Migration Strategy

Google Suite to Office365

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REVISION HISTORY
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Draft 09-09-2020 Prepared by XXXXX
Draft 09-09-2020 Technical Review by

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1. Introduction

The purpose of this document is to explain the Migration Strategy for G-Suite to Office365 for
project <<Project name>> in <<Company Name>>.

This document explains and recommends important aspects of migration from G-Suite to
Office365. These recommendations are based on past experience and best practices. This
document should be used as a guideline in way forward in this major migration and will minimize
the potential project risks.

Migrating data without an informed approach and a clear path can get expensive and time
consuming, not to mention stressful. However, with the right strategy pointing towards the right
direction, migrating data between business apps will be a painless process for IT staff, managers
and end users.

The target audience of this document is IT and Project team members who are involved in the
migration project.

2. Importance of the Document

Migrating business users from their usual email system and business tools to a new system can
be a daunting task for all involved. There will be several questions e.g.

1) How can migration occur without business interruption?

2) What premigration planning is required?
3) How can we be sure that all data has been migrated?
4) If the migration is a success
5) How do you get your users on board with embracing the new products?

This document aims to provide a technical overview of considerations such as migration time,
approaches, speed and security, as well as an overview of what can and cannot be migrated and
also will guide team in way forward for a successful migration.
3. Migration Approach
Migration approach is decided by keeping the following considerations to take the best decision in this
regard.
 Business setup
 Type
 Size.
There were two of the most common migration approaches which were in consideration
 Cutover Migration
 Staged migrations

Cutover approach involves migrating all data over a weekend, ready for your users on Monday
morning.

Staged approach provides more flexible migration options and allows you to migrate batches of data
over the course of a few weeks or months. This strategy is useful for migrations with large volumes of
data (very full mailboxes or many Google Drives) and you estimate that you won’t be able to do your
migration over a single weekend.

After the careful consideration and keeping all the pros and cons of both approaches, it has been
decided to go with Staged Approach as it is flexible and can handle big bulk of data without
compromising on quality. In addition to that, it provides many additional advantage (for example,
additional bulk of historical email migration etc.) over Cutover approach.

4. Migration Scope and Steps

4.1 Mail, Calendar and Contacts
The following components/features of a Gmail inbox will be migrated to Office 365 mail.

 Emails
 Contacts
 Calendars
 Labels (primary label converted to folder; other labels discarded)
 Rooms and resources
 Tasks

As we shall be following the standard procedure for migration, following shall be the limitations in
mail migration.

Data type Limitations

Mail Vacation settings, Automatic reply settings, Filters/Rules will not be
Data type Limitations
migrated
G Suite uses labels rather than folders to organize received emails, which
means users can apply more than one label to a single email. Office 365
mail doesn't offer labels, so storage for each email is limited to one folder.
Labels
During this migration platform uses the first label applied to an email and
creates a folder with the same name, where the email will be stored. Any
additional labels are ignored during migration.
Meeting rooms Room bookings will not be migrated
Shared calendars, cloud attachments, Google Hangout links, and event
Calendar
colors will not be migrated
Contacts A maximum of three email addresses per contact are migrated over
Contacts Gmail tags, contact URLs, and custom tags will not be migrated

Migration will be done in batches of users from G Suite to Office 365, allowing a migration project to
be done in stages. This migration requires the provisioning of all of the users who will be migrated as
mail-enabled users outside of the migration process. a list of users to migrate for each batch must be
specified.

To start the process and all of the procedures in this article, Office 365 domain should already been
verified and your TXT records must been set up.

1) Prior to their migration, the MX record for the base <<Company Name>> domain points to the
G Suite tenant or mail server where all or most of users are. Users must have their primary
email addresses at that domain
2) To prepare for the migration, new routing domains should have been created:
3) On the G Suite side, aliases have been added for all of the users in the G Suite routing
domain. On the Office 365 side, MailUsers have been provisioned for all of the users from the
G Suite tenant. The ExternalEmailAddress field for MailUsers on the Office 365 side would be
configured to point back to the primary mailbox using the address at the routing domain for
the G Suite side. Additionally, there should be aliases for the user in the Office 365 routing
domain.
4) As migration will start, they've been converted from MailUsers to Mailboxes on the Office 365
side.
5) The ExternalEmailAddress for each user will be moved to a ForwardingSmtpAddress, so that
messages sent to users will be delivered back to their source mailboxes on the G Suite side
by rerouting the message back to the G Suite routing domain.
6) Mail will still be synced from the source G Suite side to the Microsoft 365 or Office 365 side.
7) The MX record for the primary domain will still point to G Suite. After users have been fully
migrated to Microsoft 365 or Office 365, they should start working out of Office 365. On the G
Suite side, automatic mail forwarding will be set up for migrated users, so that new emails
sent to their G Suite address will be delivered instead to the Office 365 address via the
routing domain.
8) Meanwhile forwarding address will be removed from the Office 365 user object, so emails will
be delivered to that user in the Office 365 routing domain
9) After all migration batches have been completed, all users can use their migrated mailboxes
on Office 365 as their primary mailbox. A manual MX record update for the primary domain
then points to the Office 365 organization instead of the G Suite tenant.
10) The routing domains and extra aliases can now be removed, as can the G Suite tenant. The
migration of mail, calendar, and contacts from G Suite to Office 365 will be declared
completed than.
 4.2 Files
As this migration will take place without any tool so in this regard, all G Suite – Drive (Google
Drive) data will be migrated to Office365 – OneDrive using Download/Upload functionality
recommended by Microsoft.

