1. BitTitan Help Center
  2. Perform a Migration
  3. Other Mailbox Migration Types
  4. GroupWise Migrations

GroupWise to Microsoft 365 Migration Guide

This is the complete onboarding task flow for migrating mailboxes from GroupWise (version 7.0 and later) to Microsoft 365. GroupWise may be running on Windows or Linux. 

There are some tools and resources that will make the migration easier. We suggest reading through the following information and linked guides before beginning your migration. 

MigrationWiz

MigrationWiz is a migration tool, not a syncing tool. If changes are made at the source after migration, they will not sync to the destination, nor will changes made at the destination sync to the source. We do not have “live” monitoring of changes (as with a sync agent) and we cannot handle scenarios such as conflict resolution without user interaction.

MigrationWiz supports the capability to share migration projects across a Workgroup. When the Project Sharing feature is turned on, all Agents besides those who are Inactive can view all migrations projects. 

First migration?

We’ve created a guide to scoping, planning, and managing the migration process for your use. If this is your first migration, we recommend reading this guide carefully.

Prerequisites

It is important to highlight and meet the following prerequisites for a smooth migration project.

Licensing

We recommend that you purchase User Migration Bundle licenses for this migration scenario. User Migration Bundle licenses allow the performance of multiple migrations with a single license. For questions on licensing, visit MigrationWiz Licenses.

To use your license by following the next steps:

  1. Purchase Licenses.
  2. Create a Customer.
  3. Apply Licenses.
  4. Review Considerations.
Purchase Licenses Create a Customer Apply Licenses Considerations

Purchase licenses by following the steps below:

  1. Sign in to your BitTitan account. 
  2. In the top navigation bar, click Purchase.
  3. Click the Select button and choose User Migration Bundle licenses.
  4. Enter the number of licenses you want to purchase. Click Buy Now.
  5. Enter a Billing address if applicable.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Review the Order Summary and enter a payment method.
  8. Click Place Your Order.

Limitations

  • We are not able to support migrations with two-factor or multifactor authentication. 
  • App passwords are not supported for the Microsoft 365 endpoint. 
  • The maximum file size for migration through MigrationWiz varies by migration type and environment, but may never exceed 60GB.

Migrated Items

Which items are migrated?

If the destination is Exchange or Office 365:

  • Inbox
  • Cabinet Folders
  • Email
  • Contacts
  • Calendars
  • Tasks

If the destination is not Exchange or Office 365:

  • Inbox
  • Folders
  • Email
Which items are not migrated?
  • Shared folders
  • Contact and Calendar items to G Suite destination(s)
  • Multi-user folders
  • Frequent contacts
  • Suggested contacts

Microsoft 365 Questions and Troubleshooting

For questions about Microsoft 365 migrations, visit our Microsoft 365 Mailbox Migrations FAQ.

Prepare the Source Environment

Enable the SOAP endpoint

Enable the SOAP endpoint on each Post Office Agent (POA).

  1. Start GroupWise ConsoleOne.
  2. Navigate to GroupWise Agent Settings.
  3. Checkmark the Enable SOAP option to enable SOAP access.
  4. If the Source environment has multiple POAs, it will be necessary to open a SOAP port (typically 7191) on each POA.

Generate the User List

This can be generated through your GroupWise ConsoleOne portal. GroupWise migrations require both the email address AND the username, e.g., email address = testuser001@mydomain.com AND username = testuser001.

Single POA

  • If there is only one POA, you will only need to generate one user list and migrate all users from one MigrationWiz mailbox project.

If there are multiple POAs and they are not linked

  • You will need to generate a user list for each POA.
  • You will then use these lists to add the users to each MigrationWiz mailbox project.
  • You will create multiple Source endpoints, one for each POA, and include the IP address of the POA as part of the GroupWise SOAP URL, under the MSPComplete section of this guide. It will follow this format: <http or https>://<IP address>:7191/soap

If there are multiple POAs and they are linked

  • You will only need to generate one user list, which should include all users from all POAs.
  • You will then use this list to add the users to a single MigrationWiz mailbox project.
  • You will create only one Source endpoint and include the external IP address of the POA as part of the GroupWise SOAP URL, under the MSPComplete section of this guide. It will follow this format: <http or https>://<IP address>:7191/soap

