What IS the Data Migration Tool?

In order to provide our students with the best possible experience with their transition to the Google Mail system, ITS has worked to develop a portal that allows students, alumni and retirees of the university to choose whether or not to migrate mail from their old Outlook mailboxes. This system utilizes an application developed by ITS in conjunction with Google Migration tools to function. Once a user signs up for self service migration through the portal their status will change to pending. 

How does it work?

• Every day, Monday to Friday, a pool of servers checks in with my.umflint.edu to download a list of users who have requested to have their mail migrated.
  • Once the list is collected the status page will change to migration started.
  • This list is then processed in the order that users signed up.
• Google’s migration tool has to scan and convert each mail object in the user’s Exchange mailbox before uploading it to their Google Mailbox. 
  • This process can take hours or days depending on the size of the mailbox in question as well as where your mailbox is in the queue. 
  • Batches of users are done simultaneously on each server which helps reduce the delay.
    • Once a batch of users is done migrating the server then starts on the next batch of users from the same list it downloaded earlier.
• Please note: Due to the variability in migration times for each user, the status page may take some time before being updated when the process completes for your account.