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I am preparing to deploy Office365 for my organization. We have an on premise Active Directory Domain Controller (Windows Server 2012 R2). We would like to leverage our Active Directory for: automatic user provisioning in Office365, and password synchronization, using the DirSync tool.

Our Active Directory Domain is example.pvt. Email is currently Rackspace Exchange and email addresses follow the form [email protected]. Active Directory User Logon Name follows the form firstinitiallastname.

My Questions are:

  1. What Active Directory Attribute(s) can be use in provisioning the email address in Office365?
  2. Is it possible to use the E-mail field in Active Directory to provision the email address in Office365?
  3. Will the fact that our Active Directory Domain has a different extension (.pvt vs. .com) cause a problem with our planned provisioning method?

2 Answers 2

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1) The attributes for provisioning email addresses in O365 are Mail and ProxyAddresses. Populate the ProxyAddresses with SMTP:[email protected] smtp:[email protected] etc

2) I believe you need to populate Mail and ProxyAddresses

3) Not a problem. However, we prefer to add the email domain as a UPN suffix and set the users' UPN to match their email address, for simplicity. (ie. O365 login and email address are same)

As mfinni correctly points out, you can (indeed are advised to) maintain an on-premises exchange server for management. However, no on-premises exchange and DirSync rather than federation is totally supported.

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In my understanding, the current proper method for doing this is to have an Exchange 2010 server onsite. The 0365 account licenses you for a single server instance; this integrates with AD (populating all of the proper Exchange attributes) and then you federate with your O365 instance.

Point 3 is not a problem at all.

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  • mfinni, do you have a source for 'the o365 account licenses you for a single server exchange instance' ? I thought you only got CALs to access an on-premises exchange, not the actual server license. Aug 21, 2014 at 14:13
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    If you login to your portal, you'll see the download and instructions on getting a Hybrid-only license right there. Also, here's a link with the same info. blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/12/05/… Office 365 for enterprises customers can obtain an Exchange Server 2010 license at no charge by contacting customer support. This license has limitations and doesn’t support hosting on-premises mailboxes.
    – mfinni
    Aug 21, 2014 at 16:06
  • Good to know - every day's a school day! I guess that's only on E plans as well? Aug 21, 2014 at 16:27
  • That's what it states. I don't have any clients on small business plans so I can't check to see if that options exists in their O365 portal.
    – mfinni
    Aug 21, 2014 at 16:49

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