Credentials

  1. Create a Trusted Application Key. This is used to migrate from GroupWise using administrative credentials.
  2. Use the GroupWise graphical interface to register a Trusted Application key called "MigrationWiz".
  3. Ensure that the application name is set to "MigrationWiz."
  4. Make a note of the key value for the application key textbox. This will need to be entered under the Source endpoint in MSPComplete.
  5. For GroupWise 8 Support Pack 1 or later, use the graphical user interface tool to register trusted applications.
  6. For previous versions, use our command line tool to generate the Trusted Application Key.
    1. Go to the target GroupWise server.
    2. Log in as a GroupWise administrator.
    3. Verify the user has full access to the GroupWise domain folder.
    4. Extract zipped files to a local temporary folder.
    5. Run the EXE with the GroupWise database folder as an argument (ie., GenerateTrustedAppMigrationWizKey.exe C:\Novell\Databases).

Example:

  • C:\>GenerateTrustedAppMigrationWizKey.exe C:\Novell\Databases
  • MigrationWiz Trusted App Key Generator
  • Configuring: C:\Novell\Databases
  • Key Generated
  • Key: 865A15420BA50008B…007BCF0085003000​

If this doesn’t work in your environment

The command line tool requires the NETWIN32.DLL, which is packed by Novel Netware client. If you get the following error: “The program can’t start because NETWIN32.DLL is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem” confirm that:

  1. The GroupWise client is installed on the computer.
  2. The Novell Netware client is installed on the computer.

If these are both installed:

  1. Go to a Windows machine.
  2. Log in as a GroupWise administrator.
  3. Mount a drive letter to the remote target GroupWise server (for example, net use X: \\GW-Server\c$ /u:Administrator).
  4. Follow the previously outlined steps using X:\Novell\Databases instead.

Prepare the Destination Environment

Modern Authentication Requirements

The steps listed in the Required Permission for Performing M365 Mailbox and Archive Migrations article apply to both the source and destination tenant when they are Exchange Online, in regards to Exchange Web Services (EWS) in the mailbox, and archive mailbox. Use a Global Administrator for the configuration steps.

Please review the documentation before preparing the source.

Set Up User Accounts

Set up user accounts on the destination Office 365 tenant and assign licenses. These can be created in several ways. (The following links are to external articles.)

Create an Administrator Account

Create an administrator account in Microsoft 365 to be used for migration or use the global admin account for the tenant. The administrator account must have full access to the user mailboxes, have the required API Permissions, or be granted impersonation rights.

We recommend adding the necessary API permissions to the Modern Authentication app you are using for your O365 mailbox or archive mailbox endpoint, to do so, follow the steps outlined in this guide. This is the suggested method by BitTitan.

However, you can still use the BitTitan impersonation approach but consider that this method will be deprecated soon since Microsoft is phasing out RBAC Application Impersonation in Exchange Online.

Test Administrator Access

Test that the administrator can access user mailboxes.
Test access to the tenantname.onmicrosoft.com addresses, not to the domainname.com addresses. Make sure that the tenantname.onmicrosoft.com account is attached to each mailbox in Microsoft 365. By default, it should be attached, but if not, it will need to be added as an alias to each account. This can be done through the Microsoft 365 admin portal or via PowerShell scripts. 

Prepare the Tenant to Send and Receive Large Items

We do not impose any limit on item/attachment sizes. However, large items/attachments can fail to migrate because of external factors.  There are two considerations:​

  1. What is the maximum attachment size allowed by the Destination system? 
    • ​Most email systems impose size limits. For example, if the Destination system has a 30MB limit, any item/attachment larger than 30MB will fail to migrate.
  2. What is the connection timeout for the Source and Destination system? 
    • ​​For security reasons, most email systems close opened connections after a predetermined amount of time. For example, if the Destination system only has 512Kbps of network bandwidth and closes connections after 30 seconds, we may be unable to transfer large items/attachments before the connection is closed.

MigrationWiz will automatically make multiple attempts to migrate large items. Upon completion of a migration, you may resubmit it in error retry mode to try to migrate failed items. This is always free of charge.

When migrating from or to Office 365 use the steps provided here to increase the Max Send and Max Recieve quotas, Change message size limits in Office 365.

MigrationWiz Steps

Create a Mailbox Migration Project

If there are multiple Post Office Agents (POAs) that are not linked, you will create multiple Mailbox Migration Projects and match the Source endpoint to the project that corresponds to the users on the POA.

