Google Sites to SharePoint Migration Guide

Overview:

Google Sites to SharePoint migration with Cloudiway
1. Supplementary tools
Security during Migration
Performance information
Site migration scope
Pre-migration configuration
Use the Cloudiway platform to migrate your sites
Troubleshooting

1. Google Sites to SharePoint migration with Cloudiway

Cloudiway’s site migration solution helps businesses perform elaborate technical migrations through a simple SaaS interface. As a result, site migrations require no additional software installation or overhead, and migrations can be performed securely and quickly.

The Cloudiway platform is flexible enough to support all types of migration paths. Your migration strategy will depend on your business setup, type and size. Whichever migration path you choose, Cloudiway provides all the essential features such as site content, permissions, site layout and URLs (included rewrites where required). Delta passes are also available, which means you can complete a migration to capture any changes since the initial pass.

2. Security during Migration

For more information about security, please refer to this article.

3. Performance information

For more information about migration performance, please refer to this article.

4. Site migration scope

4.1. What can be migrated?

When migrating from Google Sites to SharePoint, the following site items can be migrated:

Menus (Horizontal and vertical navigation bars)
Permissions at site level
Site content
Welcome page
URLs rewritting
Web pages
Announcement pages (become discussion lists)
File cabinets (become document libraries)
Google list pages (become list libraries)
Google Gadgets ( converted to webparts when an equivalent exists)
Attachments

The platform supports delta migration which means that modifications (new items and updates) are propagated between passes (no deletions).

4.2. Migration limitations

Google Sites and SharePoint site are set up differently, which makes it difficult for some elements to be migrated successfully.

Google Site pages are organized in a tree hierarchy where pages can contain sub-pages (such as http://www.mysite.com/mainpage/subpage. SharePoint stores each site’s pages in a flat library; to avoid page naming conflicts, Cloudiway migration platform renames Google Sites pages as ‘mainpage-subpage’.

Google Site menu depth is unlimited, whereas, by default, SharePoint is limited to two nodes. By default, Google Site menus with a depth of more than two nodes cannot be migrated.

The Google menu control can contain text. SharePoint menus cannot, so text content in the Google Site menu control is lost.

Google gadgets that do not have web part equivalents are not migrated.

Announcements are migrated to SharePoint discussion boards. However, discussion boards do not support attachments. To work around this, announcement attachments are migrated in a SharePoint library with the post title.

Important note before migrating Googles Sites: Embedded Drives

Google Drives can be embedded in Google Sites making the migration of files, permissions and the assignment of an owner more complex than for standard migration.

By default, Cloudiway migration platform will not migrate the embedded Google Drives. However, there is a way to migrate embedded Google Drives by following this process:

Prior to the Google Site migration, it is mandatory to run a file audit of all the Google Drives. This is in order to build the list of Drive documents and respective owners.

Follow the below process:

1) Perform an audit of the Google Drives with the File migration tool (requires Cloudiway file migration licenses for each Google Drive)

2) Migrate the Google Sites

3) Migrate the Google Drives

Read more details about how to migrate Embedded Google Drives in this article.

4.3. Considerations

We strongly recommend you use Cloudiway’s file migration tool in conjunction with the site migration tool to achieve the best migration results possible. Please see our other documentation for more details about how these two products interact.

4.4. Audience

This guide is aimed at experienced system administrators who are capable of connecting to remote systems and using a variety of administration tools.

Although we provide support for our own products, we do not provide support for third party products such as PowerShell or server administration of Google or Microsoft products.

If you are concerned you might have any difficulty completing these steps, please consider a solution with our consulting team, contactable via presales@cloudiway.com. This will ensure a fast, costeffective and stress-free implementation.

5. Pre-migration configuration

5.1. Before you start

Before you start, you will need to ensure you have the details outlined in the following table.

Name	Description	Location
Cloudiway login	Stores details and provides communication between the systems you already use.	https://apps.cloudiway.com
Knowledge base access	Our extensive knowledge base is always accessible, with videos, troubleshooting tools, samples and more.	https://kb.cloudiway.com
Google Admin console	The Admin console is where administrators manage Google services for people in an organization.	https://admin.google.com
SharePoint Tenant administrator account	Account with Sharepoint Tenant administrator that bypasses SSO and is able to authenticate using username/password credentials, preferably with the format: user@tenant.onmicrosoft.com.	We recommend you create an account with admin access especially for migration. After all migrations are complete, simply delete this admin account.

