If you have some experience with BPOS or the Office 365 Beta, you know there’s a tool called DirSync that allows you to synchronize your Active Directory with Microsoft’s Online Services. During a course last week, I was asked if you can use DirSync temporarily to sync users, contacts and groups and, after migration, turn it off.
In BPOS, you can certainly do the above and essentially use DirSync as just a migration tool. It is in fact the easiest way to load users, contacts and groups into BPOS if you don’t mind setting up the software. When you turn off DirSync in the BPOS Administration website, all synchronized users become normal users which means their properties become editable. Turning off DirSync is done from the Migration / Directory Synchronization tab:
In Office 365, it’s a totally different story because DirSync is intended as a tool for permanent coexistence. As a result, you will not find a Disable button in the UI and there’s also no PowerShell cmdlet to turn it off. If you just want to migrate your users, contacts and distribution groups to Office 365 you should use other means such as CSV, PowerShell, etc…
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