Migrating from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 is often complex as it usually translates into migrating data between multiple drives. For many businesses, moving from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) also means migrating emails and chats.
To help you navigate the complexities in planning the migration, we have shared some of the best practices that you can adopt for your organization.
1. Understand the Source Cloud Structure Through a Pre-Migration Assessment
It is crucial to understand the collaboration structure in Google Workspace to be able to plan the scope of work strategically. And the best way to do this is to perform an in-depth pre-migration analysis. With a proper pre-migration assessment, your IT team can have proper clarity on the number of users and data to migrate from one specific drive to another.
For example, when migrating from Google Drive to OneDrive, a proper pre-migration analysis will help your IT team determine the total number of users and their individual folders and files to migrate. This way, you can plan the scope of work specific to your organization’s migration needs.
2. Segregate Google Shared Drives Data to Migrate
Many businesses and their IT teams make the mistake of not taking a granular approach when it comes to migrating from Google Shared Drives to SharePoint Online. As a result, they miss out on ensuring proper segregation of the migrated data in SharePoint Online.
The best practice to follow is to map the Google Shared Drives data to the relevant Sites in SharePoint Online. With this approach, your IT team can preserve the sharing and collaboration structure and ensure its continuity in SharePoint Online post-migration.
3. Choose the Features to Migrate for Source Cloud Replication
If your organization is planning to accurately replicate Google Workspace’s structure in Microsoft 365 through the migration, then it is critical to transfer all the features essential to uninterrupted user collaboration. For total replication, make sure to migrate these collaboration features:
- Internal sharing permissions
- External sharing permissions
- Embedded links
- File versions
- Timestamps
- Shared links
4. Plan the Migration and Validation in Batches
One of the best practices to follow, especially during a large-scale Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 migration, is to take a phased approach. This approach involves segregating the total number of users to migrate into several batches and migrate them sequentially.
For example, if your organization has 1000 users to migrate, you can create 5 migration batches of 200 users and perform their one-time migration and delta migration one by one. This way, your IT team can validate each migration batch in a hassle-free way. This approach can also help your company lower the risk of API rate limit throttling to a significant extent.
5. Prepare for User Onboarding and Microsoft 365 Adoption
Lastly, the best practice to follow during the post-migration stage is to have a proper change management plan to enable the end-users to onboard and adopt Microsoft 365 in a proper way. Plan and schedule training sessions to familiarize end-users with the primary Microsoft 365 apps, including OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Outlook, Teams, and more.
A combination of in-house efforts and usage of Microsoft 365 adoption guides from Microsoft can go a long way in ensuring proper change management. And the smoother the end-users’ transition, the easier it becomes for your IT team to lower user impact and ensure proper operations continuity post-migration.