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  3. Other Mailbox Migration Types
  4. IMAP Migrations

IMAP to G Suite (IMAP) Migration Guide

This is the complete onboarding task flow for migrating mailboxes from IMAP systems to G Suite. Due to API limitations, IMAP migrations will only migrate mail items.

There are some tools and resources that will make the migration easier. We suggest you read the following information and linked guides before you perform the migration. 

First migration?

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

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. 

Prerequisites

There are many different versions of IMAP mail systems available. For this reason, we recommend running a trial migration on one or more mailboxes before the actual full migration project. Once the trial migration is completed, check on the folder structure at the Destination to ensure that the directory structure is as desired. 

To run a trial migration, follow these steps:

  1. ​Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
  2. Click on your migration project. If you haven't created a project, create a project (following the steps laid out in the Create a Mailbox Migration Project below) and add a user to that project.
  3. Select the user for whom you wish to perform the trial migration.
  4. Click on ​Start.
  5. From the drop-down list, click on  Trial Migration .
  6. Click on Start Trial Migration.

This guide includes a folder mapping under the MigrationWiz Steps section, that will ensure that folders are mapped to the root label on the Destination mailboxes, rather than under inbox/labelname.

Licensing

Purchase and apply User Migration Bundle licenses for all the users being migrated. For this migration type, we suggest the User Migration Bundle. For questions on licensing, visit MigrationWiz Licenses.

  • User Migration Bundle Licenses have unlimited data available per license.
  • User Migration Bundle Licenses are applied to the customer's users and expire 12 months after their purchase date. 
  • Document, Personal Archive, and DeploymentPro projects are all included when using User Migration Bundle Licenses.
  • This license type must be applied manually.

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. 
  • The maximum individual file size that MigrationWiz can support is 60GB.
  • Only mail folders are migrated with this scenario. Contacts and Calendar items will need to be exported/imported manually.

Prepare the Source Environment

  1. Test connectivity to the IMAP server through our connectivity test tool. Fill in the form and click the Test button.
  2. Export the user list to a CSV file.
    • Administrator accounts with at least read rights can export a user list.
    • If you do not have an administrator account, you will need to ask your IMAP host to provide you with a complete user list, in CSV file format.
    • This CSV file will be used to bulk-add users into your MigrationWiz mailbox project.

Prepare the Destination Environment

Please review the following prerequisites before preparing your environment.

  • Enabling access is required for both G Suite mailbox and Google Drive document migration projects.
  • Mailbox migration projects require a G Suite administrator to grant access to the BitTitan client ID and scopes listed in this article.
  • Document migration projects require that a G Suite Super administrator grant access to the BitTitan client ID and scopes listed in this article and enable the API access. The steps to do this are included at the bottom of this article.

Grant MigrationWiz OAuth 2.0 Access to G Suite

BitTitan products use OAuth 2.0 to authenticate to G Suite and utilize the G Suite (IMAP) endpoint in MigrationWiz. This applies to both mailbox and document migration projects. To configure the OAuth access within your G Suite environment, follow the directions in this article.

Enabling access is required for both G Suite mailbox and Google Drive document migration projects. To access your G Suite data, it is necessary to add specifically allowed API scopes to the MigrationWiz project. 

Steps in the G Suite Admin Console

Complete these steps to grant BitTitan client ID access to the appropriate scopes:

  1. Go to https://admin.google.com and authenticate as a Super Administrator.
  2. In the admin console, go to Menu Google_Menu.png > Click Security > Access and data control > API controls> Manage Domain Wide Delegation.

    Warning

    If you do not see the security icon on your admin console home page, your account does not have the necessary rights to make these changes. 
    Google limits settings access and configuration to only G Suite Super Administrator accounts.
  3. Click Add New.
  4. Enter 113321175602709078332 into the Client ID field. 
  5. Enter the following groups of scopes into the OAuth Scopes (comma-delimited) field:
    • G Suite as the Destination (full scopes):
      https://mail.google.com/,
      https://www.google.com/m8/feeds,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive,
      https://sites.google.com/feeds/,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.settings.sharing,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.settings.basic,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts
  6. Click Authorize.