  1. Click the Go to My Projects button.
  2. Click the Create Project button.
  3. Click on the type of project that you wish to create. For this migration:
    • Mailbox: Mailbox projects are used to migrate the contents of the primary user mailbox from the previous environment to the new environment. Most mailbox migrations can migrate email, calendars, and contacts.

For mailbox migrations, use administrative credentials to access mailboxes. In most migration scenarios, the admin account needs to have full access rights to the Source mailboxes. 

  1. Click Next Step.
  2. Enter a Project name and select a Customer.
  3. Click Next Step.
  4. Select your endpoints previously created or follow the steps below to create new ones.
  5. Click Save and Go to Summary.

Endpoints

Endpoints are created through MigrationWiz. If you select an existing endpoint from the dropdown, it will only show ten endpoints. If you have more than ten, you may need to search it.

Consider that endpoint search is case and character-specific. For example, Cust0mer will not show up if the search is customer. We recommend keeping a list of endpoints you have created, along with any unique spellings or capitalization you may have used.

Create your Endpoints

Please review the following tabs to create your destination and source endpoints.

Source Endpoint Destination Endpoint

Create your source endpoint by following the next steps:

  1. Click New.
  2. Name endpoint.
  3. Select type GroupWise 7+.
  4. Enter the GroupWise SOAP URL.
  5. Click the Provide Credentials radio button and enter the Trusted Key for the Trusted Application Key that was set up under the "Prepare the Source Environment" section of this guide.
  6. Click Add.
  7. Click Next Step.

Important

If multiple Post Office Agents (POAs) are not linked, create separate Source endpoints for each POA.

Application (client) ID, Directory (tenant) ID, and Client Secret

For Microsoft 365 Mailbox and Archive migrations, MigrationWiz adds the Application (client) ID, Directory (tenant) ID, and Client Secret fields.

While the Application (client) ID and the Directory (tenant) ID are mandatory, the Client Secret field is not. It will depend on the permissions of the user account that performs the migration. Please review the following information before the creation of your M365 endpoints.

For more information about how to get the Application (client) ID and Directory (tenant) ID values from the Application Registration, please review step 3 of this article.

Region of Destination Tenant

MigrationWiz displays a dropdown to select the Preferred Region of the Tenant at the destination endpoint. This value updates the Preferred Region of the Destination Tenant field in the project's Advanced Options, and vice versa. You will notice that both values are always the same.

The Region of Destination Tenant feature optimizes the migration performance and speed when choosing the region closest to the destination tenant.

Tip

You can find the region of your destination tenant directly in the Microsoft Entra admin center by going to Identity > Overview > Properties, and using the Country or region or the Data location.

Country or region.png

For more information on this topic, review this article.

Warning

If you do not complete this field you will not be able to save your project and the “This field cannot be left blank.” error will appear.

Endpoint Validation

Once the information has been provided for both, the source and destination endpoint, and the customer selects Save and Go to Summary, MigrationWiz performs an endpoint validation check.

This validation tests the administrator credentials entered into the project and the Modern Authentication setup only. If there is an issue, the screen redirects to the endpoint and provides an error message or flyout that can be selected for more information regarding the error.

Common Errors when Configuring Your Endpoint

For more information, review the AADSTS700016, AADSTS90002, and ADDSTS50126 issues on the Common Errors Using Modern Authentication page.

Add Users

Add the user accounts that will be migrated to the project. This may be done in several ways, depending on the size of the project. Steps for each option are in the accordion below, simply click to show the option you select and follow the guidance there.

GroupWise migrations require both the email address AND the username, e.g., email address = testuser001@mydomain.com AND username = testuser001.

Small Migrations

For small migrations, it is easy to add users one at a time using Quick Add. The steps for this are below. 

Larger Migrations

For larger migrations, we recommend either using the Autodiscover (if supported) or Bulk Add option.

Quick Add
This option allows you to add items one at a time. To do so, you only have to provide an email address if you entered administrative credentials when setting up the project. If you did not, enter the following user information:
  • An email address
  • Login name
  • Password
  • Mailbox Status
Bulk Add

Bulk Add uses a CSV containing the source and destination email addresses for the users to add the users to the project. If migrating only a specific group from a tenant, we recommend using the Bulk Add option.

