This article will guide you through migrating from Google Groups to Microsoft 365 Shared Mailbox.

You can easily set up a mailbox project and leverage the MigrationWiz solution to migrate your members, conversations, and attachments from Google Groups to your desired Microsoft 365 Shared Mailbox.

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.

Prerequisites

It is important to note the following prerequisites to have a smooth migration project.

• The source administrator must have a valid Google Vault license before proceeding with the migration project.
• Google Groups requires “Conversation History” to be enabled for conversations to be kept. A collaborative inbox has “Conversation History” enabled by default. However, it is recommended to verify this in the Group’s setting.

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.

Limitations

The following are some of the limitations for the migration of Google Groups to Microsoft 365 Shared Mailboxes. Some of the limitations are an inheritance from the APIs used as well as the capabilities of the current destination.

• External members from the source are not migrated as Microsoft Shared Mailboxes do not support external members.
• Group settings (posting policy, member moderation, member privacy) are not migrated as Shared Mailbox instances do not support these settings.
• A nested Group which is a member of other Groups will not be migrated.
• Conversation tags like “Star”, “Abuse”, “Report”, and “Locked” are not migrated due to a lack of data from the source extract. The conversations are migrated.
• Collaborative inbox features like “Assign to me”, “Assign to someone”, “Mark as completed”, “Mark as duplicated”, and “Mark as no actions” are not migrated as these are not supported in Microsoft Shared Mailboxes. The conversations are migrated.
• Conversations under “Moderated” or “Pending” are not migrated due to a lack of data from the source extract.
• In MigrationWiz, Google Groups messages are exported and migrated individually to the Shared Mailbox destination, while the Google Groups app shows the number of threads and messages within the thread. Therefore, there would be a mismatch of migrated item counts between what is indicated in MigrationWiz and Google Groups itself.
• In MigrationWiz, Google Groups messages are exported and migrated individually to the Shared Mailbox destination, therefore, messages are shown as individual emails instead of their original conversation thread format. Prevent this issue by performing only one of the following options:
  • Use the Advanced Option UseMultiAdmin=1.
  • Set the “Advance Option>Performance>Maximum number of concurrent migrations” to 3.
  • Create multiple projects to accommodate all the line items.

    Important

    MigrationWiz leverages PowerShell to migrate the project line items, hence, there is an inherited PowerShell concurrency limitation of 3 line items per run. Selecting more than 3 line items may result in a timeout error.

Migrated Items

Prepare the Source Environment

Google Groups Endpoint

This endpoint requires your tenant service account to be set up and Google APIs to be enabled. 

Prerequisites

• Subscription to Google Cloud Platform.
• Google Super Administrator account.
• Ability to set up a service account on the G Suite tenant.
• A service account must be set up before the MigrationWiz project is created.
• The administrator must have Google Vault access privileges.

Create a Google Project

1. Go to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Console and sign in as a super administrator. Choose one of the options below:
   • If you haven't used the Google Cloud Platform Console before, agree to the Terms of Service and click Create Project.
   • If you have used Google Cloud Platform Console before, at the top of the screen next to your most recent project name, click Down to open your projects list. Then, click New Project.
2. Enter a project name and click Create.

Enable APIs for Service Account

1. Click Menu () > APIs & Services > Library from the Google Cloud Platform Console,.
2. Enable the following APIs by selecting the specific API and clicking Enable. Repeat for each API.
   • Groups settings API
   • Google Vault API
   • Admin SDK API

Make sure that the respective services are enabled within the Google tenant. You can control services for your users by following the instructions on this page: G Suite and Google Services Access.

Create a Customer Tenant Service Account

1. Click Menu > IAM & Admin > Service accounts from the Google Cloud Platform Console.
2. Click Create Service Account and enter a name.
3. Click Create.
4. Assign the role of Owner to the new Service Account by selecting Owner from the Role drop-down menu.
5. Click Done.
6. You will now be returned to the Service Accounts page. 
7. On the Service Accounts page, click the vertical ellipsis ⋮ under the Actions column for the service account created above, and click on Manage Keys.
8. Click + Add Key.
9. Click Create New Key.
10. Make sure that JSON is selected as the Key Type.
11. Click Create.
12. Click Close.
    • Make sure that you download the key as a JSON file and make a note of the name and location of the file. This JSON file will be used when setting up the migration endpoint in the mailbox migration project.
    • The JSON file must contain information in the following fields: “type”, “private key”, and “client email”. If these mandatory fields are empty, the file upload during endpoint creation will fail.

Find your Unique ID

From the Google Cloud Platform Console

1. Go to Menu > IAM & Admin > Service accounts.
2. Find the service account that was set up in Step 3: Create a Customer Tenant Account.
3. Find the Unique ID field for that service account by clicking the Column Display Options “|||” button in the upper right corner above Actions.
4. Select the Unique ID checkbox.
5. Click Ok.
6. Copy the unique ID number.
   • This is the Client ID number that will be used in a later step.
   • This Client ID should be considered similar to Administrator account passwords and handled securely.

