Create a tenant account for Office 365 and enable Lync Online

Learn about Office 365 and Lync Online at Office 365.

To make sure that your environment is ready for Office 365, see the System Requirements.

For details about setting up Office 365, see Getting Started with Office 365 and Set Up Office 365.

Add your domain and verify ownership

Your domain is sometimes also referred to as your vanity domain. You must add your domain to your Office 365 tenant, and then follow the steps to validate the domain with Office 365. This is to confirm that you are the owner of the domain.

To add your domain to your Office 365 tenant, follow the steps described at Add your domain to Office 365.

Complete all of the steps in each section in the topic, including "Edit DNS records for your Office 365 services."

Verify environment readiness

You can use the Office 365 Deployment Readiness Tool to identify any issues in your Active Directory Domain Services that may cause issues with synchronizing with Office 365. This tool inspects your Active Directory environment, and then provides a report that includes a prerequisite check and an attribute assessment that are specific to the directory synchronization tool requirements.

To download the tool, see Microsoft Office 365 Deployment Readiness Tool.

For details about using the tool and deploying Office 365, see Microsoft Office 365 Deployment Guide for Enterprises.

Prepare for Active Directory synchronization

Active Directory synchronization keeps your on-premises Active Directory continuously synchronized with Office 365. This lets you create synchronized versions of each user account and group, and also enables global address list (GAL) synchronization from your local Microsoft Exchange Server environment to Microsoft Exchange Online.

To prepare your environment for Active Directory synchronization, follow the steps described in Active Directory synchronization: Roadmap, including setting up single sign-on.

Create certificates for Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS)

You will need to create the certificates that are used for identity federation with Office 365. For more information, see the “Federation server certificates” section of the Plan for and deploy AD FS for use with single sign-on topic at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=285376.

Assign certificates for AD FS

After you create the certificates that are used for identity federation with Office 365, you must install and assign them.

Move pilot users to Lync Online

After you have completed the steps to prepare and configure your environment for Lync Online, you can start moving pilot users to Lync Online.

See Move Users to Lync Online.

Administering users in a hybrid deployment

For details about how to administer users in a hybrid deployment, see Administering Users in a Hybrid Deployment.