BitTitan and MigrationWiz support three primary migration strategies: Big Bang, Pre-stage, and Quick-switch. Each is appropriate for specific migration scenarios depending on the workload, size of the migration, and time span over which the migration can (or should) take place. Deciding which of the three to use depends on factors related to your migration workload, as well as the size of your migration and other factors.

We will not delete or alter anything at the Source. The migration process is similar to a copy process (not a move process). In addition, we will access items at the Source in such a way that unread items will not be marked as read.

We also offer trial migrations, which are often suggested to test your throttling, bandwidth, and source/destination compatibilities. 

Delta Migration

A Delta Migration allows the resubmission of a mailbox in order to perform a differential migration pass. MigrationWiz will automatically find data that hasn't yet been migrated, and migrate only that. In other words, a Delta Pass will find and migrate residual data. In most cases, a Delta Pass will complete much faster than the initial pass.

A Delta Migration allows for the performance of an initial migration and then follows up with a background pass. For example, if there is a lot of data to migrate, limited bandwidth, and the need to switch users to a new email system as quickly as possible. Perform a first pass to migrate only the last 180 days of data, and switch users to the new system. Later, follow up with another pass to migrate the rest of the data in the background.

A Delta Migration also allows for a pre-stage of the data to minimize risk if there is a hard deadline for the migration to finish by.

It is possible for the Source email system to receive new email while the migration is in progress. It is also possible for the Source email system to continue receiving new email long after switching MX records (due to DNS replication delays). A Delta Migration is a great way to migrate residuals.​

The Delta pass performs summary date retrieval on all items, in order to determine which items have previously been migrated (using watermarks) and which items still need to be migrated during the Delta pass.

Therefore, even if 95% of the data has been migrated during earlier passes, the Delta pass still requires the full summary date retrieval process to be run, prior to migrating the remainder of the items. Yes, the time for completion will be much shorter than the previous pass but, due to the summary date retrieval process, it may take longer than anticipated if your calculations are based purely on the number of items to be migrated.

In addition, if a mailbox has folders with very large number of items, for example over 10,000 items, this will increase the time spent on summary date retrieval and hence increase the time for Delta pass completion.

MigrationWiz may record very slow migration speeds during a Delta pass, because the speed will be recorded as the amount of data that is migrated over the entire time of migration, which, again, includes the time spent on summary date retrieval.

Example scenario:

• A mailbox has one million items.
• There are only five new items since the last migration pass, totaling 1MB of data.
• An Advanced Option date filter has been configured to migrate data for only the last 3 days.

Recorded speed:

This would be equal to the amount of data migrated over the time that is taken for summary date retrieval, plus the amount of time taken to migrate the five new items. If the summary date retrieval took 59 minutes and the migration of the five items (1MB data) took one minute, then the recorded speed would be 1MB/hour.

For this reason, Delta passes with very few migrated items often record very low performance numbers, such as 0.25MB/hour.

If migration performance is poor due to throttling, bandwidth, capacity or any other reason, you can plan your migration as follows:

1. Migrate all calendars, contacts, tasks.
2. Migrate emails for the last X days.
3. Switch users to their new system.
4. Migrate the remaining data in the background.

Trial Migration

A Trial Migration will migrate a very small amount of data in order to test that the project has been created and configured properly, as well as that the users have been entered into the project correctly. It is completely free and can be performed an unlimited number of times. It is also possible to perform the migration of a single mailbox with the use of a paid license. Instructions for this process are below. 

Each Trial Migration will perform the following:

• Verify Credentials at both the source and destination.
• Create the entire folder hierarchy on the destination, based on what is defined at the source.
• Migrate only up to 10 items in each folder and a total of 5MB of data.

Important: In Public Folder migrations the Trial Migration only scans the current folder and does not scan sub-folders.  No data is migrated, nor is an error message shown.  Barring connectivity errors, the Trial Migration for Public Folder migrations will show a Completed status.

To run a Trial Migration, follow these steps:

Trial Migrate a Full Mailbox

If you are interested in performing a trial migration of an entire mailbox, we suggest you purchase a single mailbox migration license and try for yourself. We have no minimum purchase requirements and allow you to purchase a single license instantly with your credit card. Information on purchasing and applying our licenses can be found in MigrationWiz Licenses.

For this process, we also suggest using the migration guide relevant to your source and destination. 

Document Migrations

Big Bang migration

A Big Bang migration strategy is recommended for most small document migration projects. It is also recommended for high-bandwidth migration scenarios, such as Google Drive to Microsoft OneDrive migrations, since it is possible to migrate many users with a large number of documents and data in a short amount of time.

