Migrating Equipment Mailboxes to Office 365
In an effort to update a large number of older instructions out there, when working in an Office 365/Exchange on-prem hybrid environment, moving equipment mailboxes have become a much, much more straight-forward affair than in the past. Previously, as your recent Google search probably pointed you to, you would need to do the following:
- Enable the Active Directory user account for the equipment mailbox.
- Log in to your Exchange Online tenant via PowerShell
- Run a New-MoveRequest command for the equipment account mailbox
- Scroll down to discover that the sites on the top of the search giving this advice is really trying to convince you to purchase some service or software to do all of this for you.
Thankfully, this procedure has been changed in the newest updates of Exchange Online (as of 08/2019). So before starting, a simple disclaimer: NEVER enable the accounts for your equipment mailboxes. This made sense with the old migration steps, however it is no longer necessary. Besides, though it is a very small risk, it is still enabling an account that should not be enabled.
The new method of equipment mailbox migrations
So, the new method is remarkably straightforward:
- Log in to your Exchange Online EAC, not your on-premise environment
- Click on Migration, then New->Migrate to Exchange Online
- Select Remote Move Migration
- Click the add (+) symbol to manually add your equipment mailboxes, or upload a CSV dump from your on-prem EAC
- Note: if a particular mailbox account is not visible, it may be due to how your hybrid system is configured. This could be for any number of reasons, but confirm the mailboxes are in the OU/group being used to force a sync to Office 365.
- Continue through the rest as if you were migrating any other mailbox
- Once completed, confirm functionality and that the booking rules have carried across.
That is basically it. No PowerShell (you CAN do it that way, but just make sure it’s a PULL from Exchange Online, not a PUSH from on-prem), and no enabling accounts. Oh, and it’s FREE. Great huh?
