SharePoint Online to SharePoint Online GCC High Migration Guide

This is the complete workflow for migrating from SharePoint Online to SharePoint Online GCC High. The source must be SharePoint Online and the destination must be SharePoint Online for GCC High. SharePoint On-Premise is not supported

First migration?

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

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 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

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

Licensing

The SharePoint Online to SharePoint Online document migration is supported by the Shared Document License or Flex Collaboration licenses.

  • Both licenses Shared Document 50GB or Shared Document 100GB can be utilized.
  • Each license allows up to the maximum quantity of data it permits to be migrated per Site.
  • If more than 100GB of data per Site is being migrated, purchase enough licenses to cover the total data being migrated. For example, if you have six Sites and two have 200GB of embedded data you must purchase eight licenses. 
  • Flex Collaboration licenses are good for up to 100 GB per license.
Purchase 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 the license type you need.
  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

Please consider the following information before performing this type of migration.

  • We are not able to support migrations with two-factor or multifactor authentication. 
  • App password usage, MFA/2FA, and ADFS are not supported for the migration admin account/service account being used by this endpoint.
  • Due to limitations on connections allowed by GoDaddy, we do not support migrating to or from GoDaddy using this migration type.
  • GCC High document type migrations do not support migrating Versions and Metadata. Due to versioning enabled in the destination, storage usage in SharePoint/OneDrive may be increased when migrating with permissions.

Document Properties Limitation

Microsoft Word document properties in Content Controls are not retained at the destination after migration. References to custom metadata values within a document appear broken after being migrated to the destination document library. This is a Microsoft limitation and can be replicated by copying a basic document to a new document library within the same tenant without using MigrationWiz. 

We have provided a workaround for this issue

Preparing the Source Environment

Save Library Templates

This step is only required when applying templates from your Source libraries to your Destination libraries.

BitTitan uses app-based authentication for commercial SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, Microsoft 365 Groups (Documents), and Teams endpoints. This provides greater security and reduces the potential of Microsoft throttling. It replaces the previous Microsoft 365 authentication, which has been subject to increased throttling by Microsoft. This app-based authentication method is specific for Microsoft 365 tenants. Using this option, including steps for uninstalling, can be found outlined here: App-based authentication using Application Permissions for SharePoint and OneDrive Migrations

Enable app-based Authentication Permissions

  1. Ensure you are signed in as a Global Admin.
  2. Go to MigrationWiz-SharePoint-FullControl and consent to the app access when prompted. Once you click on Accept, you will be redirected to the BitTitan login page. This is normal and the page can be closed.

  3. Create a new security group named MigrationWiz in the Office 365 Admin Portal. (The name of the security group must be an exact match)

  4. Create a new user that is not having data migrated in the project. This account does not require any administrator roles to be assigned. (If you already have an existing user, that should be fine) This user must have a SharePoint/OneDrive license applied.

  5. Add the new (or existing) user to the previously created security group as a Member (Adding as an Owner will not work here).

  6. Create MigrationWiz project.

  7. When creating the source and destination endpoints, enter the user credentials used in step 4 that correspond with the endpoint to which the user belongs.

  8. Add the support option UseApplicationPermissionAtSource=1 to the advanced options of the MigrationWiz project under Support Options.

Steps to remove these permissions are provided below in the Post-Migration section.  

Prepare Destination Environment

  1. Create a SharePoint Online administrator or Site Collection administrator account for the migration, or use the global admin account for the tenant. More information about these can be found here.
  2. Create SharePoint site libraries and schema. Make a note of the site URL where the document libraries are stored. This will be entered when creating your MSPComplete Destination endpoint.
  3. Before beginning the migration project, create the structure of the document libraries and the current document libraries on the Destination SharePoint Online site. Refer to this Microsoft training video for more information on the steps of the Create your document library article.
  4. Optionally, you can apply Source library templates to your Destination library if you want to maintain the same look and feel.

Enable Delegated App Permissions

GCC High endpoints require using delegated permissions. The easiest approach is to use the global administrator account, set up at the time of tenant creation. However, you can create a new user account if you do not wish to use this global admin account during migration. This new account will then need to have a license assigned including OneDrive for Business and be granted either Global Administrator permissions or SharePoint Administrator privileges.

