Odyssey’s Google to Microsoft Migration

As you all know, the company has made the decision to migrate from Google to Microsoft (MS) for our platform of productivity and collaboration tools and products. This includes all software, workspaces, accounts, and systems. The actual migration is scheduled to take place the weekend of 12 January 2024, with the new environment available for use on 16 January 2024.

Our goal is to ensure that all stakeholders understand the process and expectations and are adequately prepared well in advance of the actual migration. The MS Migration team has developed a detailed schedule and communications plan to minimize the negative impact on productivity and help ensure no loss of data. IT will have weekly ‘office hours’ where you can meet with them for additional support.

This will be a team effort and we need all stakeholders to be part of the team to be successful. Thank you!

Odyssey’s Google to Microsoft Migration

As you all know, the company has made the decision to migrate from Google to Microsoft (MS) for our platform of productivity and collaboration tools and products. This includes all software, workspaces, accounts, and systems. The actual migration is scheduled to take place the weekend of 12 January 2024, with the new environment available for use on 16 January 2024.

Our goal is to ensure that all stakeholders understand the process and expectations and are adequately prepared well in advance of the actual migration. The MS Migration team has developed a detailed schedule and communications plan to minimize the negative impact on productivity and help ensure no loss of data. IT will have weekly ‘office hours’ where you can meet with them for additional support.

This will be a team effort and we need all stakeholders to be part of the team to be successful. Thank you!

Google to Microsoft (MS) Environments

Current Google productivity and collaboration tools will migrate to Microsoft environments—they are:

System / AccountGoogleMicrosoft
Emailgoogle chat icon  Gmailgoogle chat icon  Outlook
User Drivesgoogle chat icon  My Drivegoogle chat icon  One Drive
Shared Drivesgoogle chat icon  Shared Drivegoogle chat icon  SharePoint
Meetingsgoogle chat icon  Google Meetgoogle chat icon  Teams
Groupsgoogle chat icon  Groupsgoogle chat icon  MS 365 Groups
Chatgoogle chat icon  Google Chatgoogle chat icon  MS Chat
Browsergoogle chrome icon  Chromems edge icon  Edge

About Migrating Your Shared Drives

The planning and initial preparation have already begun and many of you have started migrating your Shared Drive folders and preparing your data. There are several actions that need to be completed for Shared Drives prior to the MS migration:

1. Clean up, delete, and organize your files. Remove any unwanted or unused files. Please ensure the organization of your remaining folders and files is logical and intuitive within your department / group. If there isn’t a logical place for something, please work with the MS Migration team to determine what to do with the data. The organizational structure should be provided to the MS Migration team.

2. Since we are moving from a Google environment to a MS environment, any critical files (e.g., graphic-heavy briefs, complex spreadsheets, etc.) should be saved from a docs / sheets / slides format to a Word / Excel / PowerPoint format. If a file is already in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, it will migrate over cleanly.

3. Next, move shared folders from Google My Drive to Google Shared Drive. This will ensure that during the migration, any shared folders will be migrated to SharePoint and not an individual My Drive account.

Please note, when you move to Shared Drive, you CANNOT restrict folder permissions. If you have sensitive documents that are shared with others, consider password protecting them until they are migrated to the Microsoft platform.

Finally, a Google Shared Drive can only house 400,000 files. You may need to break up a folder into several different folders for the move from My Drive to a Shared Drive. You will be able to re-consolidate the folders in MS SharePoint once the migration is complete. MS SharePoint allows up to 30 Million files in a folder.

About Migrating Your Gmail

Prior to the migration you will receive a new password for your MS Outlook email account. All emails will automatically be transferred from Gmail to Outlook. As part of the conversion from Google Gmail to MS Outlook, please note that email attachments in a Google format (i.e., Docs, Sheets, Slides) will not migrate over to the new environment. Additionally, any Google links will not work after the migration.

Migration Schedule

September 13-19, 2023

Shared Drive Owners Impact Briefing / Initial Training

September 18, 2023 – October 11, 2023

Group / Department Meetings

October 16, 2023

Email sent to all employees

November 20, 2023

Data Migration from My Drives to Shared Drives complete

December 28, 2023

Mapped Shared Drives migrated to SharePoint

January 2, 2024

Email sent to employees with new Outlook Passwords

Questions? Concerns?

Contact the IT Helpdesk