Drive Migrations
Review these important considerations to keep in mind during the migration process from Google Workspace to Google Workspace.
Complex Migration Scenarios
Complex Drive migrations such as migrating only a subset of users within a domain or migrating users to different domains are typical. We are able to accommodate migrations such as these using domain replacement and user renaming functionality.
What follows are a few things to be aware of when performing a Google Drive migration.
Provision all Users and Groups Before Migration
We will provision all of your users and groups before performing a Drive migration. This is required to ensure all sharing and Drive hierarchies are preserved correctly during the migration. We’ll also ensure all of your Drive users have Drive enabled in the destination.
Usage of the destination drive during a migration is not recommended. Items may not be moved into place for all users until the full migration for all users has completed. If items are moved around in the destination domain during a migration multiple problems can occur and will cause migration times to increase significantly.
If you are renaming users as part of the migration, you must make sure all import and export names are present and have been updated to the names in the new system. You should ensure you have provisioned all of your users before migrating your groups. You should not rename groups during a migration. This must be done before the migration begins. If you are migrating Drive items, the tool will warn you before the migration.
Migrate Items Only From Listed Users
This option will migrate only Drive files from those users listed on the Users tab. 'Migrate All Drive Items' should be also set to true for this setting to work. If you want to migrate items from users other than those being migrated add them to the user tab but do not select them for migration.
'Migrate Items Only from Listed Users' should be used with care and only ever used if you are only migrating a subset of your users. If you are migrating all of your users during a migration, you should not select this option for any part of your migration. If you do use the option, you should ensure that your user list is fully correct before starting the first migration.
Files and Folders May be Migrated for Other Users
During a migration of the migrating user, files and folders that were shared with the migrating user may be migrated for the owning users, even when they are not being migrated at that time.
Files from Outside of the Domain
Only files owned by users inside your domain are migrated. While it may be possible to migrate files from outside of the domain where the user has edit access, this involves making changes to files outside of the migrating domain which raises many security issues for the external domains and is therefore not enabled.
Folder Hierarchies from Outside of the Domain
It is possible to add folders that have been shared with you into your folder hierarchy, and other users could also have done the same thing. If this is a folder from outside of your domain, then the first user to migrate the folder will become the new owner and it will then be treated as belonging to that user. All external ACLs will be removed from the folder (but all domain ACLs will be preserved).
Comments and Revision History
Comments can be migrated but revision history cannot.
Deleted Files and Folders
Deleted files and folders a user owns are not migrated.
If a user has deleted a file that has been shared with them making the file invisible in their account (but not actually delete the source file or the sharing rights), then these files will be visible again in the ‘Shared with me’ folder following migration. Additionally, even though the file may be invisible, the sharing rights as allocated by the sharer still exist.
Renaming Users and/or Groups
The migration process includes functionality to allow user or group email addresses to be changed or mapped during a migration. This is achieved via address replacements.
Externally Owned Data
We’re unable to migrate any documents owned externally due to the lack of access to external Google Workspace instances. Consequently, any documents owned by external users to the Google Workspace instance will require re-sharing to migrating users after the migration process.
It is important to note that any documents owned internally with external sharing will maintain their permissions.
Recommendations
Any documents owned by external users will need to be re-shared back to the migrating users after Go-Live.
Orphaned Files and Folders
If a migration has non-migrating users, external users or users who have deleted folders that house other users data, this could cause orphaned items post migration.
Files and folders that are orphaned will be migrated to the root level of the destination.
Recommendations
Before proceeding with the migration process, it is recommended that customers perform thorough checks on their environment to verify the absence of the specified scenarios.
To minimize any potential impact, it is advised to confirm that all users in the source environment who possess necessary data are included in the migration scope, or any externally owned items should be reassigned to migrating users to maintain the integrity of the data structure after migration.
Deleted files that were shared with you
If a user deletes a file that has been shared with them, causing the file to become invisible in their account without actually deleting the source file or the sharing rights, these files will reappear in the "Shared with me" folder after the migration process.
Recommendations
If the end user wishes to locate that particular file, they will need to search within the "Shared with me" section. It is important to note that the "Shared with me" section displays all files and folders that have been shared with you by others, so it may contain a large amount of content.
Document Version History
Document version history from Google Workspace to Google Workspace is not currently supported.
Recommendations
Users who have been migrated will not have the capability to undo any modifications made before the Go-Live date of their new account.
Prior versions should be generated before the migration if deemed necessary. It is essential to manually copy any critical information from the revision history as it will not be transferred during the migration process.
Metadata
The last modified date will be retained.
The creation date will be adjusted to the date of file migration.
Shared dates will be reset to the date of file migration.
Linked Files
Hyperlinks to other Google files will become outdated during the migration process. This occurs because the files are assigned new URLs. It is important to consider the following implications:
Embedded links, files, charts, etc., will no longer be functional as they will continue to point to the original file on the source domain. You will need to update these links to refer to the newly migrated file on the destination domain.
External applications, such as Slack, will still refer to older versions of documents from the original source.
Google Forms will no longer be connected to their response sheets.
Recommendations
After going live at the destination, migrated users will be required to update the hyperlinks within the documents on their new accounts. During the migration it is possible to generate a comprehensive list of all document mappings.
Trash
Items located in the Trash, will not be migrated.
Starred files and folders
Files and folders that have been marked as starred in your source accounts will not be starred automatically in your destination account.
Recommendations
The end-users will have to star files and folders post migration.
Google Photos
Google Photos are not supported for Migration by CloudM.
Recent View
End-users may observe alterations in the Recent view of their My Drive, where files may no longer be displayed in the correct sequence. This occurrence is anticipated as the tool necessitates accessing documents for migration purposes, which may result in their appearance in this section.
File Comments
Users will be notified via email regarding documents on which they have previously provided comments or have been mentioned in the comments during the migration process.
Comments will be migrated by the document owner 'On Behalf Of' the original commenters, unless the comments are located within a Shared Drive. In such cases, the comments will be attributed to the migration admin account.
Recommendations
Notify end-users that they may receive notifications during the migration process.
Shared With Me View
The "Shared With Me" view in Google is dynamically populated based on the files and folders that have been shared with your account. It is important to note that our migration tools do not directly migrate from the "Shared With Me" view. Consequently, the items may not be located in the same structure at the destination if not all users are included in the migration process.
Shared Drive Membership
When migrating Shared Drives, it is necessary to specify a Default Organiser in the list of members for the destination Shared Drive for each Shared Drive being migrated. If the option 'Remove Default Organisers' is chosen, the tool will automatically eliminate these organisers during the initial migration. Nevertheless, if multiple migrations are conducted, the organiser will persist in any subsequent migrations.
Recommendations
If the specified Default Organiser should not be present on the membership of the Shared Drives, then they should be removed post migration.
Shared Drive Settings
In order to successfully migrate Shared Drives, it is necessary to enable external sharing on the source Shared Drive.
Recommendations
This setting must be configured before migration using the Google Admin console.
Shared Drive Limits
All Shared Drive limits are detailed here in the documentation from Google.
Recommendations
Ensure you are aware of the above limitations when planning your migration to Google Shared Drives.
File Creation Limits
During large migrations, if a user creates more than 500,000 items, you may encounter issues where file metadata at the destination becomes queued. This can lead to duplication if the migration is re-run before the metadata has been fully applied.
Recommendations
To minimize errors and enhance performance during and after migration, it's recommended that no single user create or own more than 500,000 files, folders, or shortcuts. For Shared Drive migrations specifically, you can achieve this by designating additional Shared Drive default managers within the source settings and splitting large workloads into separate migration batches with different admin usernames specified.