Inform users that the migration is occurring at a certain time/date and that they should not attempt to modify their documents while the migration is in progress. Perform a Big Bang migration and migrate all documents with no date filters. You can select in your project's Advanced Options to automatically send an email to the user when the migration completes successfully.  It is important to note here that the users will not actually lose access to their files during the Migration.  They would still be able to access and update their files, but should be discouraged from doing so in order to prevent the changes from being lost.

It is possible to modify the text of this email by editing the text under Customize Notification Email in Advanced Options.

Quick-Switch Migration - File Server

This Quick-Switch Migration strategy is a good solution for file server migrations, and other migration types where the migration speeds are typically slower, and thus users will quickly need access to their most recent documents, prior to migrating the remainder of the documents.  A sample migration plan  for this is below

1. Set a date filter, in Advanced Options, to migrate only documents that have a Last Modified date newer than three months ago (or whatever date is desired.
2. Run a first Full Migration pass.  This will migrate the newest files over to your destination so that your users can start using them right away.
3. Remove the original date filter from the project's Advanced Options, and add a new date filter. This new date filter should be set to migrate only items older than three months ago. (Or whatever date was specified).
4. Run a second Full Migration pass. This will migrate everything that was not migrated in the original pass.

During the first pass, users need to be informed that a migration is occurring and that they should not modify documents while it is in progress. It is recommended to select the option to, upon completion, send a successful migration email notification to the users, under the MigrationWiz project's Advanced Options. This email should be customized so that it includes the following information:

• How to access documents on the new Destination.
• An explanation that a first migration pass has been completed. This first pass only includes documents newer than three months (or whatever was set using the date filter).
• An explanation that a second migration pass will follow, in which all the remaining older documents will be migrated, and a further email will be sent upon completion of this second pass.
• A link to any training material about how to use the new Destination document platform.
• Your trusted company name.
• Your email signature.

During the second pass it is recommended to select the option to, upon completion, send a successful migration email notification to the users, under MigrationWiz project's Advanced Options. This email should also be customized so that it includes the following information:

• An announcement that their migration has now completed.
• Your trusted company name.
• Your email signature.

Quick Switch migration - Documents

A Quick-Switch Migration strategy requires working with the project level Advanced Option date filters and performing two migration passes.

Below are the exact steps to follow.

Pass 1:

1. ​Click ​Edit Project, click Advanced Options ​and, under Filtering, checkmark the box Only migrate items whose create date is after a specified date.
2. Set this date to three (3) months prior to the current date (or whatever date is decided to be the cut-off date filter). Also, we recommend to set hours/minutes to be: 0:0.
3. Click the Save Options button (at the bottom right-hand corner of the dashboard).
4. Select the check box to select all items.
5. With items selected, click the Start button.
6. From the drop-down list, click Full Migration.
7. Click the Start Migration button.

 Pass 2:

1. ​Click Edit Project, click Advanced Options, ​and under Filtering, deselect the check box Only migrate items whose create date is after a specified date.

2. Then select the check box Only migrate items whose create date is before a specified date.

3. Set this date to three (3) months prior to the current date (or whatever date is decided to be the cutoff date filter). Also, we recommend setting the hours/minutes to be: 0:0.
4. Click the Save Options button (in the bottom right-hand corner of the dashboard).
5. Select the check box to select all items.
6. With items selected, click the Start button.
7. From the drop-down list, click Full Migration.
8. Click the Start Migration button.

Shared document permissions

When people are working together on projects, they tend to share documents and folders with each other. You will typically want these permissions and shares to be migrated as well. 

The following steps are applicable to SharePoint, OneDrive, and Google Workspace document migrations. 

To ensure these items are migrated successfully, there are a few requirements to work through before starting the migration:

1. Make sure that the users and groups exist on the Destination prior to migration. If we cannot find the user or group, it is impossible to assign the correct permissions.
2. Make sure the ​username (before the @) is the same. For example, username@domain1.com can become username@domain2.com.
3. Make sure the groupname is the same on Source and Destination.
4. Make sure the administrator domain is the same as the user domain. If your Destination users are xxx@domain2.com, the admin user has to be yyy@domain2.com.​
5. We recommend that you create a different administrator account, such as migrationwiz@domain2.com, that is not a user you migrate.

Mailbox Migrations

A single pass migration strategy will move the entire mailbox in one pass, after MX records are cut over. A typical scenario consists in cutting over on a Friday evening and migrating during the weekend. 

This is useful when you want a cost-effective and simple migration strategy to implement. This is only really recommended for smaller migrations where you want to migrate everything in one pass.

MX Records Cutover:

MX records are used purely for email delivery by SMTP. The MX record for your domain points to the Source system, and after the MX cutover must point to the Destination system so that the email gets delivered to the new messaging system.

