G Suite (IMAP) to G Suite (IMAP) Migration Guide

This migration guide will walk through the complete setup and migration process for a G Suite (IMAP) to G Suite (IMAP) migration. There are a number of additional tools and resources that will also be helpful for this process. These are linked throughout the migration guide. 

First migration?

If this is your first time performing a migration, we have created a Migration Planning & Strategy Guide to walk you through planning, set-up, and general migration best practices.

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

Please consider and meet the following prerequisites for a smooth migration project.

  • Migrating from a G Suite/Gmail endpoint requires an administrator email address that matches the end user domain.
  • All accounts being migrated must have an Active status at the tenant. Users with an Inactive status will not be able to fully migrate and will fail in the project.

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

  • App password usage, MFA/2FA, and ADFS are not supported for the migration service accounts being used for this migration scenario.
  • The maximum file size for migration through MigrationWiz varies by migration type and environment, but may never exceed 60GB.
  • Some item types are not migrated. Please review them in the section below.

Besides, Consider the following limitations related to this type of migration: 

  • When migrating from G Suite as a source, contacts in Contact Groups (which look like subfolders of the Contacts folder) will migrate to the top-level contacts folder on the destination. Folders will be created for each group but the contacts will not be sorted into those folders.
  • Calendars can have multiple Owners. An Owner is anyone with "Make changes and manage sharing" permissions, so shared calendars will be migrated to users with these permissions by default.

G Suite Specifics

OAuth administrative credentials will not function properly with G Suite for Business Legacy free accounts, G Suite Legacy free accounts, or Google Apps Legacy free accounts. Unfortunately, migration of Google Legacy free accounts is not supported. For additional G Suite-specific details, see our Gmail/G Suite Migration FAQs article.

Migrated Items

Please click the bars below to check the migrated and non-migrated items. We are constantly working to create a better migration experience for you so these items may change over time.

Which items are migrated?

Always Migrated

  • Inbox
  • Folders/Labels
  • Email
  • Muted Email (as regular email)
  • Contacts
  • Calendars (including links for Google Hangouts within calendar meetings)
  • Calendar Notifications 

Links for Google Hangouts are a new default feature added to Google Meetings. Microsoft 365 doesn't have the corresponding property to map. Therefore, when migrating to Microsoft 365, the links for Google Hangouts are added to the beginning of the meeting description body text on Microsoft 365.

With Google API Endpoint at Source

With this endpoint, all items listed above migrate as before. However, utilizing the API endpoint enables migration of the following items as well. The following items are not migrated via the IMAP endpoint. 

  • Google Categories (Category flags, i.e. Social, Promotions, Updates, Forums)
  • Snoozed and Scheduled emails - these are migrated like regular emails to custom destination labels. Their properties are not migrated.
Which items are not migrated?

Not Migrated in Any Instance

  • Calendar Reminders.
  • Google Spaces.
  • Google Spaces Chats.
  • Appointments.
  • Chat message attachments.
  • Google Groups for Business (including forums and collaborative inboxes).

Not Migrated As Source

  • Calendar Attachments.
  • Calendar Reminders.
  • Tasks.
  • Chats and chat history.
  • Google Categories (i.e., the Google category flags: Social, Promotions, Updates, Forums).
  • Email attachments that are links to Google Drive.
  • Some calendar colors.
  • Automatic Replies (Out of Office Messages).
  • Mailbox Rules.
  • Personal Folder and Calendar Permissions.

Important

All color category meta tags are transferred over, but Microsoft 365 does not have direct color mappings from Google G Suite, so certain colors do not get mapped over, thus the colors are not displayed in Microsoft 365 for the calendar entries.

Not Migrated As Destination

  • Calendar Attachments.
  • Exceptions of recurring appointments.
  • Google Groups for Business (including forums and collaborative inboxes).

For additional features and limitations, please visit MigrationWiz: Migrated and Not Migrated Items.

Preparing the Source 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.

Create Users on G Suite

Google provides clear, step-by-step guidance for this project. Follow these steps and then move to the next step listed below.

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. In order 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. Note that these scopes are for the source only. The destination scopes are found below.
    • G Suite as the Source (read-only scopes):
      https://mail.google.com/,
      https://www.google.com/m8/feeds,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.readonly,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group.readonly,
      https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user.readonly,
      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.other.readonly
  6. Click Authorize.

The client's name is 113321175602709078332. This will grant BitTitan products access to the appropriate scopes.

More than One Domain?

If you are migrating from multiple domains, repeat these steps for each domain.

Enable IMAP

Ensure IMAP access is enabled for all users. For details on how to check this, refer to the Google support article here.

Enable Folder Size Limits

  1. Ensure the folder size limits on IMAP folders have been removed for all users. For each user:
  2. Click the gear icon.
  3. Click Settings.
  4. Select Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
  5. Select Folder Size Limits.
  6. Select the radio button for Do not limit the number of messages in an IMAP folder (default). This is an end-user setting, which can only be set on a per-user basis. Therefore, we recommend that you send instructions to your end users to check this setting.

