Google Workspace to Google Workspace Migration Process

Based on our first hand experience with bunch of Google Workspace migration projects, we have seen businesses like yours fall in one of the following categories:

1. Rebranding : You already have a Google Workspace account in use with all your users, but now because of rebranding, you want to change the domain name. This process is comparatively easy as it does not data migration.
2. Merger / Acquisition : There are 2 entities, both with their own Google Workspace account (with their respective users), and now they need to be merged to become a single account. This one is a bit complex as it includes data migration, deletion of one entity and merging with another.

I will explain to you the process we follow here at Googally for both of the above scenarios. This process has helped us achieve great results for our customers like BioGaia (You may read their migration case study here).

I hope this helps you understand the path forward regardless of whether you work with us or some other Google partner for your project.

Rebranding Use Case : 

Let me start with an example case study to help you understand the process better in each case.

Example Scenario

• You are a small business that has been using Google Workspace for all of your 50 employees.
• Your primary domain name in Google Workspace is old.com
• You are rebranding and decided to go with the new.com domain.
• Your website will now be new.com instead of old.com (you would have a redirect so visitors are redirected from old.com to new.com website).
• Important : Assumption here is that new.com is not registered or in use with Google Workspace yet.

Desired Result with Google Workspace:

• All your users should have and use user@new.com instead of user@old.com.
• If anyone by mistake sends an email to user@old.com, it should not be bounced, but rather should be delivered to the respective user@new.com.
• No workspace data should be lost during the rebranding exercise, when users login to their user@new.com, they should find all their data intact including email, calendar, docs etc.

Googally’s Migration Process (Rebranding):

• Add new.com as a secondary domain under your old.com Google Workspace account.
• Swap the primary domain from old.com to new.com
  Note : Changing primary domain name does not change users’ email addresses in Google Workspace, hence the next step.
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• Run the script to quickly change users’ email addresses from user@old.com to user@new.com.
  When a user’s primary email address is changed in Google Workspace, Google retains the user's old email address as an email alias (or nickname). This is helpful because if someone sends an email to user1@old.com, this alias email will ensure this email lands in user1@new.com’s mailbox.
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• Setup Send  Mail As to allow user@new.com to be able to send emails as user@old.com. This step is optional based on customer’s requirements.

Result after following our process

• Your rebranding of Google Workspace domain is completed successfully without any data loss or downtime.
• Your users now have a new email address (user@new.com) to send and receive emails.
• Emails accidentally sent to user@old.com come to respective user@new.com.
• Optionally, user@new.com can also send as user@old.com if required.

Merger / Acquisition Scenario :

Now, let me explain to you the process we follow for merger / acquisition scenarios. To simplify things a bit, let us keep the same example scenario with a change in situation to represent merger or acquisition.

Example Scenario

1. You have been using Google Workspace on your company domain new.com for all of your users.
2. You acquired a company and their domain name in old.com.
3. Your management decided to merge and present them as one entity, instead of running them with own names (old.com and new.com). 
4. You would have a website redirect setup sometime so website visitors would be redirected automatically from old.com to new.com.
5. The company you acquired old.com also uses Google Workspace for all of their employees, and have bunch of data including emails, calendar, contacts, drive files etc.
6. Important : This assumes you both old.com and new.com have their own Google Workspace accounts in use.

Desired Result in Google Workspace:

• You want one single Google Workspace account, each user should have one primary email address (e.g user@new.com) to meet business objectives.
• Acquired company’s employees (e.g users@old.com) should now have user@new.com email address as they are now part of new.com. This way you only pay for a workspace license once per employee.
• No data should be lost during this merger, and users@old.com should see all of their (including emails, calendar, contacts, docs) when they login to their new mailbox (user@new.com).
• You want a setup where all users can send and receive emails in their user@new.com mailbox, however if someone sends them an email on their old email user@old.com, you want that too to come to the new email user@new.com.
• Optionally, when your users reply to emails, by default it should be sent from their new user@new.com email, but they should also have an option to send as user@old.com right from user@new.com mailbox.

Googally’s Migration Process (Merger):

Our migration process starts as soon as we receive required migration information from you, here is the step by step process:

1. We add a temporary secondary domain to your old google workspace account, under old.com in our example here, let's call this temporary.old.com.
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2. We migrate emails, calendar, and contacts (and optionally Drive files) for all / required users from user@old.com to user@new.com (Note, we’ll create the users in new.com if you haven’t created them yet).
   
   Following steps are performed on weekends (usually on Friday evening as you won't have much email traffic). We also use scripts to fasten some of these process steps:
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3. Once the initial migration is completed, we’ll swap the primary domain from old.com to temporary.old.com, and rename all your users from user@old.com to user@temporary.old.com.
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4. Now we delete the domain old.com from its instance, this instance will only have temporary.old.com left now, and all your users email now is user@temporary.old.com.
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5. We add old.com as a secondary domain under new.com, and verify the domain ownership via DNS record creation.
   
   You will have a few minutes of downtime between step number 4 and 5, because when we delete a domain from Google Workspace, Google needs some time to purge it from their database, and then we can re-add this domain under new (e.g under new.com in our example) domain.
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   However, if due to the nature of your business, if you can’t afford these few minutes of downtime on weekend evening, please let us know and we have another option to ensure zero downtime, it’ll increase the migration scope and pricing.
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6. At this stage, we have both your domains (old.com and new.com) under one google account, all your users here have user@new.com primary email address.
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7. We now add email alias for each of your users, so all users get user@old.com email alias, we do this step to ensure emails sent to users’ old email address (e.g user@old.com) does not bounce, and is rather delivered to users’ new email address (e.g user@new.com).
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8. We make any DNS changes if required (e.g DKIM for this secondary domain).
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9. We let you review everything and start using your new / branded Google Workspace.
   
   
10. Once you are settled down, you can delete everything from your old domain (e.g temporary.old.com) to avoid paying for Google licenses there.

‍Result after following our process

• Your two separate Google Workspace accounts are now merged into one. You have one centralized administration console to manage everything.
• Your acquired company users now also have user@new.com mailbox to send and receive emails. In addition, any emails sent to user@old.com would also come to respective user@new.com, so no email bounce.
• Your acquired company’s users’ data including email, calendar, contacts (and optionally drive files) are migrated successfully with no data loss.
• Optionally, all your acquired company’s users’ have an option to send emails as user@old.com if needed.

Don't have time or expertise to do it? check out our white glove Google Workspace to Google Workspace migration offering with transparent pricing.