Exchange Online (Microsoft 365) using Graph API to PST

Notes

  • Although present in the UI, BYO App using Client Certificate is currently unavailable. We are working on a resolution for this issue at this time.
  • GoDaddy-Hosted Office 365 is currently not supported with the Graph Endpoints at this time.

This is the complete onboarding task flow for exporting either regular mailboxes or in-place archive mailboxes from Exchange Online (Microsoft 365) using Graph API to PST (Outlook Data Fil) files. 

For this scenario, the Destination is a Bring Your Own storage container on Azure. This will hold all of the PST files after the mailboxes have been exported to PST. The export of the selected mailboxes will be saved, in the Azure container, as one or more PST files per user mailbox. BitTitan Azure Storage is only available as a Source endpoint for PST migration.

A new PST will be created for every 10GB of data in a mailbox. This increases the export speed and leads to efficiency improvements.

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

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 Which Migration License Do I Need?.

  • 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 and Personal Archive 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. Review Considerations.
  2. Purchase Licenses.
  3. Create a Customer.
  4. Apply Licenses.
ConsiderationsPurchase LicensesCreate a CustomerApply Licenses

Licenses are released once payment has been received:

  • Licenses are available immediately upon payment if you purchase via credit card.
  • If you purchase via wire transfer (100+ licenses), the licenses will be available once payment is received and accepted.
  • We do not accept purchase orders because of processing overhead.

In both cases, you will be notified by email that payment has been accepted and licenses are available in your account upon notification.

For more information on licensing, including coupon redemption and other licensing types, see our Which License Do I Need? guide.

Limitations

Please review the following limitations before performing this type of migration.

  • We are not able to support migrations with two-factor or multifactor authentication.
  • Due to Microsoft limitations, using Delegate Permissions with Graph API is not supported at this time. Only Application Permissions can be used.
  • Pinned/Flagged Emails are migrated but not Pinned/Flagged in the destination environment.
  • Threading (email messages that belong to the same conversation) is not supported and will require Manual implementation. 
  • Delegate-level calendar access isn't supported by Microsoft Graph. It's automatically downgraded to Free/Busy-only.
  • Archive Mailbox as a destination is currently not supported. Support for this option is planned for a future release.

Prepare the Source Environment

Modern Authentication Requirements

The KBs listed in the Exchange Online Authentication options using Graph API section will help you configure the source tenant when using Microsoft 365 with the Microsoft Graph API. A Global Administrator account is required to consent to the BT app or create and consent to the BYO app, since the Entra app's permission types require global admin approval.

Set up Accounts in Microsoft 365

Set up accounts on Microsoft 365 and assign licenses. These can be created in several ways:

Prepare the Tenant to Send & Receive Large Items

We do not impose any limit on item/attachment sizes. However, large items/attachments can fail to migrate because of external factors.  There are two considerations:​

What is the maximum attachment size allowed by the Destination system? 

  • ​Most email systems impose size limits. For example, if the Destination system has a 30MB limit, any item/attachment larger than 30MB will fail to migrate.

What is the connection timeout for the Source and Destination system? 

  • ​​For security reasons, most email systems close opened connections after a predetermined amount of time. For example, if the Destination system only has 512Kbps of network bandwidth and closes connections after 30 seconds, we may be unable to transfer large items/attachments before the connection is closed.

MigrationWiz automatically makes multiple attempts to migrate large items. Upon completion of a migration, you may resubmit it in error retry mode to try to migrate failed items. This is always free of charge.

When migrating from or to Office 365 use the steps provided here to increase the Max Send and Max Recieve quotas, Change message size limits in Office 365.

Discover PST Files and Upload to Azure

Discover PST files on the network, and upload them into Azure.

Prepare the Destination Environment

  1. Estimate Azure storage costs. This step is optional but is useful in providing the customer with upfront storage costs ahead of time.
  2. Buy an Azure subscription, or use the free one-month trial (option only viable for very small migration).
  3. Create an Azure storage account:
    1. Visit the Azure portal.
    2. Click Storage accounts.
    3. Click Create.
    4. Select the Subscription and create a new Resource group or use a current one.
    5. Name the Storage account.
    6. For Region, select a geographic region for the storage account.
    7. For Performance, select Standard general-purpose V2 account.
    8. In the Redundancy field, select Locally-redundant storage (LRS).
    9. Click the Review button.
    10. When the validation ends, click the Create button.
    11. Once the deployment of the storage account is complete, click the Go to resource button or open up the home page for the new storage account.
    12. In the Security + networking section of the left sidebar, click on Access Keys.
    13. On a notepad, copy the Storage account name and the key1 and save them.
  4. Create an Azure BLOB container. Take note of the name of the BLOB to be entered in the Bucket Name field in the project Advanced Options.

MigrationWiz Steps

Create a Mailbox Migration Project

Create the Mailbox Migration project or Archive Migration project (depending on whether you are exporting regular or in-place archive mailboxes to PST). Read the How do I create a new migration project? article for more information.

  1. Create the Mailbox Migration Project or In-Place Archive Project
  2. Select the customer, or create a new one.

    Important

    If you are migrating a mixture of regular mailboxes and in-place archive mailboxes, create one mailbox migration project and one archive project.

  3. Create source and destination endpoints.

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.

Create the Source and Destination endpoints. 

Source Endpoint Destination Endpoint

Create your source endpoint by following the next steps:

  1. Click New.
  2. Name the endpoint. It is recommended that the endpoint's name be unique for the project.
  3. Select Microsoft 365 Graph API for the endpoint type and click Add.
  4. In the Permissions section, Application Permissions are selected by default (Delegated Permissions are not supported at this time).
  5. Complete the Migration Service Account and the Tenant ID.
  6. Click Save Project.

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.

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 Accounts

Using Bulk Add, add the accounts, also referred to as "items", that will be migrated to the project:

  1. Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
  2. Select the Project for which you want to perform the bulk import.
  3. Click Add.
  4. Click Bulk Add.
  5. Follow the instructions on the page.  

Please consider the following information when adding your accounts.

  • The Source will be the SMTP address for each mailbox.
  • The Destination will be the name that you want for the PST file. It must include .pst at the end of each entry. A good format to follow is to name each file after the username that the PST file will belong to, e.g., user1.pst, user2.pst.

Advanced Options

The following advanced options show you some options that will help you to perform o complete a migration.

Bulk Load

To upload a large list of Advanced Support options, see the Bulk Load - Advanced Options when Migrating Mailbox projects using Graph API for additional guidance.

Run Verify Credentials

  1. Open the Project containing items you wish 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.

Once complete, the results of the verification will be shown in the Status section.​ 

Start migration

  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.

Final Steps

Users must create new Outlook profiles, set up their signatures again, and reattach any PST files attached to their previous profile.

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

Related Topics

 

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