Bits & Bytes

The BitTitan Blog for Service Providers

08/24/2020
Grady Gausman
teams2-0_feat

Teams 2.0: New Enhancements for Microsoft Teams Migrations with MigrationWiz

Since introducing capabilities to migrate Microsoft Teams in July 2019, we’ve been hard at work to expand features in MigrationWiz® for this scenario. We’ve completed over 4,000 Teams projects since then and continue to develop best practices and collect feedback from our partners to improve the migration experience for one of the hottest work applications on the market.

This new release of MigrationWiz unveils key features for managing Teams migrations in scenarios such as divestitures or a large enterprise merger while ensuring ease-of-use and security remain top priorities.

Learn more about recent enhancements below or head over to the BitTitan® Help Center for step-by-step technical documentation on how to configure and launch your Teams project today.

 

Introducing Autodiscover

When setting up a Teams project, we now offer several ways to import Teams into MigrationWiz. One option is Autodiscover, which will scan the Source instance for all Teams and populate a CSV to upload into MigrationWiz. Users can choose to import all Teams found during discovery or a subset and can modify that easily in the CSV prior to upload.

 

For large projects where customers are mapping a significant number of Teams or will be mapping a large number of Teams to new destinations, Bulk Add via CSV template is here to help. This is also how Teams will be uploaded should customers go the Autodiscover route.

Quick Add is the final option to import Teams into MigrationWiz and perfect for small migrations or proof of concepts. It allows you to migrate specific Teams without the full CSV management.

In both Bulk or Quick Add, users can map and/or edit Team names to avoid naming conflicts on the Destination or merge multiple Teams. Refer to our migration guide for more advice around Team naming conventions and best practices.

 

Introducing Teams Pre-Stage

From a project management perspective, Teams migrations with MigrationWiz are treated very similarly to mailbox projects we’ve been doing since 2009. One similarity within this release is the introduction of a Teams Pre-Stage strategy. In mailbox scenarios, this involves migrating the majority of user data over days or weeks leading up to the actual MX record cutover. This helps expedite the final cutover and enables large migrations with user counts in the thousands to happen over a weekend.

We’re taking that same strategy and applying it to Teams. Once Teams have been imported and users are ready to start the migration, we recommend a two-step approach:

  • In a first pass, migrate the Team and Channel structure to the Destination.
  • In subsequent passes, migrate the actual data such as Conversations, Files, and Permissions.

In the course of testing and performing Teams migrations this past year, we’ve found this to help expedite migration speeds and reduce migration errors. The MigrationWiz UI for Teams projects now introduces users to this pre-stage approach to help ensure a successful transition.

 

 

Manage Individual Teams

Besides the pre-stage approach, another similarity to mailbox projects is to treat each Team as an individual line item in the project. Once imported, users can select specific Teams to migrate – handy in the case of a divestiture in which only a subset of the Teams instance will be migrated.

It also makes it easy to see progress, status, and errors for each Team in the project. And with additional features such as Project Sharing, Action Logging, and the BitTitan SDK, users can collaborate on large migration projects and maintain visibility into a jointly-managed engagement.

 

Enterprise Security with App-Based Authentication

BitTitan recently transitioned from Microsoft 365 authentication to app-based authentication for workloads including OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. Benefits of this change include increased security and a lower risk of throttling from Microsoft specific-to-Office 365 tenant projects, including Teams-to-Teams.

Note that this app must be added in both .microsoftonline.com tenants for the Source and the Destination to successfully reduce throttling and failures from Microsoft policy changes. Steps for adding and removing this app are linked here, in addition to our complete KB on SharePoint App-Based Authentication in the BitTitan Help Center.

 

Collaboration Licensing: Now Per-Team

Within this rollout of new features is a shift in how we are licensing Teams migrations: from per-user to per-Team. The “Collaboration License” is now $75/Team with a data allowance of 100GB (i.e. if a customer is wishing to migrate six Teams to a new tenant, they will need to purchase six Collaboration licenses to complete that project). Licenses continue to be available at store.bittitan.com as well as through our global distribution partners.

From now through the end of the year, Collaboration licenses are available at a limited time discount of $40/Team. Volume discounts are also available – contact us to learn more!

The biggest driver of this change is simplicity. Charging per-user can be complicated when considering factors like guest users and feedback from our customers over the past year was overwhelmingly in favor of the per-Team model. We want to make working with our solutions and our technical experts as easy as possible and feel this helps us achieve that goal and fully address this growing scenario within a tenant-to-tenant project.

 

On-Demand Webinar: Teams Migrations

A year’s worth of Teams projects have led to some lessons learned – we made the mistakes so you don’t have to.

You can learn more about Teams projects and MigrationWiz in a recent on-demand webinar. BitTitan technical experts cover pre- and post-migration tips in addition to a short demo of this scenario.

 

 

Related Posts

Onboarding Options for Migration Success

Onboarding Options for Migration Success

Onboarding Options for Migration Success Unforeseen Migration Challenges Managing migrations presents several challenges for managed service providers (MSPs) and internal IT teams. Migrations are highly visible and complex undertakings that often occur under strict...

Related Posts

Onboarding Options for Migration Success

Onboarding Options for Migration Success

Onboarding Options for Migration Success Unforeseen Migration Challenges Managing migrations presents several challenges for managed service providers (MSPs) and internal IT teams. Migrations are highly visible and complex undertakings that often occur under strict...

Register for a FREE BitTitan Account

Create an account now and start planning your project.