Workaround on open issue during Google Workspace Migration for Microsoft Exchange using GWMME

[ajitsingh]

Hi Team,
Please refer to this document for What is migrated?
What is migrated? - Google Workspace Admin Help
From above link below is list of unsupported featured of GWMME.
Is there any way/tool or workaround to migrate these unsupported features? I need to work on these unsupported features.

1 .Unsupported email features
1.1 Rules - Rules (both server and client) aren’t migrated but you can create equivalent filters in Gmail.
1.2 Signatures - Signatures aren’t migrated but you can recreate them in Gmail.

2. Unsupported calendar features
2.1 Signatures - Rich content in event descriptions
Rich text descriptions aren't imported. In Microsoft Outlook 2016, descriptions are converted to plain text.
2.2 Tentative or Out of Office status - Any special status for calendar data is not migrated.

3. Unsupported contacts features
3.1 Contact folders - Separate contact folders don’t migrate.
3.2 Contact groups or personal distribution lists - Contact groups or personal distribution lists don’t migrate.

4. Other Unsupported features
Notes
Tasks
Journal entries
RSS feeds

Thanks
Ajit Singh

[wyloguj]

Hi Ajit!

Some of these things like signatures or contacts you can migrate by using GW Migrate. Here's a link to the support article https://support.google.com/workspacemigrate/answer/9222862?hl=en&ref_topic=9223062&sjid=407558344750...

[Marcin_Milewski · Accepted solution]

Hey @ajitsingh,

GWMME is limited when it comes to the features, however it allows to migrate the most important data (Mails, Calendars and Contacts) from the Microsoft Exchange environment. As @wyloguj said, Workspace Migrated is more powerful, and supports Drive migration as well, it's a free to use product but it requires more resources (Cloud infrastructure) that makes it better suited for bigger migration projects. 

Let me add some additional comments on the points listed by you:
1.1 Rules - Rules: Mails rules set on the user level aren't supported, it would be best to communicate with the end users (Change Management) and ask them to export these settings, or to note, how the current rules are configured (there might be difference on settings between the systems). Then they would be able to set these settings in the Gmail interface after the migration.

1.2. Signatures - You could utilize some third party tool such as GAM (free CMD tool) to apply the signatures to the end users, this is possible using the bulk update command, so should be pretty straightforward, when you have user signatures exported from Microsoft (e.g. using Powershell script) in html. 

2.1 Rich content in event descriptions  - this is because there is a difference between Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar formatting - the description is being migrated as a plain text, but if rich formatting is applied on the source, then it will be converted to plain text when possible.  

4. Other unsupported features - it's best to communicate with the end users, what is/isn't in scope of the migration, so they would be able to export or move manually some of the elements that they would like to maintain (e.g. notes -> Google Keep)

There are also 3th party migration products on the market, some of them might support some of these elements, but typically these also brings additional costs.

Hope this helps,
Marcin

[ajitsingh]

Thanks Marcin.

This helps lot for solution.

Regards

Ajit