During this migration, Project Team will perform the following activity on individual account.

1) Sign in to the user’s Gmail account, click the Google apps icon in the upper-right corner, and
then choose Drive.
2) In Drive, select all of your documents, right-click, and choose Download.
3) After your files have been compressed into a downloadable .zip file, choose Save as at the
bottom of your screen, and save the .zip file to your desktop. (Download limit needs to be
checked)
4) On your Windows desktop, click the OneDrive cloud icon in the System Tray (located in the
Windows Task Bar), and choose Settings on the menu.
5) In the Microsoft OneDrive dialog box, choose Add an account, and then sign in with your
Microsoft 365 email address and password.
6) Follow the steps in the setup wizard, and then choose Open my OneDrive folder.
7) From your desktop, open the .zip file that you downloaded earlier from Google Drive, select
all of the files, and drag them to your OneDrive folder.
8) The files will start uploading and syncing to OneDrive for Business, as indicated by green
check marks.

5. Checklist
5.1 Checklist for Source System
A data migration will fail if it doesn't have the right information from the source system. One common
problem is using email aliases instead of SMTP addresses, making the originating mailboxes
impossible for the mail migration tool to identify.

Another is that the admin password expires during the course of migration. Taking time to audit the
source system is a requirement for a successful migration.

Follow this checklist to minimize any hiccups:

1) Check the user list contains no aliases (use primary SMTP addresses)
2) Create one or more migration accounts to use solely for migration, and then delete after
3) Set migration account passwords to never expire
4) Inform users of any tasks they should perform before migration (e.g, consolidating/pruning
files and identifying files that can't be migrated)

5.2 Checklist for Target System

A general checklist for the target system includes:

1) Create one or more migration accounts to use solely for migration, and then delete after
2) Set migration account passwords to never expire
3) Purchase licenses for all resources at the target
4) Provision all resources (users, rooms, equipment)
 5.3 Migration Planning Checklist
Below is a general checklist to help you plan for migration. Further addition/deletion can be required in
detail planning.

Project planning

 Migration goals made (e.g., to get merged businesses on same mail/business app platform)
 List of items to be migrated made (e.g., mail, trash, contacts, calendars, delegations, tasks,
metadata, source files with the same name as any existing files at the target)
 Any existing Vault archives identified and destination chosen (e.g., inbox or separate archive)
 Migration strategy chosen (e.g., cutover or staged)
 If staged migration strategy, migration order/batches defined
 Decision made about archiving older mail, and destination defined
 Number of mailboxes to be migrated established
 Expected total size of migration established
 Migration timeframe established (e.g., start date, end date)
 End users notified of planned migration (and training performed/tip sheets provided)

Technical planning

 Source server preparation complete (user list ready, special migration account(s) set up etc.)
 Target server preparation complete (licenses purchased; resources provisioned etc.) Post-
migration planning
 Post-migration tasks identified and included in migration plan
 Any tweaks to end user local email clients identified and included in plan
 Any MX record updates identified and included in plan
 Any global address list updates to be made identified and included in plan
 Outlook profiles recreated at destination, if required
 If mail routing was used, services to be deactivated
 Identify and find manual workarounds for any items unable to be migrated (e.g., custom site
gadgets, native Google file formats)
 Special mail migration accounts deleted

Expected Project Plan

Top level plan will be based on 3 main stages.

1) Plan
2) Prepare
3) Migrate
4) Post - Migration

Activities
PLAN
PMO Documentation (Project Charter etc.)
Detailed Project Plan
Kick Off Meeting
Plan Infrastructure
User Experience
Mobile Apps
Co-ordinate License Acquisition
Desktop Users & Communication Plan
Bandwidth Analysis
Gather current Exchange Information
Check Current DNS records
File Storage Analysis
Backup Plan
Create new folder structure in Office 365
Define Files new Metadata
Define User Plans
Analyse Current Security and File Structure
User Training Schedule
PREPARE
Create and Setup account
Add domains to Office365
Create and Configure User Accounts and user/groups
Acquire Additional Storage
Network Configurations
Configure AD
Configure and Request a Domain
Configure user archive mailboxes
Re-Organize File Structure
Remove passwords from Excel File
Fix Document link
Lookup and fix issues
Create complete list of files to be migrated
MIGRATION
Migrate Email boxes
Archive non selected files
Reconfiguration of Applications
QA & UAT
TRAINING
TESTING
Go-Live & Post Migration