Outlook Profile Migration

Managing Outlook profiles in conjunction with a migration can create a time-consuming and a heavy support demand.  In addition, when this does occur, can sour the perception of the migration to the point that the process is halted mid-stream which further frustrates the process.  The process gets even more complicated when migrating to Office 365 or Exchange 2016 due to the many new configuration elements necessary.

There is a current trend where little thought is given to the impact that the Outlook profile can have on a migration or transition to a new or different mail environment.  One of the likely reasons for this is the assumption that AutoDiscover – an information service provided by Microsoft Exchange – will be a magic solution to this problem.  While this does work quite well for brand new Outlook profiles, the same is not often true for existing profiles.

There are only a few options for managing Outlook profiles in relation to a migration. One option is to depend on Outlook reacting properly to new information from AutoDiscover – and hope for the best.  Another option is to create new profiles using one of a few Microsoft provided tools like PROFGEN, EXPROFRE, or PRFPATCH.  Lastly, options exist from 3rd party software vendors.

Microsoft Native Tools

Nearly all of the Microsoft tools available for Outlook profiles are either unsupported, or do not work well with newer versions of Outlook, and specifically do not work with Outlook 2016.  Profgen.exe, ExProfRe.exe, and PrfPatch.exe are a few of the more common tools produced by Microsoft or Microsoft support people and none of them are very usable for current deployments.  They may work if Outlook 2010 or earlier is still in use, but are still difficult to get right.

Outlook 2013 and earlier support a command-line option that can read a file (*.PRF) that has settings that cause Outlook to create or update a profile.  However, one nearly has to be a MAPI developer to understand how to use this file format, and any misconfigurations become a problem that has to be solved by the user – Microsoft doesn’t actively support this method.

PRFPatch can help in the creation of the PRF file format, but as already mentioned will not work with Outlook 2016 and issues exist with Outlook 2013 (especially Outlook click-to-run versions).  This utility allows for the setting of the various PRF variables available and are slight improvements to ProfGen and ExProfRe.

Pros:

·        Free tools, lots of web notes and articles on use.

·        Good for small scale use, and automated testing.

·        Good for older versions of Outlook and Exchange.

Cons:

·        No support from Microsoft for either bugs or configuration help – you’re on your own.

·        Administrators must learn unique and different settings for each PRF variable and how to obtain the values – no documentation.

·        Does not preserve existing Outlook profiles or profile settings.

·        No logging, or analysis features to help make decisions on how to apply.

·        Not designed for Office 365 or Exchange 2013/2016 migrations.

Autodiscover

Autodiscover is a web service that was developed as a mechanism to minimize user configuration and deployment steps by providing clients access to Exchange features. For Exchange Web Services (EWS) clients, Autodiscover is typically used to find the EWS endpoint URL. However, Autodiscover can also provide information to configure clients that use other protocols.

Contrary to the idea that most have about AutoDiscover, it’s not a tool or feature of Outlook, but an information service provided by Microsoft Exchange that first arrived with Exchange 2007.  The purpose of this service was to provide client software a way to discover the types of services and the endpoints and protocols to make a connection to those services.

As such, AutoDiscover doesn’t “do” anything – it only provides information.  It is up to the software that consumes this information to do the appropriate configurations with it.  In the case of Microsoft Outlook, it consumes this information to determine how it should connect to a given mailbox.

AutoDiscover And Outlook:

Outlook uses the information from AutoDiscover to both create new profiles, and to react to changes in an existing environment during its lifetime.  In the latter, Outlook re-queries AutoDiscover every so often (depending upon the version of Outlook) to see if there are changes to the information, and reacts accordingly.

When AutoDiscover is used by Outlook for the setup of a new profile, most – but not all – of the information is contained in the AutoDiscover result.  Any information Outlook needs that is not in the AutoDiscover result is discovered in other ways (separate communications with an Exchange server).

AutoDiscover, Outlook, And Migrations:

The three of these together create challenges for end users and administrators, but sometimes these challenges are not seen right away.

Consider when Outlook is running that it periodically will re-query AutoDiscover for any updated info.  If Outlook is pointed to a new mail system for AutoDiscover as a result of a migration, Outlook will get the new information but will not understand that the reason for such is due to a migration.  It will attempt to connect to the endpoints provided by the new target AutoDiscover without any other consideration.

Outlook stores additional configuration information for each user in the Outlook profile that are not seen in the configuration dialogs provided by Outlook or the Control Panel applet.  Some of the information elements are the names of Domain Controllers, Global Catalog Servers, and Exchange Servers.  When Outlook gets the updated AutoDiscover info from the new target environment, these previous elements remain and the profile is reconfigured in a “half-baked” sense as some of the connections will be to the older source environment, while some other connections will be to the target.

This ultimately leads to odd behavior in Outlook depending upon the feature being used in Outlook.  Issues with Offline Address Books, Free/Busy Lookups, folder delegation, etc. are all elements that can be impacted by a mixed configuration. Often immediately post migration.

Even more frustrating, sometimes these issues don’t appear for days or weeks because the referenced servers in the profile are still accessible on the network by the client.  However, as soon as either network connectivity to those server are dropped or those servers are decommissioned, Outlook begins to lockup or present generic error dialogs to end users.

Since errors likely occur days or weeks after a migration, such is rarely associated with the migration.  Outlook profiles are simply recreated as new and the problem seems to go away, and life goes on.  In hindsight, it can be difficult to realize that the issues could have been mitigated had the profiles either been created as new during the migration, or updated properly using a 3rd party utility designed to manage migration related changes.

AutoDiscover, Outlook, Migrations, And Priasoft:

Priasoft, invented the enterprise Exchange migration tools market and has nearly 20 years of experience with migrations and Outlook, has a profile migration solution that is specifically designed to cleanly update an existing Outlook profile.  In contrast to Outlook simply responding to new endpoints received, the Priasoft Profile Manager solution will reset and clean out prior Exchange settings in a profile before applying new settings.  This means that the issues mentioned above that occur days or weeks after migration are non-existent.

In addition, the Priasoft solution updates existing profiles, it doesn’t create new profiles.  This distinction is important to consider.  A new profile will certainly provide a clean and working experience for end-users, but the end user experience is often impacted when there are additional profile settings in the original profile.  Consider a user with a PST file attached, a 3rd party service, or some other profile-specific setting.  If a new profile is created, these setting must also be reconfigured – but an end user or administrator may not know the values to preserve, use, or may have forgotten.

In contrast, if the same profile is updated properly, all the non-Exchange related settings in the profile are retained, providing the best opportunity for a transparent profile update post migration.  This is the key value of the Priasoft Profile Manager solution – to reduce or eliminate help desk calls, frustrated end users, and negative perception of the IT department that can result with Outlook Profile issues.

Furthermore, the Priasoft Profile Manager solution automatically and intelligently reacts when profile changes are required during a migration event. In addition, the Priasoft Profile Manager solution provides a heads-up display that reports in real time the status of Outlook client updates on your workstations so you always know the status of the Outlook profile migration. The heads-up display can even be deployed to helpdesk and other IT personnel to allow real time proactive monitoring of Outlook Profile Migrations.

Conclusion

We hope this article was helpful and explains some of the tools, solutions, and considerations when faced with updating Outlook client profiles post migration.

To learn more about the Priasoft Profile Migration Manager solution, to chat with one of our Exchange experts, or to download a free evaluation please click the button below.