An engineering company based near Lincoln contacted IT Support Lincoln when a Microsoft 365 migration they had started internally stalled after moving just twelve user accounts.
The Challenge
The business had attempted to migrate 34 staff from a legacy Exchange server to Microsoft 365 using guidance from online tutorials. The first wave of migrations went smoothly, but the team ran into problems with shared mailboxes, distribution lists, and a set of legacy PST files belonging to two senior engineers that contained over a decade of project correspondence.
The internal IT contact, a production engineer with limited Microsoft admin experience, had spent three weekends on the problem without making progress. The Exchange server was out of support, and the business was aware it represented a security liability, but they could not move forward.
Beyond email, the company wanted to adopt Teams for internal communication and reduce its dependence on a file server that staff in the yard struggled to access from their tablets and laptops.
The Solution
IT Support Lincoln took over the migration using the Microsoft FastTrack migration toolset combined with manual PST remediation for the legacy archive files. The team identified that the PST corruption was partial and recoverable; the usable data was merged into online archives before the Exchange server was decommissioned.
Shared mailboxes and distribution groups were rebuilt correctly in Exchange Online, and each department head received a short briefing on how to manage their team mailbox permissions going forward.
For collaboration, IT Support Lincoln rolled out Microsoft Teams with a channel structure mapped to the company's project and department layout. SharePoint document libraries replaced the file server for office staff, while an offline sync policy was set up so that engineers in the yard could access key documents without a reliable internet connection.
The full migration and Teams rollout took four weeks from the point IT Support Lincoln took over.
The Results
All 34 staff accounts were successfully migrated with no loss of historical email. The two legacy PST archives, totalling approximately 18 GB of data, were fully recovered and accessible in Outlook within the first week.
Teams adoption was high from the start because the rollout was structured around how the business actually worked rather than a generic deployment guide. Within six weeks, the company had reduced its reliance on email for internal communication by a measurable margin.
- 34 accounts migrated including two complex PST recoveries totalling 18 GB
- Exchange server decommissioned and removed from the network within 30 days
- Teams active daily use reached 91 percent of staff by week six
What the Client Said
"We had wasted months going round in circles. IT Support Lincoln came in, told us exactly what was wrong and what they were going to do about it, and just got on with it. We wish we had called them sooner."
Want Similar Results?
If your Microsoft 365 migration has stalled, or you are planning a move from an on-site Exchange server, we can take it from where you are and get it done properly. Call IT Support Lincoln or fill in the contact form to get started.