5.2. Pre-migration

To ensure successful migration, we also recommend that you prepare any mapping tables for users and groups in CSV format, ready to upload later on.

5.3. Permissions Pre-requisites

For programmatic access, Modern Authentication in SharePoint must be disabled.

Also, the migration account (both at the source or target) must not authenticate using SSO or MFA (Multi Factor Authentication).

You must define a migration account that bypasses SSO (authenticate natively in Google and Office 365) and without MFA activated.

For setting up the pre requisites, you need a tenant administrator account at both the source and target.
In Google, the tenant administrator account will be used to setup the service account permissions.
In Office 365, the tenant administrator account will be used to setup the graph API application.

G Suite — Set permissions for the service account

1. In a new browser tab, go to https://admin.google.com and log in with your Admin console credentials
2. Click on Security, then Advanced settings (you might need to click on Show more to see this)
3. Click on Manage API client access
4. Click on Manage API client access
5. Client Name: paste 114818336788408865729
6. Click on the One Or More API Scopes field and add the following scopes:

https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/calendar/resource/#readonly,
https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/user/#readonly,
https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/,
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar,
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonly,
https://sites.google.com/feeds/

NOTE: 1. Each scope must be separated by a comma.
2. Some scopes require slashes (/) at the end and others don’t: please use the above strings. 3. If you add another scope later, existing scopes will be removed: you need to add the whole list at the same time.

7. Click on the Authorize button
8. You can check that the scopes were successfully registered by looking for the names next to the client ID you paste
9. Now, navigate to Security > API Reference > API Access and ensure that ‘Enable API Access’ is checked.

Graph APIS require application permissions on groups, users and sites.

It requires:

Microsoft Graph:

Group.Read.All and Group.ReadWrite.All.
User.Read.All
Sites.Read.All, Sites.ReadWrite.All

SharePoint Graph:

Sites.FullControl.all
Sites.Manage.all
Sites.Read.all
Sites.ReadWrite.All

For CSOM access, the migration account must be SharePoint administrator.

6. Use the Cloudiway platform to migrate your sites

6.1. Create your G Suite source connector

For Cloudiway to migrate your sites, it needs to be able to communicate with both your source and target domains. To do this, Cloudiway uses connectors, which are configured on apps.cloudiway.com. You will need to set up a connector for each source tenant and each target tenant. Follow the steps below to configure a G Suite source connector.

From your browser, go to https://apps.cloudiway.com and login
Click on Site Migration on the left

You can choose to manually set up your connectors, or you can use the simpler process of the wizard. The steps below will walk you through the manual process.
Click on Sources, then on the + New option at the bottom of the screen
Click on Google Site and type a meaningful name in Connector name
Click on the Create button
Fill in the remaining details including Domain Name (no www required), Administrator (your migration admin account). Also fill the security questions: Google will detect that the migration account will log in from an unusual location and will request to answer one or two security questions.Cloudiway would then have to log in to Google from the server in order to “whitelist” the IP address of the server. This would be necessary only one time, then the server would remain whitelisted during all the project.
Click on the Save button at the bottom of the screen. Your source connector has now been created. Next up is the target connector.

6.2. Create your target connector

With the source connector now configured on the Cloudiway platform, it’s time to create and configure the target connector. Follow the steps below to configure a SharePoint Online target connector.

Click on Targets on the left, then + New on the Action bar at the bottom of the screen.
Click on SharePoint Online and type a meaningful name in Connector name
Click on the Create button
Fill in the fields, remembering to use your Office 365 account credentials with administrator rights in the remaining fields

Server Region: Most of the time, keep the default value “Worldwide” except if you have a China, German or US Governmental tenant.
Name of the tenant: enter the name of your tenant (ie cloudiwaylab), not cloudiwaylab.com or cloudiwaylab.sharepoint.comFilling this field automatically fills the URL field.
Domain Name: Enter the name of your primary domain.
Migration User: A sharePoint administrator account ( for permissions to run CSOM calls).
User Password: The password of the migration user. This is stored encrypted in EAS 256.
Client ID / Client Secret: Graph API client ID and secrets with permissions to access, groups, users and sites.See this article for creating the application : https://kb.cloudiway.com/article/azure-apps-registration/
Click on the Save button at the bottom of the screen

6.3. Import sites with the Get Sites command

The Cloudiway platform provides a tool called Get Sites which returns a list of all sites from the domain you added to the source connector (using the admin credentials you supplied in the source connector). This is a useful tool which provides you with a complete picture of sites to be migrated.

