Add support for creating remote mailbox in Hybrid Exchange environment

In a hybrid exchange environment, the supported way to create cloud mailboxes is by using the on-premises Exchange ECP or powershell to create a remote mailbox. This creates the user account in on-prem Active Directory while also creating a mailbox in the cloud, and creating all of the required attributes in both on-prem exchange and exchange online to enable mail flow between the on-prem exchange environment and the cloud environment.

Currently, GroupID can only create either an on-prem mailbox or a cloud mailbox, not a 'remote mailbox' which is desired in a hybrid environment.

When groupID creates an office 365 mailbox, it creates a user in On-Prem AD as well, but doesn't populate any of the attributes required by on-prem exchange. As a result, the on-prem exchange server doesn't know that the cloud mailbox exists, and will reject mail addressed to the new user.

When groupID creates an on-prem mailbox, then the mailbox is created in the on-prem exchange database, and must be manually migrated to office 365 after creation. Another limitation in this case is that groupID cannot handle assigning Office 365 licenses to the user, so this also has to be done manually.

This creates mail flow issues when any mailboxes or groups are still homed in the on-premises exchange database, or when any part of mail-flow routes through the on-prem server for any reason.

I would like groupID to add an option to create a remote mailbox in Hybrid environments. Ideally, it should do this through the on-prem exchange server, so that the mailbox and account are properly created by Exchange with all of the correct attributes, just as if when using the on-prem Exchange Control Panel or the new-remotemailbox powershell cmdlet.

In the the user creation forms on the self service portal, this could be as simple as an added choice in the 'mailbox store' dropdown box. It would offer the choice to create the mailbox in on-prem mailbox database 123 or in Office 365. If Office 365, it would still go through on-prem exchange to create the mailbox as a remote mailbox, and not directly create it in O365. In addition, if the Office 365 option is selected, the portal should also present options for assigning O365 Licenses to the account, since the mailbox will require a license to be assigned.

Official comment

Daanish Sayyed

January 30, 2019 14:19

Thanks for this valuable suggestion. We have pushed this to the product Team for further discussion and will have an update soon.

Daanish

Steve Whitcher

May 29, 2019 13:21

Hello - I wanted to check in on this and see if the product team has had a chance to consider this. We would love to be able to enable HR to create new users via the Self Service portal instead of sending a form to IT whenever someone new is hired, but cannot because GroupID does not create a mail user properly in a hybrid environment (with a remote mailbox).

Is this something that you plan to implement in an upcoming version of GroupID? If so, do you have any timeframe you can share regarding when that might be available?

May 29, 2019 17:42

Hello Steve,

We have this request added to our feature list but you may not see it in the very next release, we have not still chalked out an ETA.

If the requirement is immediate, we can get this done as a PSO. Let me know if you like to see a Quote?

Add support for creating remote mailbox in Hybrid Exchange environment

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