Hi! hope you are well… I used this script yesterday and thought “I must post about that!” So here it is… 😃
This can be a good way to deal with an employee leaving, or if you end up with a dual-mailbox scenario, although Microsoft have made that much less likely since adding the Hybrid Exchange option to AD Connect a while back…
Right, enough kafuffle – onward! 👀
Suppose a user leaves – your off-boarding procedure may include something like:
Exporting the mailbox to a PST file which is stored somewhere
Converting the mailbox to a Shared Mailbox and giving a another user access to it
But what if there is an incoming user that would benefit from having the existing data in their newly created mailbox? It might be a training coordinator or HR administrator’s mailbox that has a heap of relevant information that the incoming user can search through for information. This is much easier to use when it is in your main mailbox, rather than an attached shared mailbox (or worse a PST file!).
This script will connect to Exchange Online and prompt you with a list of soft-deleted mailboxes (these are the ones that have been deleted but remain for 30 days before being permanently deleted). Select the recently deleted mailbox and click OK. Now you are prompted with a list of all active mailboxes. Select the mailbox to merge the data into and click OK. Now the soft-deleted mailbox will be merged into the active mailbox. Superb!
Make sure you have run ‘Install-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement‘ so you can run the script successfully.
Here’s the code:
# set variables to null
$source = $null
$target = $null
#Connect to EOL...
Try {
Connect-ExchangeOnline -ShowBanner:$false
}
Catch {
Write-Warning "Failed to connect to Exchange Online!"
Read-Host "Press a key to exit..."
Exit
}
# prompt to select source mailbox
$source = Get-Mailbox -SoftDeletedMailbox -ResultSize unlimited | Select DisplayName,ExchangeGuid,PrimarySmtpAddress,ArchiveStatus,DistinguishedName | Out-GridView -Title "Select source soft-deleted mailbox and click OK..." -PassThru
if ($source -eq $null) {
Write-Warning "No source selected. Press any key to exit..."
Read-Host
Exit
}
# prompt to select target mailbox
$target = Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited | Select Name,PrimarySmtpAddress,DistinguishedName | Out-GridView -Title "Select target mailbox and click OK..." -PassThru
if ($target -eq $null) {
Write-Warning "No target selected. Press any key to exit..."
Read-Host
Exit
}
# start merging source into target
Try {
New-MailboxRestoreRequest -SourceMailbox $source.DistinguishedName -TargetMailbox $target.PrimarySmtpAddress -AllowLegacyDNMismatch
}
Catch {
$errormsg = $Error[0].Exception.Message
Write-Warning "An error occured. $errormsg. Press any key to exit..."
Read-Host
Exit
}
As usual please let me know if you have any trouble or have a scenario that warrants a modified solution and I’ll try to help.
I thought I would share some PowerShell I used during a recent cross-tenant migration. Firstly, the Microsoft documentation is really good and got the journey off to a good start:
PLEASE NOTE: Following is some fairly raw PowerShell. You can’t just press Go! You’ll need to understand and update the bits required and run accordingly! Hopefully everything that requires updating is in bold-italics. If not please punish me via comment! =)
That said… let’s continue 😃:
Firstly, let’s create a mail-enabled security group in the source tenant Exchange Admin console, ‘zzMigUsers@sourcedomain.com’ should do the trick! ..then add the users (mailboxes) you will migrate (the migration endpoint is scoped to a group, anyone not in the group will fail to migrate).
Now load PowerShell ISE and paste all of the below code bits in, then save it for later. First, we need our commands to be able to switch quickly between tenants (disconnect before connecting each time):
Now we can connect to the target tenant and create the Org Relationship and Migration Endpoint – you’ll need the ‘sourcedomain‘, app ID and secret to paste in here where the bold italics are (follow the MS article to set up the App Registration and Enterprise App, easy as!): Target tenant app setup.
# connect to target tenant here
# Enable customization if tenant is dehydrated
$dehy = Get-OrganizationConfig | fl isdehydrated
if ($dehy -eq $true) {Enable-OrganizationCustomization}
# Create Migration Endpoint in target tenant
$AppId = "paste the app id here"
$Credential = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $AppId, (ConvertTo-SecureString -String "paste the app secret here" -AsPlainText -Force)
New-MigrationEndpoint -RemoteServer outlook.office.com -RemoteTenant "sourcedomain.onmicrosoft.com" -Credentials $Credential -ExchangeRemoteMove:$true -Name "SourceDomainMigEndpoint" -ApplicationId $AppId
# Create Org Relationship in target tenant
$sourceTenantId="paste source tenant id here"
$orgrels=Get-OrganizationRelationship
$existingOrgRel = $orgrels | ?{$_.DomainNames -like $sourceTenantId}
If ($null -ne $existingOrgRel)
{
Set-OrganizationRelationship $existingOrgRel.Name -Enabled:$true -MailboxMoveEnabled:$true -MailboxMoveCapability Inbound
}
If ($null -eq $existingOrgRel)
{
New-OrganizationRelationship "SourceDomainOrgRel" -Enabled:$true -MailboxMoveEnabled:$true -MailboxMoveCapability Inbound -DomainNames $sourceTenantId
}
Let’s use our disconnect / connect commands above to disconnect from the target tenant and connect to the source tenant to set up the other side:
# connect to source tenant here
# Configure OrgRel in source tenant
$targetTenantId="insert the target tenant ID here"
$appId="insert the app id here"
$scope="zzMigUsers@sourcedomain.com"
$orgrels=Get-OrganizationRelationship
$existingOrgRel = $orgrels | ?{$_.DomainNames -like $targetTenantId}
If ($null -ne $existingOrgRel)
{
Set-OrganizationRelationship $existingOrgRel.Name -Enabled:$true -MailboxMoveEnabled:$true -MailboxMoveCapability RemoteOutbound -OAuthApplicationId $appId -MailboxMovePublishedScopes $scope
}
If ($null -eq $existingOrgRel)
{
New-OrganizationRelationship "targetdomainOrgRel" -Enabled:$true -MailboxMoveEnabled:$true -MailboxMoveCapability RemoteOutbound -DomainNames $targetTenantId -OAuthApplicationId $appId -MailboxMovePublishedScopes $scope
}
Hopefully you got to this point without issue – if not let me know in the comments section and I’ll try to help! Next, we should be getting a successful test of what we have set up. Run this command since you are still connected to the source tenant – you should see the expected values returned:
Now, disconnect and connect to the target tenant again, and run this:
# Confirm OrgRel and MigEndpoint in Target tenant
Get-MigrationEndpoint
Get-OrganizationRelationship | fl name, DomainNames, MailboxMoveEnabled, MailboxMoveCapability
Test-MigrationServerAvailability -Endpoint "SourceDomainMigEndpoint"
Awesome, green lights!? The tenants are configured. Now disconnect / connect to the source tenant, we’ll need to get the following details out into a CSV file so we can create the MailUser objects in the target tenant (yes I know we could have done that earlier =)). Limit this if required based on the group we created earlier, scoped to your migration users.