Setting the Scopes for the Migration

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

   Important

   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 on Add new.
4. In the client Name field, enter the Service account's Unique ID.
5. For OAuth scopes, enter the scopes listed below: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/apps.groups.settings
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group.readonly
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.domain.readonly
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/devstorage.read_only
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/ediscovery
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user.readonly

6. Click Authorize.

Assigning Google Vault Privileges

1. The user must be a Super Administrator user and signed in as one.
2. Sign in to Google Admin Console.
3. In the Overview page, click on Admin Roles.
4. Click on Create a New Role.
5. Enter the Name and Description for the role, and click Continue.
6. Find and expand the list on Google Vault, select the following:
   • Manage Matters.
   • Manage Searches.
   • Manage Exports.
   • View All Matters.
7. Click Continue.

Prepare Destination Environment

Microsoft 365 Endpoint

1. Set up user accounts on the destination Office 365 tenant and assign licenses. These can be created in several ways:
   • Manually, one at a time. Read the Add users individually or in bulk to Office 365 article from Microsoft for more information.
   • By bulk import, via CSV file. Read the Add several users at the same time to Office 365 article from Microsoft for more information.
   • By PowerShell script. Read the Create user accounts with Office 365 PowerShell TechNet article for more information.
2. Create an administrator account in Office 365 to be used for migration or use the global admin account for the tenant. The minimal service account requirements are either full access rights to the mailbox or impersonation rights. We recommend using impersonation over delegation because it is Exchange Online. For specific steps to set impersonation manually, see Impersonation and Delegation.
3. 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 Office 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 Office 365 admin portal or via PowerShell scripts. Read the Verify mailbox accessibility using EWS article for more information.

Modern Authentication Requirements

The steps listed in the Obtain Client and Tenant ID Settings for Mailbox and Exchange Online Migrations section of the Authentication Methods Migrations KB apply to both the source and destination tenant when they are Exchange Online, in regards to Exchange Web Services (EWS) in mailbox, archive mailbox, and public folder projects. Use a Global Administrator for the configuration steps.

Please review the documentation before preparing the destination.

MigrationWiz Steps

Set up a Mailbox Migration Project

1. Click Go To My Projects from the MigrationWiz dashboard.
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 you want to add a new customer you can do so here. To create a new customer:
   1. Click New.
   2. Provide required details including primary email domain and company name.
   3. Click Save.
6. Click Next Step.
7. Create or choose your source and destination endpoint by following the next steps in the section above.

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.

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.

• The client secret value is not mandatory if you use delegated permissions. Please leave the Client Secret field empty.

• The client secret value is mandatory if you use the Application Impersonation using API Permissions approach.

• If you already have an admin account with the Impersonation role enabled (not using the Application Impersonation using API Permissions approach) the client secret value is not mandatory. Please leave the Client Secret field empty.

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.

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

Add Accounts (Items)

Add the accounts that will be migrated, which are also referred to as items, to a project using one of the following options:

Advanced Options

The following advanced options may be useful for your migration. 

Support Tab

• RecipientMapping  Use this advanced option to map the source email addresses to the destination. The right part is a RegEx applied to the recipient's email address. You can use more than one remapping expression.
• VaultPollTimeoutInMilliseconds=86400000 This will increase the Google Vault polling from 1 hour to 24 hours.
• UseHashMapRecipientMapping Use this advanced option together with Recipient Mapping to increase performance when mapping large numbers of recipients.
• ModernAuthClientIdImport Modern authentication client ID support for tenants not using legacy authentication (basic authentication). You would have to set up the app in your AAD portal to get the client and tenant ID. Authentication Methods for Microsoft 365 (All Products) Migrations.
• ModernAuthTenantIdImport Modern authentication tenant ID support for tenants not using legacy authentication (basic authentication). You would have to set up the app in your AAD portal to get the client and tenant ID. Authentication Methods for Microsoft 365 (All Products) Migrations.
  

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.

Verify Credentials

1. Open the project containing the items you wish to validate.

2. Select the line items to validate.

3. Click the Start button in your dashboard.

4. Select Verify Credentials from the drop-down list.

5. Once complete, select the Status section and view the verification results.

Auto-provisioning of Shared Mailboxes

MigrationWiz now supports the provisioning of Shared Mailboxes for the Google Groups to Microsoft Shared Mailbox migration projects. This is optional for users and does not require any licenses.

Existing mailboxes present at the destination will be skipped. MigrationWiz follows the exact details provided in the destination item information for the provisioned mailboxes 

Steps for Provisioning Shared Mailboxes

1. Create a Google Groups to Microsoft Shared Mailbox project
2. Input the line items through Quick Add/Bulk Add/ Auto Discovery
3. Start a Full migration or Pre-stage migration, and choose the option to provision the Shared Mailboxes

Performing a Migration

Trial Migration

1. Select the line items to migrate.

2. Click the Start button from the top.

3. Select Trial Migration.

4. Click Start Migration.

Pre-Stage Pass

1. Select the line items 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.

Full Pass

1. Select the line items.

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.