Things to Keep in Mind When Migrating Teams Private Chat

Sometimes things just don’t work the way you think they should – something you’ll discover the first time you plan a Teams Chat migration. In the cosmic scheme of things, Microsoft Teams is a very new technology, but it’s already become integral to a lot of our daily lives. Because of that, we tend to treat Teams as a single, integrated thing. In fact, the Teams platform is composed of multiple core apps, one of which is Teams Chat. If you keep this in mind, it’s easier to understand why migrating Teams and Teams Chat are actually separate processes.

Before embarking on a Microsoft Teams migration, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with how Teams Chat migrations work. This is because currently Microsoft Teams chats can only be migrated using Microsoft APIs. The best way to use those APIs is with a tool like MigrationWiz. You’ll also find that a Teams Chat migration has certain limitations – keep those in mind so you can set appropriate expectations with clients and users.

APIs Make Migrations Easier and Usually Faster

APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, are rules that allow software applications to communicate with each other. Microsoft has made some of their APIs public so third parties like BitTitan can build apps that interact with Microsoft 365 products. As soon as Microsoft makes new APIs available, BitTitan product engineers work on integrating applicable ones into MigrationWiz. APIs for migrating Teams have fairly recently became available. MigrationWiz is now previewing Teams Private Chat migrations using APIs. During preview, you can use the functionality without a license, as it is still in the beta phase. Migrating Microsoft Teams does require the purchase of MigrationWiz Collaboration licenses.

If you’ve previously migrated Teams Chat, you may have done it using a process through Exchange Web Services (EWS). You can learn the API process by reading guidance in the BitTitan Help Center and our FAQ and Troubleshooting Guide.

Know the Limitations

It’s important to understand the limitations of Microsoft Teams Chat migrations as you plan your project. Good communications are key to any migration project, and in this case, you’ll want to make sure your clients and end users know what to expect:

• Only users with Microsoft Teams and OneDrive for Business licenses can have their chats migrated.
• Although seemingly the same the process for migrating Teams conversations (conversations that are in Teams channels) migrating 1:1 type chats use different APIs.
• Every chat, including 1:1 chats, needs a service account to export and import. This ends up turning 1:1 chats into group chats. Due to the need for the service account to be added to the rehydrated chats. Once the chats are migrated, a cleanup pass can be run to remove the service account from the rehydrated group chats and return them to 1:1.
• Chats that were initiated by external users will not be able to be read by the API since they’re not part of the migrating tenant.
• If you’re working on a full Teams migration, it is recommended to run Teams Private Chat separately and last.

Chat’s Little Secret

The thing to know about Teams Chat migrations is that you’re not actually migrating them from one tenant to another like-for-like. Instead, conversations are “read” in the source tenant, then copied and recreated by a service account in the destination. So instead of saying that MigrationWiz is moving the chats, we say they’re being rehydrated.

Currently only chat threads with active messages in the last 30 days will be rehydrated back into the Teams application at the destination. Older chat threads can be migrated as a chat history are done so with an html file. Each chat thread has its own html file with a max size limit of 250 MB any messages that exceed that quota will not be migrated.

Once the migration is complete, users will be able to go to the same place in Teams to see their chat. The contents of their conversations can also be searched from the Teams search bar. Not all migration tools work the same, so you’ll want to check capabilities if you plan to use something other than MigrationWiz. MigrationWiz supports a large number of chat elements including meeting chats, 1:1 chats, group chats, chat titles, rich content formatting, replies/threads, emojis, GIFs, stickers, and long text messages.

Since Teams Chat migration using APIs is a relatively new functionality, it’s important to understand how the process works and what the end-user experience will look like. BitTitan offers support for every aspect of your Microsoft Teams migration – from learning resources to expert consulting from our Customer Success team. Contact us if you’re planning a Microsoft Teams migration and would like help migrating Teams Chat.