MigrationWiz allows you to bulk import mailboxes into the system.

To import one or more mailboxes:

  1. Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
  2. Select the Project for which you want to perform the bulk import.
  3. Click on Add .
  4. Click on Bulk Add .
  5. Follow the instructions on the page.
Autodiscover

​The Autodiscover process within MigrationWiz can be used to discover items from the Source environment so that they can be imported into your projects.

There are a few requirements for this to work:

  • The Source has to be Exchange 2007 or later.
  • The endpoint on the Source needs to use admin credentials.
  • For mailbox migration projects, the admin account that is specified within the Source endpoint needs to have a mailbox associated with it.
  • The admin mailbox must be listed in the public Global Address List (GAL).

One additional item to note here is that there is no way to restrict the IP addresses that the connection will come from.  This means that the steps outlined in our IP Lockdown guide will not apply here.  If your environment requires that any IP addresses be whitelisted, it is recommended that items be added to your project using one of the other available options.

Autodiscover of items will not work while using Modern Authentication

Autodiscovery exposes the following items:

  • For mailbox migration, autodiscovery will list all mailboxes at the Source.

Steps to Run Autodiscover

  1. Navigate to the project you want to import users into.

  2. Ensure that you have created an endpoint for the source project.

  3. Once in the project, on the top navigation bar, click on the Add drop-down, then select Autodiscover Items. This will begin the Autodiscover process.

  4. Once discovered, click on the Import button, to import the items into your MigrationWiz project.

Advanced Options

Support Tab

  • Folder mapping: FolderMapping=”^Cabinet->Inbox”. This will map folders under the cabinet subfolder on GroupWise, to the Inbox on the Destination.

Default Options for Microsoft 365 Endpoints

By default, some fields are view-only. In other words, you cannot edit or remove them from the support options page. To edit them, you need to edit the source or destination endpoint of your project.

Among these default options, you can find ModernAuthClientIdExport, ModernAuthTenantIdExport, ModernAuthClientSecretExport, ModernAuthClientIdImport, ModernAuthTenantIdImport, and ModernAuthClientSecretImport. 

The support options above are required when configuring your endpoint.

Important

Keep in mind that the ModernAuthClientSecretExport and the ModernAuthClientSecretImport support options are text-masked.

Warning

You cannot update the default Advanced Options, in case you try to modify or add new ones the following message arises.
Duplicate Support Option.png

Performance Tab

  • Set Maximum concurrent migrations. We recommend setting this to a very low value, such as 10, to ensure that server utilization does not go above 80%. If the Source server has enough server resources, set this parameter based on the bandwidth guideline of three (3) mailboxes per 1Mbps of bandwidth. Therefore, for example, if there is a 10Mbps connection, we recommend setting the maximum concurrent migrations parameter to 30. If the Source server has very few available server resources (e.g., it is running low on memory or it has very high CPU utilization), we recommend setting this value to a lower number to avoid overwhelming the Source server with requests.

Source/Destination Tab

  • Set to use impersonation at Destination. Check the Use impersonation at Destination box. 

Run Verify Credentials

  1. Open the Project containing items you wish to validate.
  2. Select the items you wish to validate.
  3. Click on the Start button in your dashboard.
  4. Select Verify Credentials from the drop-down list.

Once complete, the results of the verification will be shown in the Status section.​ 

Notify Users

Notify users that a migration is occurring. Send an email to all users telling them the time and date of the migration.

Run Migration

Pre-Stage pass

  1. Select the users you wish to migrate.
  2. Click the Start button from the top.
  3. Select Pre-Stage Migration.
  4. Under the Migration Scheduling section, from the drop-down list, select 90 days ago.
  5. Click Start Migration.

MX Record Cutover

Change over MX records on the DNS provider's portal. Also, include the AutoDiscover (CName) setting.

Notify users

Send an email to end users to let them know what to expect for their Outlook profile reconfiguration. Samples and screenshots can be found in our DeploymentPro documentation.

Full (Delta) pass

  1. Select the users.
  2. Click the Start button from the top.
  3. Select Full Migration.
  4. Click Start Migration.

Run Retry Errors

Look through the user list and click any red "failed migration" errors. Review the information and act accordingly.

If problems persist, contact Support.

Request Statistics

Click the pie chart icon in the MigrationWiz dashboard to receive an email containing all the project migration statistics.

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