MAIL FORWARDERS USER GUIDE

1. Mail Forwarder Overview

2. Mail Forwarder: When to use it?

3. Mail Forwarder: Pre-requisites

4. Mail Forwarders Configuration

This involves a process of adding a TXT record to your external DNS.  The process is detailed in the “Add a domain” step by step wizard.

If you are using the onmicrosoft.com domain as the destination technical domain, you can add the Google TXT record in the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Settings / Domains, select the tenant domain, click on DNS records tab and then add the TXT record:

Once validated, the O365 technical domain appears as registered in the Google domain list.

5. Cloudiway Configuration

Once your basic tenant configuration is complete, you can now set up the Cloudiway tools to apply the forwarding rules on your mailboxes.

Global Settings

 In your Mail Migration Global Settings

Set “Forwarder Settings” to “Enable.” This will give you options to configure based on your project needs.

Create Alias

Enable this feature for a same domain migration scenario, if you want Cloudiway platform to create aliases for you in both the source and target mailboxes.  Please ensure that you will not have any alias conflicts in your tenants.  For example. If you have two Bob Smith’s, please be sure that their aliases, whatever you decide to use, are assigned to the correct Bob Smith.

Whether or not you use this feature, the alias should be formatted using the email prefix of the user defined in the mail migration “User List” along with the domain listed in the “Technical Domain” in the Global Settings.

For example,

If the migration user is:

Sourceflast@tenantA.com and TargetFirst.Last@tenantB.com

The mailbox alias should be:

Sourceflast@source-techncialdomain.com and TargetFirst.Last@target-technicaldomain.com

Note:  If you have decided to use the built-in technical alias in Google Workspace, please be sure that the mailboxes have the alias correctly applied to them. The Cloudiway tools will not be able to set an alias using that domain.

Create Target Forwarders

Enable this feature to ensure that the target mailboxes will receive a forwarder back to the source mailbox.  Usually, this is Enabled.

Technical Domain

Each of your connectors that supports mailbox migration will be displayed at the bottom of the Forwarders Global Settings list.  Here you will click Modify and add the Technical Domain (or alias domain) you have chosen as your forwarder domain associated with each tenant connector.  In other words, add the alias of the source tenant to the source connector, and alias domain of the target tenant to the target connector.

If the source and destination primary SMTP domains are different, you just need to set as the technical domain the own domain:

Forwarders Global Settings Different Domains

6. Applying the Forwarders

Before applying the forwarders in a staged migration, you will need to populate your mail migration User List.  Once that step has been completed, you can begin the initial forwarding on all mailboxes to be migrated in the corresponding user batch to forward email to the source mailboxes.

To do this, select the users or the user batch and click on the Forwarders button, and select Forward Email to Source.  This will create a forwarder on all target mailboxes to send email to the source mailbox aliases, and not leave a copy of the email in the target.

Email Forwarders

You will then start the migration of the mailboxes in the batch by clicking on Migration button and then Start.

When you are ready to cut over the users of the batch, select them, click the Forwarders button, and choose Cutover.  This will remove the target mailbox forwarder, add a forwarder on the source mailbox to forward to the target alias, it will not leave a copy of the email in the source, and perform one more migration delta pass, so you don’t need to submit another migration pass from Migration button.

7. Additional Information