How migrate Microsoft Teams from one Tenant to another?

 

Microsoft Teams Migration from One Tenant to Another: Manual Vs Saketa Migrator 

Planning an MS Teams migration from one tenant to another? Let us help you out with few alternate processes to tackle all your migration worries.  

Microsoft Teams: The Digital Workplace Protagonist: Microsoft Teams loaded with an array of advanced communication and collaboration features have become the centerpiece to the vast Microsoft 365 user experience. It’s easy to use and seamlessly integrable features give it an edge over its competitors. With the importance of MS Teams growing day by day, it has become a common business demand to migrate to Microsoft Teams from all other tenant platforms to achieve a great workflow.  

Saketa SharePoint Migrator has always been a migrating organization’s best friend but what we look forward to currently is our new and powerful Microsoft Teams Migration Tool that makes your MS Teams migration experience effortlessly simple. 

Challenges of Microsoft Teams Migration 

Teams migration is quite complicated as compared to the SharePoint migration as unlike SharePoint, all the Teams data are not sorted Team-wise at particular places. Instead, they are sorted according to the type of content. So, manual migration will involve picking up each of those from different locations and assigning them to the designated Teams – A task that sounds difficult and is even more difficult when we try to execute it.  

For migrating Microsoft Teams from one tenant to another, it will be almost impossible to execute the task manually as it might include gathering data from the following sources: 

• SharePoint team site 
• Exchange team mailbox 
• Exchange mailboxes of individual users 
• OneDrive for Business of individual user 
• OneDrive organizational document library 
• Azure (using Blob storage) 
• Stream 
• Third-party storage provider 

Manual Teams Migration From one Tenant to another 

Manually migrating Teams from one Tenant to another involves a humongous amount of IT efforts and time. The lack of public APIs from Microsoft makes the automation of Teams migration almost unachievable. While there is no easy way for migrating Microsoft Teams from one office 365 tenant to another, we can devise a plan that involves systematically migrating each of the Teams components to the new Tenant and then reintegrating them into their cloned Teams.  

Teams elements to be migrated and reintegrated 

The contents of a Team aren’t sorted Team-wise in the tenant storage. Instead, they are sorted by the type of content. While this keeps the data organization excellent while maintaining Microsoft Teams, it turns out to be the worst part too when we decide to migrate them. 

Here’s a list of their element locations: 

• SharePoint Team site 

Sharepoint Teams sites store all the files and folders stored in the team document library or shared in channels. It also includes Teams external emails, its wiki page, and OneNote assets of Teams channels. 

• Exchange Team mailbox 

This location comprises of the Teams contacts, mails, group chat, and channel chat conversation history. 

• Exchange mailboxes of individual users 

Each of the individual mailboxes will contain the private one to one chats with that particular user along with conversation history and voicemails. It also comprises of the calendar meeting details. 

• OneDrive for Business of individual users 

Each user’s one drive account is connected to Teams and all the attachments exchanged in private chats, meeting chats, or call message windows are uploaded and stored in the respective user’s OneDrive account. 

• OneDrive organizational document library 

Users’ personal OneNote files along with all the details are stored here. 

• Microsoft Azure 

Images and all other types of media except GIFs that have been shared in chats are stored in the Azure account. 

• Microsoft Stream 

All the Meeting recordings are stored in Microsoft Teams for any future reference. 

• Third-party storage provider 

If your organization allows third-party storage provider, either through Teams tabs or other partner apps, the information related to them are stored directly in the systems of those 3rd party used by the partner. 

 Steps to Manual Teams Migration 

1. Replicating the Teams to be migrated by recreating them at the destination 
2. Add the required users and permissions to each Team manually 
3. Download the contents of each Team from source 
4. Update the content of each Team at the destination with the ones downloaded from the source 
5. Export each mailbox from the source and import them at the destination 

Steps to Migrate Microsoft Teams with Saketa Teams Migrator 

MS Teams migration is the need of the hour but the excessively lengthy and complicated approach required for executing it manually makes it nothing less than a nightmare. Instead of using so much of the time of the IT team executing the migration as well as that of the end-users whose communication might suffer significantly until the process is done, why not go for a simpler, quicker and more efficient automated way. Using a 3rd party Teams migration tool is a great idea to simplify the migration process while bringing in a significant reduction in downtime. 

Microsoft Teams Governance Best Practices - Saketa

An introduction to Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams need no introduction as it has become an inseparable part of our work culture. meanwhile, Microsoft Teams governance and best practices play a major role in enhancing its performance.