Export mailboxes to CSV file(s)

From the Google Admin portal:

  1. Click Users.
  2. Click ⁝ (3 vertical dots).
  3. Download Users.
  4. Download All Users.
  5. Click OK.
  6. Save.

Preparing the Destination Environment

The steps for preparing the destination are identical to the steps for preparing the source, with the exception of the scopes. Follow the directions above to set up your destination, but substitute the following block of scopes for the source scopes above, then continue setting up your destination according to the Prepare the Source instructions. 

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

MigrationWiz Steps

Create a Mailbox Migration Project

  1. From the MigrationWiz dashboard, click Go To My Projects.

  2. Click Create Project.

  3. Select a Mailbox migration type. 

  4. Click Next Step.

  5. Enter a project name and select a Customer from the list.
    • If the customer hasn’t already been created, you can do so now.
    • To create a new Customer, click New, provide the required details including Primary Email Domain and Company Name, and click Save.
  6. Click Next Step.
  7. Select or create your source and destination endpoints
  8. Click Save and Go to Summary.

Endpoints

The steps for this section outline how to create the endpoints in MigrationWiz. If you select an existing endpoint, remember 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 your Endpoints

Source Endpoint Destination Endpoint

Create your source endpoint by following the next steps:

  1. Click New.
  2. Type any name you want for the endpoint.
  3. Select G Suite/Gmail from the source endpoint type dropdown list.

    Stop!

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

  4. Enter the Administrative email address. This is the account that has an admin access level to the Google admin portal.
  5. Click Add.
  6. 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 Admin Console by navigating to Data > Compliance > Data Regions.
For more information about the region of your destination tenant review the Choosing the Region of the Destination Tenant article, where you can find the recommended ways to verify it.

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.

Advanced Options

Support Tab

Under Support/Support options, add:

  • StoreOverflowGooglePropertiesInNotes=1 
  • StoreOverflowGooglePropertiesInNotesPrefix="enter your text here" 

Performance Tab

Set the Maximum concurrent migrations value.

  • The default value is 100. For cloud-to-cloud migrations, this value can be set to a very high number, such as 500, because both the Source and Destination environments can handle a large number of concurrent migrations.

Filtering Tab

Under Filtering, add: (^All Mail$|^All Mail/)

  • This will filter out the All Mail label from your migration passes. It will also speed up your migration passes.
  • You will remove this folder filter before performing your final migration pass. These steps are included later in this section.

Launch the Migration

The following sections will guide you through setting up and launching your migration. Each header is one step, with its component steps below. Follow these steps in order, and read the notes for important information about dependencies or best practices.

Run Verify Credentials

  1. Open the Project containing items 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.
  5. Once complete, the results of the verification will be shown in the Status section.

Notify Users

Send out the final notification that the migration is beginning. Include when the migration will start, the expected duration, any usage instructions during migration, and any expected steps or notifications for the post-migration timeline.

If using DeploymentPro, refer to this article for some sample text and screenshots that can be included in this email.

Pre-Stage Pass

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

MX Record Cutover

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

If mail coexistence is required, you must set up mail forwards against those user accounts that are in the migration batches. Google documentation explains how: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10957

If you are migrating in batches, you will not be cutting over the MX records until your final batch of users has been migrated.

Run Full (Delta) Pass Migration

  1. Select the users – you may either select individual users or all users in a project by clicking the checkbox to the left of the Source Email.
  2. Click the Start button from the top
  3. Select Full Migration. If you want to delay your migration, then select the checkbox marked "Automatically start the migration at", and enter the date and time to have the migration start. To start a migration immediately, you do not need to select the scheduling option.
  4. Click Start Migration

Run Retry Errors

Each error logged represents an item that was not migrated. MigrationWiz contains a mode in which you can resubmit the migration to retry failed items. This mode of operation is always free of charge. You may only submit mailboxes in this mode only if they satisfy all of the following conditions:

  1. The last migration was completed successfully.
  2. The mailbox contains at least one error.

If your mailbox does not satisfy these conditions, you will receive a warning when submitting the migration in this mode and your request will not be fulfilled.

To submit one or more mailboxes in retry mode, perform the following steps:

  1. Click the Go To My Projects button.
  2. Select the project that contains the mailboxes that you want to retry.
  3. Select the mailboxes that have migration errors.
  4. Click on the Start button.
  5. Select Retry Errors from the menu.
  6. Click the Retry Errors button.

When errors are repaired, they will disappear from the error log. Some errors may not disappear if the Source item was not reprocessed (due to filters, for example), has been deleted or moved, or if the item failed again.

Run Final Full Migration Pass

  1. Under Project Advanced Options, navigate to the filtering section.
  2. Delete: (^All Mail$|^All Mail/).
  3. Select the users.
  4. Click the Start button from the top, and select Full Migration.
  5. Click Start Migration.

Post Migration

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

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