Disconnect / connect to the target tenant again. We want to test one user first, so I used these commands (replace bold italic with values for one user from the CSV output):
# create MailUsers in target tenant - ONE AT A TIME HERE OR BELOW FOR BATCHES
$originalalias = 'sales'
$newalias = 'sourcedomain.sales'
$userdisplayname = 'sourcedomain Sales Department'
$exchguid = '80ddefd4-26cb-7621-c497-g6c044b04dd9'
$archguid = '70edegc5-36f8-8639-b287-f6g035408ec2'
$x500address = 'x500:/o=ExchangeLabs/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/cn=Recipients/cn=ce04185c5ff841f885d660e46e6c8bc5-sourcedomain SAL'
$usersourceaddress = $originalalias + "@sourcedomain.onmicrosoft.com"
$usertargetaddress = $newalias + "@targetdomain.com"
$usertargettenantaddress = $newalias + "@targetdomain.onmicrosoft.com"
New-MailUser -Name $newalias -DisplayName $userdisplayname -ExternalEmailAddress $usersourceaddress -MicrosoftOnlineServicesID $usertargetaddress -Password (ConvertTo-SecureString -String 'Hellosourcedomain2099' -AsPlainText -Force)
Set-MailUser $usertargetaddress -ExchangeGuid $exchguid -ArchiveGuid $archguid -PrimarySmtpAddress $usertargetaddress
Set-MailUser $usertargetaddress -EmailAddresses @{Add="$x500address","$usertargettenantaddress"}
Set-MailUser $usertargetaddress -EmailAddresses @{Remove="smtp:$usersourceaddress"}
NOTE: Recently I found this command was not working and I had to use a one-liner copy of the batch1-users.csv mentioned below. After the test user is successfully migrated, reference your original file with all the mailboxes in it. Just in case you get this issue in your scenario 😃
Okay! When this is working and we are confident all is well, copy the sourceusers.csv to a new file named batch1-detail.csv. Open the file and add three columns before DisplayName as below. ‘originalalias’ (the bit before the UPN), ‘newalias’ (set as needed for the target tenant) and ‘newupn’ (new UPN in the target tenant):
Assuming the file is called batch1-detail.csv, create another CSV called batch1-users.csv. This is the input for the migration batch command (very simple and worked well for me), just copy the target UPNs from batch1-detail.csv into the EmailAddress column and populate the other columns as below:
Now you can use this code to create the MailUser objects with the batch1-detail.csv file:
NOTE: At this point you are migrating the mailboxes because of the “-Autostart” switch. Users in the batch will have ‘Syncing’ status. When ready to complete they will be ‘Synced’.
You can run this command to check the status of a batch:
# Get status of a migration batch:
Get-MigrationBatch $batchname | fl
Or this to check status of a single user:
# Get details for a single mailbox
Get-MigrationUser 'insertupnhere' | Get-MigrationUserStatistics | fl
Or this to get the status of all migration users, updated every 5 minutes:
# output progress of all users every 5 mins
$x = 0
Do{
$x = $x + 1
Get-MigrationUser | Get-MigrationUserStatistics
Start-Sleep -Seconds 300
}
Until ( $x -eq 480 )
When the mailboxes in a batch have ‘Synced’ status, go ahead and complete the batch using this command:
# Complete a Synced batch
Complete-MigrationBatch $batchname -Confirm:$false
This can take a bit of time so have a beer or cup of tea then come back – done! Once completed the mailuser you created in the target tenant will become a mailbox, and the mailbox in the source tenant will become a mailuser with a forwarding address set to the users target onmicrosoft.com address 👍
Some other commands I used are:
# Restart a failed batch
## Start-MigrationBatch $batchname
# remove a completed batch
## Remove-MigrationBatch $batchname -Confirm:$false
# Remove failed users from batches due to failure
## Get-MigrationUser | ? { $_.status -eq 'failed' } | Remove-MigrationUser -Confirm:$false
This migration went really smoothly… once the user was migrated, the forwarding was set correctly in the source tenant, and permissions were intact for access to Shared Mailboxes etc. Now we are planning to tidy up and move additional email aliases, the accepted domains and MX records across to the new tenant… I’m impressed with how relatively easy this was!
Until next time… ‘Hei kone ra’ from New Zealand Aotearoa! 🍻😜
recent comms…