Microsoft added Microsoft Teams to its robust Office 365 suite of services –describing it as a tool, you can use to collaborate with your team and external guests. Ever since Microsoft announced the plans on phasing out Skype for business, Teams started taking over its communication aspect and started paving its way to where Skype was positioned in the user acceptance level.

Microsoft Teams governance and best practices

Creation Process

Creation Process is the first and foremost step for the Teams governance, is everybody able to create teams? not everyone in the organization can create teams. every time you create a new team in Teams, an office 365 group, planner and a SharePoint team site is created.

Naming Convention

Naming Convention, the name you choose for a newly created team impacts several aspects of Office 365. Creating a Team creates an email address for that team, so it’s important to stick to a similar naming convention. For Example: you have 2 teams, “Team Marketing” and “Teams Sales” the names should be descriptive and understandable clearly so that one can understand the purpose.

Using the consistent naming convention from the beginning of the Teams usage will be quite helpful for IT. It becomes difficult for IT team to change them later.

External access

External access, whether allowing the guest/external user with a team, I think you should allow an external user, if not they start using different communication methods to share the content. Like attaching files to emails and that’s something you are trying to avoid. If the Team is for internal purpose, I don’t think it needs to collaborate externally. The internal Teams probably contains confidential data that you don’t want it to be shared.

There could be a project, where people might need external collaboration. You want to enable external sharing. By defining policies around teams, you can allow external users.

Create Processes for Creating and Removing Teams

Create an approval process for making new Teams. This can be as simple as getting approval from a manager; it doesn’t have to be complex. it just makes sure that people aren’t creating new Teams every day. A short checklist can help employees decide whether creating a new Team is necessary

Likewise, for the purposes of data management and security, you should make sure there are processes for managing Teams. For most Teams, only employees who are strictly needed should be included. This protects potentially private and confidential data, while also making sure employees aren’t inundated with information that isn’t relevant to them.

Each Team should have a specific purpose so that data isn’t replicated, and employees aren’t confused about which Team they should be posting in.

Control Options

MS Teams provides conversation options such as memes, gifs, and emoji. If you want a more professional atmosphere and that employees are finding this a distraction, you can regulate or remove them. However, do note that some people do find that these types of communication options can ease corporate communication, making it easier for team members to interact with each other as though they are in person.

Using General Channel

The General channel is created by default when you create the team. Below are some purposes for this channel:

• Use it for sharing an overview of teams wants to achieve or purpose, and who is this team for?
• Use it l for announcements
• Use it for new team member onboarding
• For new or single-purpose teams, it may be the only channel at the beginning as you decide how Teams can best support your goals.

You can’t remove, rename, or unfavorite the General channel. Channels appear in alphabetical order (with the General channel at the top). In teams with many channels, use Hide or Show to display the channels you use the most.

Setting up Moderations in Teams Channel

Team owners can turn on moderation for a channel to control who can start new posts and reply to posts in that channel. When you set up moderation, you can choose one or more team members to be moderators.

Protecting Content in Teams

• Public vs Private Teams
• Private channel

Public teams are available for everyone and can be joined without the team owner’s approval.

Private teams can only be joined if the team owner or moderator adds you. You can also turn off the discoverability so that people can only fin the team if it’s shared by an owner or member.

If the content is sensitive or confidential, you make the team private and owner have to select who needs an invite to the team and those that are invited should treat the content in confidential manner.

Using Private channel within the Teams

Private channel within a team is a focused space for collaboration. Owners or members of the private channel can only access the channel, anyone, including guests, can be added to the private channel.

You might use the private channel if you want to restrict the collaboration for group of people or facilitate the communication between group of people assigned to specific project, without having to create an additional team to manage.

For example, a private channel can be used in such scenarios:

• A group of people in a team want a focused space to collaborate without having to create a separate team.
• A subset of people in a team wants a private channel to discuss sensitive information, such as budgets or resourcing.

A lock icon indicates a private channel. Only members of private channels can see and participate in private channels that they are added to.

Office 365 Group expiration policy

For IT admins, it is suggested to set an Office 365 expiration policy at tenant level and finding the teams which are not in use for a long time and get rid of them.

Based on the recently rolled out activity-based Microsoft teams renewal feature, you can set an expiration policy based on the user activity. Unlike before, the expiration was only based on the time period you set.

Only team owners can decide whether to delete or renew the Teams. and can get the content back post Microsoft’s 30-day soft delete period.

These were some of the Microsoft Teams governance best practices that we practice. Let us know yours!