How to transfer Teams from one tenant to another?

Organizations are increasingly looking for solutions to improve communication and collaboration capabilities. Beyond simple features like chat, companies are looking for more comprehensive services that include video calling, file sharing and real-time app collaboration.

Many of these capabilities are available in Microsoft Teams, which leverages the capabilities of other Microsoft apps and services in addition to third-party integrations. With a significant number of enterprises adopting Microsoft Teams as their primary communication solution, scenarios arising from collaboration, mergers, acquisitions and organizational consolidation are driving enterprises to migrate Teams from one tenant to another.

Let's understand the architecture of Microsoft Teams before diving into what it takes to move to a different tenant.

How does Microsoft Teams work?

Microsoft Teams is one of the most powerful collaboration tools available, thanks to its highly integrated architecture that leverages what's available in Microsoft 365.

• All accounts in Microsoft Teams use Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) for identity management. An Azure AD instance is created for each customer using Microsoft Teams.
• A new Microsoft 365 group is created for each team you add to Microsoft Teams.
• These groups rely on Exchange Online for mailbox and calendar functionality.
• A SharePoint Online site is created that allows users to store and collaborate on shared files from the Microsoft Teams interface.
• A Microsoft OneNote notebook is designed to allow teams to add their findings, comments, and other information along with chat data.
• Office 365 apps like Power BI can be integrated with third-party apps using connectors.

Microsoft Teams Tenant to Tenant Transition Issues

The large number of components and services used in Microsoft Teams poses the biggest challenge in a tenant-to-tenant migration scenario. Here are some of the other problems.

• Teams data is stored in different places and in different formats.
• There may be options in the API that themselves have limitations, especially for retrieving channel chat data.
• Migrating dynamic groups from one tenant to another may result in the groups being converted to static groups.
• Configure initial settings for Microsoft Teams users in the new tenant.

How can I move Microsoft Teams to another tenant?

While Microsoft does not provide a solution for migrating Microsoft Teams clients, companies can use third-party tools to simplify the process. Additionally, community-created PowerShell scripts can be used to automate and customize Microsoft Teams. 

What are the considerations for migrating between Microsoft Teams tenants?

The migration path for each organization will be unique. While third-party migration tools can make the process easier, they can be prohibitively expensive. Additionally, not all third-party migration tools are created equal. Many of them cannot migrate metadata, scheduler, tabs or user conversations.

The appropriate migration path should be chosen based on factors such as the number of users, resources required to migrate Microsoft Teams, time constraints, and compliance requirements, among other factors.

• If you can't afford the tool but need the metadata, the data in Microsoft Teams can be put into chat files that can be accessed from the new tenant.
• If cost is the main constraint, an API-based approach is faster, although it requires technical knowledge.
• If compliance is not an issue and data availability is all that matters, the data can be archived in chat files that can be accessed from the channel's file section. Plus, it can even be broadcast to the chat section.

Fanetech can help you with your Microsoft Teams migration

We hope this article helped you understand how to migrate Teams from one client to another. FanetechAs a Microsoft Tier Service Provider, we can help you identify and implement the right Office 365 solution to get the most out of Microsoft Teams. Contact our teamfor help with cloud services and licenses.