Changing MX records in DNS to point to the new system is not effective immediately, and is subject to replication delays. You will have to wait for the TTL (aka Time To Live) to expire; until then, email systems on the Internet may continue delivering to your old system.

• Using this tool for your Source domain, you will find at what the TTL parameter is set to, so it will take those <TTL> hours to take effect.
• To allow for faster switching of email delivery from Source to Destination, we recommend reducing the TTL value for the DNS record ahead of time. That way, when you cut over MX records in DNS to point to the Destination, the effect should be almost immediate.

Once MX changes replicate, new incoming email will be redirected to the new Destination system. At this point, your end-users should start working with their Destination mailboxes.

Migration may potentially not complete in time for various reasons:

• Users accessing the new system may not have access to all their data when work resumes.
• Any items created during or after the migration may be missed by a single pass.
• Downtime may occur for some users if migration fails or takes too long.

To overcome this drawback, you would need to perform a multi-pass migration instead. 

Submit the Single Pass for Big Bang Migration:

There are three migration filters which you will have to properly adjust before submitting the Project because you will have only one opportunity:

1. Date range filter in Edit Project -> Advanced Options.
2. Folder filter (optional) in Edit Project -> Advanced Options.
3. Selecting the types of data to migrate on the Start Migration panel.

Review carefully the migration filters to adjust them to the following:

Click on Edit Project -> Advanced Options -> Filtering tab, and set the earliest and latest dates from which to migrate.  Typically, for a Big Bang (single pass) migration you'll want to leave these checkboxes unchecked. By default, the system will not filter items by date unless the respective boxes are checked:

Set the folder filter if you want to select what folders should not be migrated:​

After reviewing migration filters, submit the single pass of a Big Bang migration for one or more mailboxes:

1. Select one or more mailboxes already configured.
2. Click Start.
3. Choose Full Migration.
4. Ensure all of the types of data you wish to migrate are supported and selected.
5. Select  Start Migration  (the license will be consumed only upon success).

Configure a Pre-Stage migration

This multi-pass migration strategy will move the majority of the old email in the first pass prior to the MX record cutover. The Full (or Delta) Passes, after the cutover, will migrate only the remaining latest email and all of the remaining mailbox items (calendars, contacts, tasks, etc.). 

The steps are as follows:

1. Perform a Pre-Stage migration.
2. Perform the MX record cutover.
3. Perform a Full Pass migration (i.e., all items with no date filters). This is also called a Delta Pass.

This is the recommended migration strategy for most migration projects, since it allows for a pre-stage of the migration, and migrates the majority of mail prior to an MX record cutover. This occurs in the background while users are still accessing their 'old' email system. Then, once the new MX record is made, another 'full' pass is made which will then complete very quickly since the majority of the data was migrated during the Pre-Stage migration pass.

Calendars, contacts, journals, notes, and tasks are subject to change during the migration process.  MigrationWiz will NOT propagate these changes after they have been migrated, which is the reason they are deselected during this Pre-Stage migration pass. Calendars, contacts, journals, notes, and tasks will only be migrated in the Full (Delta) Migration Pass!​

Perform a Pre-Stage migration:

1. Select one or more mailboxes already configured by checkmarking the boxes next to their name (to select all mailboxes, click on the checkbox next to Source Email column).
2. Click the Start button (if no mailboxes have been selected, this option will be greyed out).
3. Select Pre-Stage migration from the drop-down list.
4. This will have Mail items pre-selected. This will be the only option available to migrate during this Pre-Stage migration pass.
5. Now select the date range for migration, by clicking on the down arrow in the field marked Migrate items whose create date is older than.      
6. Select either 30, 60, or 90 days ago, or select a specific time.
7. The most common migration strategy is to select 90 days ago.
8. Any date filters that have been set under project Advanced Options will be overridden by the date filters that are set here.
9. To delay this Pre-Stage migration, click on the checkbox labeled Automatically start the migration at and select your date and time.
10. Click Start Migration.

If there are any date filters set under project Advanced Options, these will be overridden by the entries selected in this Pre-Stage migration panel.

Be sure your users do not modify information at the source. For example, if an item has been:

• Deleted at the Source: then the Destination will keep containing these deleted items. We cannot propagate deletes (e.g., if an item is archived at the Source, it will look like a delete and we can’t delete the item at the Destination).
• Moved from Folder A to another Folder B: these items will be duplicated at the Destination, they will be both in Folder A and in Folder B at the Destination.
• Updated at the Source: then these items will not be updated at the Destination. There is no process by which the calendars, contacts, tasks, etc., can be updated. This would require conflict resolution which is only possible with a synchronization solution.

Quick Switch migration - Mailbox

A Quick-Switch migration strategy is more complicated to set up than a Pre-Stage Migration strategy. It requires working with the project level Advanced Option date filters. 

