The ShareGate migration tool and Cloud copy automatically associate users between your source and your destination during a migration. This automatic association can affect permissions and Person or Group metadata fields such as Modified by.
Tip: You can map your users and groups manually. The users and groups you do not specify in your mappings are mapped automatically. To map your users with the migration tool, see Map users and groups. To map users with Cloud copy, see Cloud copy User mapping.
Index
- How the ShareGate migration tool resolves users from the source to the destination
- How the ShareGate migration tool resolves groups from the source to the destination
- Considerations
How the ShareGate migration tool and Cloud copy resolve users from the source to the destination
The ShareGate migration tool and Cloud copy extract the following information for each user account from the source:
- Account name.
- Display name.
- Email.
Note: Only the account name is extracted when you migrate from a file share.
Once the information is extracted, the ShareGate migration tool and Cloud copy go through the user accounts at the destination and look for complete matches with the properties below, in the specified order. These properties are:
- Exact same account name.
- Same normalized account name (without claims header).
- Same login and domain.
- Same login.
- Same login and domain (source login read from display name - this can happen when importing from file system because the account name is set as the display name).
- Same login (source login read from display name - this can happen when importing from file system because the account name is set as the display name).
- Same email address.
- Same display name.
- PrincipalType is not set or is a security group and the same display name without a domain.
The moment a matching property is found, the destination user account is considered a match and is mapped to that source user account.
If no complete match is found, an algorithm is used to look for partial matches of these properties.
Note: If you are using any kind of redundant word in the account name, or if you have certain users that have multiple matching names, you could get user mismatches with the algorithm. To resolve that problem, you can create a company-wide user mapping file. You can extract the user information from your Active Directory and use that data to generate a mapping file with PowerShell.
How the ShareGate migration tool and Cloud copy resolve groups from the source to the destination
SharePoint group
The ShareGate migration tool and Cloud copy search for a SharePoint group of the same name at the destination. If a matching group is found, that group is used.
If no SharePoint group is found, the ShareGate migration tool and Cloud copy look for an Active Directory security group of the same name. If a matching Active Directory security group is found, that group is used in the destination.
Using Copy structure and content, if no matching Active Directory security group is found, the ShareGate migration tool migrates the SharePoint group with its members, as long as the users are available at the destination.
Active Directory security group
The ShareGate migration tool and Cloud copy do not migrate Active Directory security groups, instead, they search for an Active Directory security group of the same name in the destination. If a matching group is found, that group is used. The ShareGate migration tool or Cloud copy will then copy the permissions from the source group to the destination group.
If no Active Directory security group is found, the ShareGate migration tool or Cloud copy looks for a SharePoint group of the same name. If a matching SharePoint group is found, the ShareGate migration tool or Cloud copy will then copy the permissions from the source group to the destination group.
Note: If an Active Directory security group is already nested in a SharePoint group, the mapping option will fail because a SharePoint group cannot be added within another SharePoint group.
Considerations
Matching type
In the process of mapping your users and groups, the ShareGate migration tool or Cloud copy will try to find an entry of a matching type. For example, a user, SharePoint group, or security (Active Directory) group.
If no entry of the same type is found, the app will search for a matching entry of a different type. A group can be matched to a user, and a user can be matched to a group.
Blocked sign in
If the Azure Active Directory user setting Block sign in has been applied, that user will not become a member of the destination Team or SharePoint online environment during migration. This limitation exists if the user has their sign-in blocked at either the source or the destination.
Note: The Migration report will not contain any warnings.
Training video: For more info, watch User Mapping.