Important

We strongly recommend you use an administrator account that is not one of the migrated users as it can cause issues with missing shared permissions.

Process

  1. Create a user in Microsoft 365 and assign a license that includes SharePoint Online. For step-by-step instructions, see the Microsoft article Add users and assign licenses at the same time.
  2. Grant the new user Global Administrator permissions or SharePoint Administrator rights in Microsoft 365.
  3. Grant Site Collection Administrator privileges to the target SharePoint sites in the destination that are being migrated in the project. 
  4. Ensure that the administrator account is not set to use MFA, 2FA, or app password.
  5. Go to MigrationWiz-SharePoint-Delegated for GCC High tenants (This will install the app via login at https://login.microsoftonline.us) and consent to the app access when prompted. Once you click on Accept, you will be redirected to the BitTitan login page. This is normal and the page can be closed.
  6. Add the support option UseApplicationPermissionAtDestination=0 to the advanced options of the MigrationWiz project under Support Options.

After you perform these steps, the specified user will be visible in the Microsoft 365 administrator center. Full provisioning of the user account can take up to 24 hours.

MigrationWiz Steps

Create a Document Project

Document migrations will maintain the folder hierarchy from the source to the destination.

  1. Log in to MigrationWiz.
  2. Click the Go to My Projects button.
  3. Click the Create Project button.
  4. Select the Document project type. 
  5. Click Next Step.
  6. Enter a Project name and select a Customer.
  7. Click Next Step.
  8. Select endpoints or follow the steps below to create new endpoints. 
  9. Click Save Project.

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 and any unique spellings or capitalization you may have used.

You may either use existing endpoints or create new ones. 

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. Enter endpoint name.
  3. For the endpoint type, select SharePoint.
  4. Enter the Site Collection URL for the top-level SharePoint document library, in other words, the site URL displayed in the SharePoint Admin Center.
  5. Enter the administrator username and password in the fields. This must be either a Global administrator, SharePoint Online administrator, or a Site Collection administrator account.
  6. Click Add
  7. Click Next Step.

Region of Destination Tenant

The Region of Destination Tenant feature optimizes the migration performance and speed by choosing the region closest to the destination tenant. MigrationWiz displays a dropdown that allows you to select the destination region when configuring your destination endpoint

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. In case you need the multi-geo information you can refer to 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.

Add Users

Adding the accounts (items) that will be migrated to the project, does not require the whole URL, just the library's name. The library field for both Source and Destination should contain the text at the end of the site URLs. This field is case-sensitive and may be different from the current name set for the Document Library. The examples below help explain this:

  • If the document library is named "Documents" and the URL is listed as "xxxxxx.sharepoint.com/sites/SiteName/Documents/", enter Documents as the document library name.
  • If your document library is named "Documents" but the URL says "xxxxxx.sharepoint.com/sites/SiteName/Shared%Documents/", then the name of the document library that needs to be entered is Shared Documents.

‘/' characters are not supported in the destination library name. Attempting to migrate any destination library with a '/' character will result in a migration failure.

Advanced Options

The following sections describe the tabs available for Advanced Options in this migration.

Support Tab

Consider that each Support Option includes the "=" character and must be located in the Support Options section of the Support tab.

Add blank fields for new Support Options by clicking the "+" button. In case you want to delete a field click the trash can icon.

AO Support Tab.jpg

Support Options

  • UseAsynchronousMetadataRead=1 This is required for SharePoint Online and requires the administrator account to be a Site Administrator or better.
  • OneDriveProImportEnvironment=AzureUSGovernment If migrating to a GCC High US Government Tenant.

Run the Migration

Full 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.

Post Migration

Decommission the Source SharePoint server, libraries, or user accounts to prevent users from inadvertently using the Source SharePoint libraries.

Remove the Authentication App

To remove the BitTitan Enterprise app, perform the following steps:

You can remove the Authentication App in Entra Center.

  1. Sign in to Microsoft Entra admin center.
  2. Go to Identity > Applications > Enterprise applications, in the left bar of the window.
  3. In the Manage section, select All applications, look for the application permission you configured (MigrationWiz-SharePoint-Delegated or MigrationWiz-SharePoint-FullControl), and select it.
  4. Go to Manage > Properties, and select Delete from the properties bar.
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