There are two migration filters which you will have to properly adjust between passes:

​Submit the first pass for Quick-Switch Migration:

Because the date range filter is applied not only to email, but also to calendars, contacts, journals, notes and tasks, the first pass for a Quick-Switch migration in fact consists of two steps:

Migrate all items except email:

All calendars, contacts, journals, notes and tasks will be accessible immediately at time of cutover by users.

Submit the "first step" of the first pass of a Quick-Switch multi-pass migration for one or more mailboxes:

1. Select one or more configured mailboxes.
2. Click  Start .
3. From the drop-down list, select Full Migration.
4. Select all items except Mail.
5. You can also delay your migrations to a future date and time.
6. Click Start Migration.

Migrate last 30 days of email only:

1. ​Click Edit Project, click Advanced Options, ​and under Filtering, select Specify earliest date from which to migrate.
2. Set this date to be 30 days in the past.
3. Set the folder filter if you want to select folders that should not be migrated first.

Submit the "second step" of the first pass of a Quick-Switch multi-pass migration for one or more mailboxes but this time deselect all items except Mail on the Start Migration screen.

1. Select one or more configured mailboxes.
2. Click Start .
3. From the drop-down list, select Full Migration.
4. Deselect all items except Mail.
5. You can also delay your migrations to a future date and time.
6. Click Start Migration.

Perform MX Record Cutover:

MX records are used purely for email delivery by SMTP. When you are ready to cut over to your new Destination email platform, you must switch over the MX records on your DNS providers portal so that email gets delivered to the new messaging system.

Changing MX records in DNS to point to the new system is not effective immediately, and is subject to replication delays. You will have to wait for the TTL (aka Time To Live) to expire. Until then, email systems on the Internet may continue delivering to your old system.

Using this tool for your source Domain, you will find what the TTL parameter is set to. It will take those <TTL> hours/minutes to take effect.

To allow for faster switching of email delivery from Source to Destination, we recommend reducing the TTL value for the DNS record ahead of time. That way, when you cut over MX records in DNS to point to the Destination, the effect should be almost immediate.

Once MX changes replicate, new incoming email will be redirected to the new Destination system. At this point, your end users should start working with their new Destination mailboxes.

Full or Delta migration

A Full/Delta migration pass allows you to resubmit a mailbox so as to perform a differential migration pass. MigrationWiz will automatically find items that haven't yet been migrated since the first pass, and migrates only those. In other words, a Full/Delta pass will find and migrate residual items. In most cases, a Full/Delta pass will complete much faster than the initial pass.​

In a Full/Delta pass, MigrationWiz will continue the migration from where it left off with no duplicates, which means that all items which were not migrated in the first pass or were created after/during the first pass will be migrated.

There is no time limit to perform a full pass after the MX record cutover, but we recommend minimizing the time window between passes to no more than two weeks:

• By default, your Project will be deleted 180 days after last use (you can change this setting in Advanced Options and will receive warnings)​.
• A significant action such as a backup/restore of the Source item could change Source item IDs, and this would result in the creation of duplicates.
• Migrated calendars, contacts, and tasks will not be updated.

First, ensure that no date filters are set in Advanced Options (to enter Advanced Options, click on Edit Project in top left of your dashboard, and then select Advanced Options from the drop-down list). De-select the checkboxes under the filtering section. This ensures that the entire date range will be included in this migration pass. 

1. Click Save Options in bottom right of screen.
2. Click Save Project to enter the page that lists your mailboxes.

​To submit the Full/Delta pass for one or more mailboxes:

1. Select one or more configured mailboxes.
2. Click Start.
3. From the drop-down list, select Full Migration.
4. Select all items to ensure everything is migrated:
5. Your Pre-Stage Migration settings may still be set to migrate only mail. It is very important to check all boxes during this Full/Delta pass. This will ensure that all your items are now migrated.
6. Note that you can delay your migrations to a future date and time.
7. Click Start Migration.

Draft folder migrations

The 'Drafts' folder is migrated as part of a mailbox migration.

It will be migrated over to a corresponding folder named 'Drafts' at the Destination, unless there is a folder mapping explicitly added which alters this behavior.

The display behavior of draft items will vary depending upon the Destination.

Examples:

• For Office 365, when a draft item is created at the Destination, the red "DRAFT" label is only applied when there is no recipient listed in the "To" field - but the email itself will appear in the 'Drafts' folder.
• For G Suite, when a draft item is created at the Destination, it will always have the red "DRAFT" label, regardless of whether or not it has a recipient listed in the "To' field.

Extended migration email coexistence

Email coexistence is used when migrating mailboxes over a period of time for the same email domain, where mail needs to be delivered to two or more different messaging systems.