You should therefore run this tool prior to site migration to avoid having to manually enter details of each site: any syntax errors or spelling mistakes will prevent Cloudiway from finding the intended site. This is by far the simplest method of listing the sites to be migrated.

Ensure you’re still in the Site Migration area of apps.cloudiway.com and go to Site List
Click on the Migration menu at the bottom and select Get Sites to display the following dialog box:
Select your source from the dropdown list and click on the Get button

The tool will schedule a call to your domain to return a list of all visible sites for migration.
Refreshing the screen will cycle through ‘Get sites scheduled’, ‘Get sites working’ and eventually, ‘Get sites done’, presuming your source connector is set up correctly.
Once the Get Sites tool has completed, it will return a list of all sites discovered via the source connector’s credentials. The list will appear in the Site List area of the Cloudiway platform.
From this list, you can check what is due to be migrated prior to migration, edit the target site and collection, assign licenses and delete any sites that don’t need to be migrated. These actions are explained in the following sections.

You can also download the results in CSV format for your own records or to make editing changes, and then upload the updated CSV file to the Cloudiway platform as your final list of sites to be migrated.
Note: you cannot add new entries to the CSV file: they must exist on the Cloudiway platform already. If you need to add a new sites, either re-run the Get Sites (which will add newly-available sites to the existing list) or add a site manually using the steps in section 6.1.

6.4. Import sites with the Get Sites command

The Get Sites tool will have captured as many source site details as possible for you, to help avoid spelling mistakes or missed sites. However, it cannot specify target site details.

Ensure you’re still in the Site Migration/Site List area of apps.cloudiway.com
Click on the Collections tab in the top right corner to display the list of site collections defined in the Cloudiway portal.
If you need to add any collections for one or more targets, click on the Create button on the Action bar at the bottom of the page. A pop-up dialog box will appear where you can enter a new collection name:
Type the required target collection URL into the field
Click on the Create button, then repeat steps 3 and 4 for any additional site collections

6.5. Complete target site details

With all sources and target site collections added, you can pinpoint specific target locations within site collections to obtain your preferred site structure at the target. You can also delete sites that don’t need migration, configure individual sites and assign licenses.

Before any migration can start, you must assign a license for each source site. You can purchase site licenses these within the Cloudiway platform (or contact sales@cloudiway.com for further information), and these will be displayed on the License dropdown after purchase.

Logically, you need to add a target connector from the Target dropdown list before migration can begin, as well assign any target site collection locations to your source sites prior to migration.

Remember, you can manually change each site’s name at the target, as well as choose whether to migrate directly to the root site of the collection. You can use the Target site relative URL field to preview the final site URL (relative to the target domain) each time you make a change to the target fields.

Assign Target

Note: You can assign a target connector and collection by entering into the details of the site and editing it (See above).

You can also assign a target to multiple sites from the Action bar at the bottom of the screen. To blanket assign a connector, go to the Manage menu and select Assign Targets (this will apply to all sub-sites).

To blanket assign a collection, go to the Set Collection menu and select a collection from the list.

To blanket assign a license, go to the Manage menu and select Assign Licenses (this will apply to all sub-sites).

6.7. Import or create a mapping table of user details

In order to migrate access rights for the list of users who have access to each source site, a mapping table of users must be defined. Office 365 security groups rights can also be migrated using a mapping table. A list of mail users is used as mapping tables as it defines who has access to the different sites. It is also used to migrate metadata for files and folders.

You can upload a user or site list via CSV, use Cloudiway’s automated Import Users tool, or manually add each user on the Cloudiway platform.

6.7.1. Option 1: CSV import

If you have a CSV file of all your site users and another one for groups, you can upload the files to Cloudiway. The files must have the following fields in the header row:

User CSV: FirstName;LastName;SourceEmail;TargetEmail

Group CSV: Name;SourceEmail;TargetEmail

If you perform more than one upload, any CSV data already uploaded will not be overwritten by following uploads. Therefore, duplicates can occur. Sample CSV files are available to download during the steps below.

