We are often asked the best way to create users in a hybrid environment. This article outlines the steps for creating users in a hybrid environment. It also outlines the steps for mail enabling users after the user has already been created in Active Directory on-premises. The following steps apply to both Exchange 2016 and Exchange 2013.
Creating a new user:
- Navigate to Exchange Admin Center and login with administrator credentials.
- On the left navigation select ‘recipients’. On the top navigation select ‘mailboxes’.
- Click the ‘+’ icon and select ‘Office 365 mailbox’ from the dropdown.
- In the popup, fill in the required fields and click ‘Save’.
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This will create the user in both Exchange on-premises and AD on-premises. This can be verified by navigating to the OU specified in the prior step and finding the user present.
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Initiate a delta sync or wait for the next sync cycle to complete.
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Navigate to Office 365 Admin portal. (https://portal.office.com)
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Verify that the user exists and is syncing.
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Assign license(s) to the user as needed.
If the user already exists in AD on-premises and is syncing to Office 365 perform the following steps:
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Navigate to where your Exchange Server is installed.
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Run the Exchange Management Shell as administrator.
- Edit the following command so that the display name of the user replaces ‘Display Name’, the user’s alias replaces <alias> and your Office 365 tenant name replaces <tenantname>:
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Enable-RemoteMailbox "Display Name" -RemoteRoutingAddress "<alias>@<tenantname>.mail.onmicrosoft.com"
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Once the command has been edited, run the command in the Exchange Management Shell.
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Verify that the user exists in the lists of recipients in EAC as an Office 365 mailbox type.
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Navigate to where your Azure AD Connect instance is installed, open a PowerShell instance as administrator and initiate a delta sync by running the following command: