Kerio Connect to Office 365 Migration. We get it -- you're SMBs.

 OK, folks.  We get it.

Since we announced the Kerio Connect to Office 365 calendar, tasks, contacts, notes migration application we built we've gotten inquiries from several of you.

And we've learned you're mainly SMBs -- Small to Medium Businesses -- and very price-sensitive.

You want to get your users off of Kerio and get them on Office 365.

We want to turn a profit off the hard-earned effort we put into making this technology. 

So here's what we're going to do -- we're going to let some of you run this for no charge as an informed consent experiment.  We're limiting support -- but if you find you need help we're willing to talk about what it costs.  

There's a few rules here:

• You need to contact us and tell us the domain name you're migrating into so we can give you a license key.
• This offer does NOT apply if you've hired a systems integrator or consultant to do your migration (if you can afford them you can afford to work something out with us).
• We'll give you a link to the code and you can download and try it out.
• Experience with PowerShell and Office 365 permissions is a definite plus in migrating!
• If you have under 25 users and little Microsoft experience then please use import-export methods or go cold-turkey.  There's a learning curve with our methods.  A small number of users is just not worth it.
• No support for conference rooms or resources.
• Current and future events only.  CAN we do history? Yes -- but that we think you should pay for if you want our automated process.

Questions?  Use the contact us link.

As always, to migrate email use imapsync (link is to our posts on how to migrate and the advantages).  You could use Microsoft's tools which are simple, but are also simple-minded.  If imapsync (official site) scares or confuses you, please be aware our tools require about the same level of expertise. 

Video of Kerio calendar and contact data migrating to Office 365

 

Return with us to the days of the silents.  

To start -- a blank calendar and a single contact in Office 365.

We insert data using our latest tool from a single user.

You see the calendar data insert and then the contact data.

We then use our selective UNDO capability to remove the data.

This is all happening in real time -- no editing.

Prepare for TLS 1.1 and 1.0 to go away

You know the popup warnings that we've been ignoring -- Microsoft will deprecate Azure AD TLS 1.1, 1.0  and 3DES cipher suite:

It's time to pay attention.  Microsoft means it it this time.

We run regular recursion tests to ensure our application on older hardware (when we migrate legacy systems such as our newly announced Kerio migration tools.)  As part of that work, we have to register an Azure Active Directory application.  Our scripts started failing a few weeks ago during our test on an older machine.  The root cause -- Microsoft announced the deprecation of TLS 1.0/1.1 on January 31, 2022 (this machine was set to use TLS 1.1)

We're not going to reproduce the steps to enable TlS 1.2 that Microsoft published in November, 2021

1. Install Update 3140245.
2. Enable the registry values from the Enable TLS 1.2 on client or server operating systems section.

Microsoft provided a power shell script that does some of the work to check and enable TLS 1.2.  It might be time to do this.  The end of TLS 1.1 is near.

 

Kerio Connect to Office 365 Migration Field Proven

So we at Sumatra are very happy to announce in 2022 (entering our third year of the COVID pandemic!) that we have successfully field-deployed a Kerio Connect to Office 365 full-state calendar migration tool!

Huzzah!!!

A couple of screen shots of the capability:

We ran it in December 2021 at a law firm in the Boston, Massachusetts area!

Many thanks to all involved there for their testing and attention to detail that made it a success!!

The user IDs from legacy Kerio are mappable to new IDs on Office 365.  

We of course re-create meetings as meetings with guest lists and responses so it's a huge level above any export-import methods you see out there.

And we can also preserve resource bookings in a Kerio to Office 365 migration -- though our client did not migrate resources so we're looking for a partner to prove that works as well.

Details on request -- please just drop us a line.  Please also let us know the specifics of how many users you'd like to migrate.

Kerio Mail Contacts and Office 365 Migration

Our latest version of Kerio migration code adds two options to the XML file to deal with autocomplete contacts.

• Set the ‘migratesuggestedcontacts’ switch to FALSE if you don’t want to migrate them.
• If 'migratesuggestedcontacts’  is TRUE, the contact subfolder named in the migratesuggestedcontacts_o365foldername will be created (if it doesn’t exist) and those contacts added to the folder.

 

 

BusyMac and Kerio Bugs and Migration to Office 365

We found some weird calendar stuff in Kerio when using BusyCal. 

RRULE;X-BUSYMAC-REGENERATE=TRASH:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=12;BYMONTHDAY=16

This (really weird) addition to the iCalendar format was causing us some problems with the recurrence pattern until we coded around it.

Apparently it's been reported as a bug in in their forum since December 2020.  https://github.com/jens-maus/node-ical/issues/67

But rather than waiting for someone to fix a moribund client to moribund server we coded around it to make it easier for folks to get into Office 365.

Multiple Domains in a Kerio Calendar Migration

You know how it is -- you've had your legacy system for YEARS and sometime in there you changed domains from say OLDCOMPANY.com to NEWCOMPANY.com or something like that.

And now as you are migrating into Office 365 you wonder if you can take all that over and have it work in calendars the way it used to.

Have no fear -- you can do that.  Just put both in as in the screen shot on your configuration page.

 

Kerio Calendar Data Weirdness

 One of those things we always worry about is data integrity.

We've seen weird stuff.

And now it's Kerio's turn to provide us with weird.

Take a look at this raw ICS file from some recent field data:

I'll cut to the chase.  The END date (line 14) of this recurring appointment is later than the UNTIL date in the RRULE (line 15).  So trying to insert this Microsoft Exchange Web Services called us very bad do-bees.   

Not hard to generate odd situations with a variety of clients on a technologically moribund server.

Block Mail to Recipients Outside of your Organization

We recently announced that we've started work on a  Kerio Server Migration to Office 365.  One of our clients gave us test data from a few departed/terminated users to test our code.  It's easy to test in our Exchange on-prem sandbox to ensure no "external" email gets sent to their users -- we unplug the Ethernet connection to the Router. It's a little more complicated in Office 365, but not all that difficult.  Here are the steps:

In the Exchange Admin Center, under Mail Flow, Rules, click the "+" sign to create a new rule.

• Name the rule.  We called it "Block Mail sent to External Email"
• Select the option from Apply this rule pulldown: "The Recipient is Located...."
• Select the option "Outside The Organization" from the subsequent pulldown that the recipient is located 
• Select "Reject the message with the explanation" from the pulldown "Do the Following..."
• Enter a message (optional):  We entered "The message was not sent. The Recipient is located outside the company."
• We chose to Enforce the rule, and finally
• Saved it

  Here is a screen shot:

So now let's say a user tries to send email outside your domain.  They will be informed that is an unsanctioned action with this message:

Kerio Connect Migration to Office 365

So we got a request for a Kerio Connect to Office 365 calendar migration from someone who we discovered was an old pal from the early days of group scheduling.

How could we say no?

So we've got that under development now -- anyone else interested in testing it out please drop us a line.

We've got full-state calendar migrations going, as well as contacts and tasks.  

Notes become tasks (because Microsoft's EWS API does not allow us to create Notes). 

A few of the recurrence patterns do not transfer to Office 365 so we insert them and flag them as problem children.  Biggest example: Last weekday or weekend day of the month is supported on Kerio but not in Office 365.  

Of course we include our UNDO functionality for testing and remediation.