From the Site Migration area of apps.cloudiway.com and go to Mapping Tables
Click on Manage on the action bar and select Upload CSV
If required, click on Download sample CSV and add your users to the CSV file using the sample headers (FirstName;LastName;SourceEmail;TargetEmail)
When you have a complete CSV file with the correct headers, click on the Upload button
Locate your CSV file within your own file system, and double-click on it to select it. If the CSV file format is not correct, you will see an error message on your screen:
If you see any error messages, check your CSV file to ensure it has four columns, each with a separator (including the last) and try uploading again. Once the CSV file format is correct, you will see a confirmation message at the top of your screen:
To upload a group CSV, click on the Groups tab in the top right corner and repeat steps 2 to 6
Check your email for confirmation that all uploads have been completed: you can also refresh the Cloudiway platform to display your imported users at any time
If you wish to edit any user or group that’s been uploaded, click on their name from the user list or group list to display the editable list of fields.

6.7.2. Option 2: Create a single user

Many of our first-time customers create a single user and/or group for testing purposes. This provides a means of watching the migration process without affecting all users. Single users and groups can also be created for migrations affecting just a few users.

Go to the Mapping Tables area of the Site Migration menu
Click on Manage on the action bar at the bottom of the screen and select Create Single to display the following screen:
Fill in all details for a new user
Click on the Create button. The new user will be added to the Site Migration / Mapping Tables screen:
Repeat steps 1 to 4 for any more users you’d like to create
If you’d like to manually add a group, click on Groups in the top left corner of the screen, then repeat steps 2 to 5.

6.8. Perform an audit

Cloudiway provides an auditing tool which will help identify potential errors prior to migration, such as unfound sites or broken items. We recommend that you run this audit as many times as required prior to migrating to ensure your migration list is fully prepared and ready.

1. Ensure you’re still in the Site Migration area of apps.cloudiway.com and go to Site List
2. Select the sites you would like to start auditing by clicking on their individual checkbox, or by selecting all sites with the checkbox at the top of the list
3. Click on Migration in the bottom left corner of the action bar and select Audit to begin the audit process, which will be confirmed with a message on your screen
4. Refresh the screen to see how successful the audit was: for each site, you can click on the text to the right of the Status column for further information. The Statistics tab provides an overview of warnings and errors, as well as a log of what the audit performed:
5. Click on the Site Data tab to see a list of what can be found in the site
6. Click on one of the plus signs to see further information about the page and its site content
  With this level of detail about pages and contents, you can verify any troublesome items unlikely to be migrated prior to starting migration. You should also use the audit to crosscheck any missing items from the audit that are present on your source site. Note: You can change the target details at any time prior to migration, before or after running an audit, via the Edit Site tab, as previously described.

6.9. Perform preprocessing

Cloudiway provides a preprocessing tool that will set automatically all the required permissions at the source and at the target and provision the groups and teams at the target.

What does the preprocessing tool?

At the target:

It creates the site collections.
It creates the sites and subsites.
It creates the SharePoint libraries.
It migrates the Taxonomy dictionaries.
It migrates the permissions.
It migrates the webfields.

At the end of the preprocessing, the status of the migration is set to “Not Started”. The sites are now ready to be migrated.

How to run the preprocessing?

Ensure you’re still in the Site & Group Migration area of apps.cloudiway.com and go to Group List.
Select the sites you would like to start preprocessing by clicking on their individual checkbox, or by selecting all sites with the checkbox at the top of the list.
Click on Migration in the bottom left corner of the action bar and select Pre-Processing to begin the process.

6.10. Activate and monitor your migration

Now that you have performed all the pre-migration steps within your tenants and within Cloudiway, you’re ready to migrate. We recommend you run a test migration on a single site first to check that your configuration produces the outcome you expect.

To start your migration, select the site you wish to migrate and click on the Start button. Your batch will be scheduled and will begin as soon as resources are available.

7. Troubleshooting

Cloudiway provides an extensive knowledge base with many resources, including common error messages, video guides and downloads.

Please visit the site migration knowledge base area here:

http://kb.cloudiway.com/category/faq-cloudiway/cloudiway-migration-products/sites-migration/

Please visit the entire knowledge base here (where you can search for keywords or read through topics): http://kb.cloudiway.com/

The knowledge base also contains information on how you can ask for further support, should you require it.