The client name is 113321175602709078332 (make sure there are no leading or trailing spaces, as this may cause the error "URL ends with an invalid top-level domain name."). This will grant BitTitan products access to the appropriate scopes. If you are migrating to multiple domains, repeat these steps for each domain.

MigrationWiz Steps

Create a Mailbox Migration project

  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.

Endpoints

Endpoints are now created through MigrationWiz, rather than through MSPComplete. The steps for this section outline how to create the endpoints in MigrationWiz.

If you are selecting an existing endpoint, keep in mind that only ten endpoints will show in the drop-down. If you have more than ten, you may need to search. 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.

You may either use existing endpoints or create new ones. 

Create a Source Endpoint

  1. Click Endpoints.
  2. Click Add Endpoint.
  3. Select IMAP.

  4. The server name should follow the format: imap.example.com

  5. Enter server port. As a general rule, the server port will be either 143 or 993 (if using SSL).

  6. If you are using SSL, add a checkmark next to Use SSL.

Create a Destination Endpoint

  1. Click Endpoints

  2. Click Add Endpoint

  3. Enter endpoint name

  4. For endpoint type, select G Suite/Gmail.

  5. It is necessary to add ALL domains that will be migrated.
    Important
    This means that if there are users in one project with domain names Sourcedomain.com and Destinationdomain.com, it is important to ensure that both are added under Your Domains when creating the endpoints. When you add a domain, you need to click the "+" button.

  6. Enter the Administrative email address. This account has an admin access level to the Google admin portal.

Add Users

Add the user accounts that will be migrated to the project. MigrationWiz allows you to bulk import mailboxes into the system.

Use the Bulk Add option, and import from the CSV file that you prepared under the Prepare the Source section of this guide. 

Bulk Add

To import one or more mailboxes once you have gathered the necessary credentials: 

  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.

Admin Account

If you have an admin account on the Source IMAP system, the format will be as follows.

Format

  • Source Email: SMTP email address.
  • Source Login Name: Consists of two combined names: the user name of the person whose email is being migrated, and the user name of the mailbox admin account. For example, for Exchange IMAP: Domain/Admin_UserName/User_UserName. The proper formats can be found here.
  • Source Password: Enter the administrator's password.

However, most IMAP systems do not support administrative credentials. The following systems support IMAP: 

  • G Suite supports OAuth authentication.
  • Some versions of Novell GroupWise support Trusted Key authentication. Click here to learn more.
  • Some versions of Exchange IMAP support admin authentication. Click here to learn more.

Admin Login Not Available

When the admin login is not available, please follow the next steps:

  1. Request credentials from each user.
  2. Reset mailboxes to use the same password (this will lock users out).
  3. Have us automatically request credentials from end users. Click here to learn more.

Requesting Credentials from Users

Enter the Source Email addresses in the Source Email column, and checkmark the I don't know the login name and password for the Source mailboxes box. Users will then be requested to provide their credentials during the migration process.

For the Destination, you only need to enter the Destination email address of each user.

Advanced Options

Support Tab

Add the following advanced options for this scenario.

  • FolderMapping="^INBOX/->" This AO maps folders to the root label on the Destination mailboxes, rather than under inbox/label name. 

Run Verify Credentials

  1. Open the Project containing items to validate.
  2. Select the items 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.

Enable AutoDiscover again, so that users can create new profiles via AutoDiscover, or use DeploymentPro to automate the configuration of new Outlook profiles. 

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.

Unexpected Extra Arguments

If errors are listed in the MigrationWiz dashboard with the following error message: "Unexpected extra arguments to Examine Context: FolderNameWithQuote", then follow the steps below to add the support option flag AllowQuoteInFolder=1 at the item level, and run retry errors. 

Steps

  1. Click the Edit Item icon to the right of the item that you wish to edit.
  2. Under the Support section, enter the support option: AllowQuoteInFolder=1
  3. Click Save Item.
  4. Select the line item in your MigrationWiz dashboard.
  5. Click Start.
  6. Retry Errors.

Outlook Configuration

If you use Microsoft Outlook with G Suite, you should follow the instructions here to download and install G Suite Sync for Outlook and create a new Outlook profile that connects to G Suite.

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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