Question

How do I use the uInform IMAP migration tool?

Answer

The ulnform IMAP migration tool is intended for admins for moving their users from DavisMail and Office 365.  Migrations can also be performed between Office 365 and DavisMail. The tool can be found here.  To access this page your account must be granted access to the uConnect migration tools which can be requested by contacting uconnect-help@ucdavis.edu.

The IMAP Migration tool has known limitations.  For the best results, please review these document in full, especially the following tips section.

Tips for a successful migration

• Before migrating a mailbox it is recommended that you delete all items in the deleted items and spam/junk email folders on both the source and destination mailboxes.
• Some mailboxes (especially large >5GB) often need to have their migrations manually restarted once or more to complete.
• For time-sensitive/VIP migrations, please contact uConnect for help with planning and testing and possibly scheduling a dedicated migration.

Scheduling a migration

To create a new migration request do the following:

1. Open the uInform IMAP Migration Tool. 
2. Click Create New Request.
3. Select the source mail system to migrate from.
4. Enter the Source Username, for DavisMail this is the user's Kerberos loginID, for uConnect this is the user's UPN.
5. Select the target mail system to migrate to.
6. The target mailbox will be auto-discovered via.
     a) Matching LoginID
     b) Matching a MailID@ucdavis.edu address
   If a match cannot be made automatically, contact uconnect-help@ucdavis.edu and include the source LoginID and target uConnect UPN.
7. Select a scheduled start time.  Migrations running during the weekly Thursday maintenance window from 5-7pm will stopped and restarted.
8. Enter your email to be mailed a post-migration report, this includes a skipped messages report.
9. If the target mailbox does not exist, check Provision Target Mailbox.  This will instruct the migration to process to provision a target mailbox if it does not exist.  This option only works for Office 365 and DavisMail targets.
10. To run a test without copying messages, check Dry Run Test.  This will ensure that both source and target mailboxes exist and are ready for migration.
11. Click Submit.

Migration process details and considerations

• Messages are copied to the target mail system.  Source mailbox messages are not deleted
• Duplicate messages that already exist in the target mailbox in the same folder as the source will not be copied a second time.
• The campus MailID for the source mailbox will updated to route messages to the target mail system.  The routing update will occur at the scheduled migration time, before any messages are copied.  If a MailID cannot be detected, this step will be skipped.

Troubleshooting

Due to differences between email systems and their particular implementation of the IMAP protocol, some messages will be skipped.  Several things can cause unexpected results including:

• Network conditions causing IMAP disconnects
• Service provider disconnects.
• Corrupt or incomplete headers not handled properly by the IMAP server
• Large messages not handled properly by the IMAP server
• Messages with problems are usually simply skipped, but occasionally a bad message causes the entire migration to halt.  Messages that are skipped are displayed in the skipped messages report which is emailed to the requester at the end of a migration and also can be viewed from the migration's log in uInform.

The migration tool is resilient to many unique error conditions and will automatically trigger a restart of the migration.  Some error states cause the process to halt altogether.  A migration will also stop after 10 automatic retries.  Here are some basic troubleshooting steps:

• If a migration fails to complete, first try re-running it.  To re-run a migration, click the "retry" link in the action column (far right) on the main IMAP Migrator Tool page.  Please note that duplicates will not be created unless any of the copied messages have been moved from the target location by the user after being migrated.
• If a migration ends stating "Sync completed. Some messages were skipped, see log for details." the skipped messages log will display a list of messages that could not be copied because (most commonly) they were too large or were corrupt.  Running the migration again can sometimes copy messages successfully.  
• If all else fails, please contact uconnect-help@ucdavis.edu with the ID of the IMAP move request.  In some cases the IMAP migrator will not be able to complete and the migration will need to be handled manually by your department.  Usually this involves using an Outlook client to connect to both mail servers so that folders and messages can be moved.