (why?) and of course, during a migration the great conference room attempted land grab.

The lesson: any open door can become an opportunity for malfeasance.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

#MDaemon Notes migrating into #MSExchange

We got a request from some friends in Canada for MDaemon Notes to migrate into Exchange.

Now there is a small problem with this.  Exchange Web Services does not support creating Notes.

On the other hand over the last fourteen years we all could have gotten doctorates for our work doing the impossible with Microsoft Exchange.  So we insert the Notes into Tasks.


Wednesday, February 04, 2015

European #MDaemon Calendar to #MSExchange Migration: Field Notes

Short answer:  Version   4.0.xx of our MDaemon calendar migration tool works.

A site in Germany (thanks, guys!) did the pioneering field work that resulted in some minor fixes for time zone issues (and will result in a few more changes).

But we have confirmed that European time zones in translation, international characters, and non-US date formats are working fine.

And we've added the capability to work with localized MDaemon folders (so Calendar becomes Kalender in a German language pack).

One of our guys put the extra effort in to translate our screens as well (these will change):


So if you folks in Europe want to migrate your MDaemon calendars drop us a line.