At a glance
The Client:
Signal is part of the Digital Technology Advisory Group (DTAG), and services global brands and companies in their sector, with focus on the tech community. Leading charity and financial services brands work with Signal to transform communications and create a better audience experience.
The Need:
Signal embarked on the migration from Google Workspace to DTAG’s existing Microsoft 365 tenant, to improve group collaboration. Expecting to complete before Q3 2022, project scope included all users and data on the Google Team Drive migrated to the Microsoft Cloud, followed by maintenance, change management and training.
Signal had limited internal IT resources, and DTAG had experienced issues with external specialists on prior migrations, and had concerns about the Signal team working effectively post-migration, and effects on workflow from unhappy staff.
Nero Blanco were referred to DTAG and Signal by another organisation, and this positioned them as the ideal team for the project.
“Nero Blanco were very professional, with the team coming in on-target against all project milestones. They pointed out a couple of things that were overlooked in initial planning, and analysis of distribution groups included within the scope resulted in a cull of groups from 150 to 47 prior to migration. This lowered our overall costs for the migration.”
– Chris Alcock – IT Support Engineer, Signal
Correcting missing file extensions:
This was potentially a major issue in terms of labour and extended support, requiring administrators to write extensions to each file post-migration, but fortunately Nero Blanco had a solution. A bespoke script was created which analysed each file in the M365 tenant, assigning the correct extension.
The script-fix was deployed immediately, avoiding a large admin issue for the client. Signal staff were notified of potential effects, but no significant user problems resulted.
Migration completed July 2nd- 3rd, 2022, with the script applied on July 4th, 2022.
The 5 days of Early Life Support were completed, and full adoption of the structure in the target MS365 tenant was signed off 1 month later.
The Signal team received customised change management training from a Nero Blanco partner company, focused on educating the end users to ensure a simple transition to the new tenant, whilst not impacting their day to day work.
The different sessions were highly beneficial and greatly appreciated by the Signal team, and enabled a smoother and happier transition to the new working platform.
No further technical support for the project was required.
Agreed deliverables:
Migration of planned workloads:
- 10 Shared G-drives
- 115 User G-drives
- 34 Shared mailboxes
- 115 user mailboxes
- 150 Mail/distribution groups
Change Management Workshop:
- 2x workshops on workflows in Microsoft 365 for Google users.
Training Content Creation and Delivery:
- One-to-One 90-minute session of White Glove training
- 90-minute Session as a live event/Webinar
- 90-minute sessions via 10 Person Workshop
Post-Migration Support:
- T+5 days of Post Migration support
The Solution:
Nero Blanco met with Signal to refine project scope, and had an initial review of data, users, and mail groups. In addition, some pre-migration training for Signal staff on the Microsoft 365 product stack was designed, to ensure a smooth post-migration experience.
The project started in late April of 2022, with a target of 1 month for completion.
During the initial stages, many Google email groups were found to be redundant by the Nero Blanco team. Mail and Security Groups work differently in Microsoft 365 and Google, so the 150 previosuly required mail groups was cut to 47, reducing project complexity and cost to the client.
During the migration, a serious issue arose; previous migration to Google had stripped file extensions. This isn’t an issue in Google, as file extensions are not required for file management, but Microsoft 365 needs file extensions to correctly assign default apps for file operation.
