Please beware when upgrading from another Enterprise plan to E5. Microsoft is currently experiencing an issue. I signed up for an E5 trial earlier this week in my personal tenant. In trying to update my E1 license to an E5 everything appeared to work, but my Exchange services are stuck in a perpetual Setting up… state.
Issue #1: Email services stuck in a perpetual Setting up… state.
Although I am in this provisioning state I still have access to my email through Outlook and ActiveSync, but not OWA. This is a known issue according to Microsoft.
Message from Microsoft:
Some users mailboxes are stuck in the provisioning state with a status of “We are preparing a mailbox for this user” after their license is upgraded to E5.
- Cause This issue is caused by the categorization of Customer Lockbox SKU as a base SKU instead of an add-on SKU. This causes the FWSync to fail if Customer Lockbox is the first SKU that is processed.
- Workaround The workaround is to uncheck the Customer Lockbox option when assigning the license. Once the mailbox is set-up with E5 plan successfully, the customer lockbox option should be checked again.
- Resolution The permanent fix for should be part of the next fast train deployment (pending approval) which should be completed by next week (12/13/15). We have also written a script to go ahead and identify these issues proactively and fix them from behind the scenes.
FYI… the “unchecking Customer Lockbox” workaround did not work for me.
Issue #2: ALL of my aliases (secondary SMTP addresses) are gone!
When I first reported this, Microsoft recommended I move back to E1, so I did. Then I noticed that ALL of my aliases are missing. Having no backup of my aliases I am stuck! Apparently in the failed provisioning process the account gets marked for other services, but not Exchange, so my mailbox is effectively deleted along with my aliases. Now this doesn’t complete hold water, because like I said above I always had access to email, so my mailbox still existed.
Workaround:
I have to run a Message Trace (under Mail Flow in the Exchange Admin Center) to see all the emails in the past 90 days that were sent to my mailbox. I’ve requested that report and I am waiting to receive it to determine if I can find at least some of the aliases.
