Did you know that Go Daddy sells a proprietary version of Office 365?
Go Daddy Office 356 is NOT Microsoft Office 365. This can bite you.
You may have this version and not even know it. The version of Office 365 offered by Go Daddy is specialized and white-labeled by Microsoft specifically for Go Daddy. This version of Office 365 is offered by Go Daddy and comes with a suite of their own, proprietary tools.
Go Daddy’s implementation of Office 365 only comes with their tools. If you want to use other solutions outside of Go Daddy, that is not an option. Go Daddy offers their own proprietary Anti-Spam secure email and other white label services. When you use Go Daddy Office 365 you are in their specialized tenants white labeled by Microsoft and not part of the Microsoft Office 365 freelance world.
Go Daddy implementation of Office 365 is proprietary. For all technical support you MUST call Go Daddy. All Office 365 support and integration of applications and solutions are only accessible through Go Daddy and their support people.
Go Daddy’s senior support programmers are from India. Any major issue with Go Daddy and Microsoft can take up to 5 days for Microsoft / Go Daddy Support. All Level 3 tickets from Go Daddy are handled on India’s time zone and with their programmers and Microsoft.
We at San Diego Computer Consulting work with many Office 365 implementations and migrations. We have migrated over 200 domains and thousands of email accounts over the years to Office 365. The migration to Microsoft Office 365 is complicated and has many pitfalls.
The Situation:
We were doing a migration from Go Daddy, proprietary Office 365 and during the migration, you must remove the domain name. You have to remove the domain name so that you can flush it out of the Go Daddy (white label) Office 365 and then move it over to Microsoft Office 365. In a single instance when we removed the domain from Go Daddy, it did not release from their proprietary system. The domain was removed. This is what they call De-Federation. But, the domain would not come over to Microsoft Office 365.
Go Daddy’s response time:
Go Daddy put a level 3 Priority ticket through to their senior support in India. The resolution took 5 business days to resolve. We only were able to get updates at 10:00 at night when it was business hours in India to get updates from Go Daddy. We at San Diego Computer had to put in a temporary Exchange email server to hold the customer over while Go Daddy resolved it’s problems.
Domains in Go Daddy Office 365 are locked in. De-Federation is the propriety process for them to unlock the domain for transfer in Office 365.
To move a Go Daddy, Office 365 domain it must be done by their tech support. This is the process of De-Federation. This cannot be done in their support panel. In order for you to move a domain from Go Daddy’s, Office 365 you MUST defederate it before it can be imported to Microsoft Office 365. The support people at Go Daddy are typically not trained in this operation. It is very important that a De-Federation is done during business hours at Go Daddy so that you can have proper support. The Defederation process can take up to 4 hours before the domain is available to import into Microsoft Office 365.
We use Bit Titan tools to help us with Go Daddy proprietary Office 365 to Microsoft Office 365. This is a very complicated conversion and takes a great deal of careful planning. The majority of the planning is knowing that you have to work with Go Daddy during the business day to make sure this migration goes smoothly. Because you have to De-Federate the domain, there will be a loss of email on the Go Daddy side. We setup a MX record to go through ProofPoint to help capture that email during the De-Federation process.
Before De-Federation, all email accounts and distribution groups must also be removed from Go Daddy. When the entire domain and email accounts are fully deleted from Go Daddy, it is only then that the Migration to Microsoft Office 365 can be done.
What to Expect: The Conversion to Microsoft Office 365, from Go Daddy, Office 365.
The conversion process is very complex as we have stated. It is complex because the full migration must be completed during the business day, before the defederation and removal of email accounts at Go Daddy. We mitigate this process by using Proofpoint to capture email during the migration process. This helps avoid any loss of email. We use Bit Titan to migrate all your email, contacts, calendar items, tasks and any other data that is in Outlook. Bit Titan does move everything and Outlook will have a complete set of data from Go Daddy moved over to Microsoft. Again the process must be complete before the removal of email accounts and the De-Federation of the domain out of Go Daddy. It is during that time, that email could be in Jeopardy. This is ALL dependent on making sure you have good support person from Go Daddy on the phone who understands their De-Federation process.
San Diego Computer Consulting can connect your local Microsoft Windows network active directory to Microsoft Azure.
Using Microsoft AD connect to Azure allows us to connect your Windows network to Microsoft Office 365 for your user and email accounts. When password changes are made to your user accounts, the password change will also change the email user account in Office 365.
This is significant because as you move into the cloud, having a connector from your Windows network to the cloud is key to a smooth migration.
User accounts connected from your Windows network to Microsoft Office 365 through Active Directory ensures that your administration of user and email accounts is in the same place and easy to do.
San Diego Computer Consulting is an expert in connecting your Office 365 implementation to your local network to ensure the smoothest transition as you migrate your email to the cloud.
Have any other questions? Want to learn more? Contact us for complimentary first consultation.
