This document gives answers to some of the common questions asked regarding the email migration service offered by us.

RM Cloud Service Delivery can assist you with your email migration. For further information, please speak to your Sales representative on 01235 645 316 or email getintouch@rm.com, quoting this article.

• The destination Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace tenancy must be fully commissioned
• The mail domain you are migrating to must be registered with your destination tenancy.
• All target user accounts be provision and licensed in the destination tenancy 

Source system (From)	Items migrated to Microsoft 365
	Email	Folders	Calendars and appointments	Contacts*	Tasks	Notes
Personal Storage Table (PST) files	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Microsoft 365	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Google Workspace	Yes	Yes**	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Source system (From)	Items migrated to Google Workspace
	Email	Folders	Calendars and appointments	Contacts*	Tasks	Notes
Personal Storage Table (PST) files	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Microsoft 365	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Google Workspace	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes***	No

Note:
*Personal distribution lists under the contacts will not get migrated from any of the systems.

**In addition to normal folders, please note that Gmail labels are converted to folders.

***Recurring tasks are not migrated to Google Workspace due to API restrictions.

When migrating from Gmail to Exchange or Microsoft 365, Gmail labels are converted to folders. As Gmail labels are very different in nature to Outlook folders, it is important to understand how Cloud Migrator converts them prior to migration. Cloud Migrator creates folders as it migrates the email within them and how they are created depends on the labelling of the emails within them:

• If an email is labelled with a single label, the label is created as an Outlook folder and the email placed in the folder.
• If an email is assigned multiple labels, Cloud Migrator creates the label with the shortest path (e.g. Clients/B would be created ahead of Clients/A/Invoices) as a folder, places the email in the folder and assigns the remaining labels as categories to the email.
• If multiple labels of the same path length are assigned, it creates the first of them alphabetically.
• If an email is located in both the Inbox or Sent labels and other labels, it creates the first label as a folder nested under the Inbox
• If a label contains emails assigned to the Inbox label and other emails only assigned to the label this can result in a single label being created as two folders, one under the inbox  and one independent folder, with different emails in them.

Our email migration process includes three stages:

• Phase 1: Primary migration - Existing email data will be migrated to the new email system. This is copying of complete data and this will be the time consuming phase during migration depending upon the data to be migrated.
• Phase 2: DNS/MX records switch over - DNS/MX records need to be changed to point to the new email system. Once this is completed, the new system will be live and the current email system will become obsolete. If you are moving to a new domain i.e. the users are moving from domain1.com in the source system to domain2.com in the new system, DNS switch is required only if the emails to domain1.com need to be redirected to the new domain, domain2.com, in the new system.
• Phase 3: Secondary migration - Migrate the email messages that were received after starting the primary migration but before the MX record changes. This stage is done to ensure that no emails are missed in the new system.

Distribution groups will not be migrated as part of the standard service. If the list of distribution groups and the users in each group is provided, the required groups can be created in the destination tenancy as an additional service.

An MX record is used by a DNS server to route incoming email. Changing your MX record is usually done to redirect email to a remote server.

Once the primary migration is completed, the DNS/MX records need to be changed to point to your destination tenancy. Your DNS hosting service provider will be able to help you to change the DNS/MX records.