Home » Teams » Microsoft Teams » Migrate Teams Chat from One User to Another: A Comprehensive Guide

Migrate Teams Chat from One User to Another: A Comprehensive Guide

Michael ~ Modified: July 24th, 2024 ~ Microsoft Teams ~ 9 Minutes Reading

Over the past few years, Microsoft Teams has seen widespread adoption, leading to its chat feature becoming a crucial component of Microsoft 365. During this time, the software has undergone numerous changes, including the relocation of team meeting recordings. Users are left wondering how to find their Microsoft Teams recordings. If we want to migrate Teams Chat from one user to another, it will be one of the most complicated processes in any Microsoft 365 migration. This is because there are items in Microsoft Teams that are so complex to migrate, that Microsoft cannot handle to migrate. During the migration process, leaving some data behind cannot be an option since many organisations rely on the data that they store on Microsoft Teams for their daily business.

Before we learn what we can do to migrate Teams Chat from one user to another, we need to know what Teams Chat is.

Table of Contents:

  1. What is Microsoft Teams Chat?
  2. How are Teams Storage Allotted?
  3. Can Microsoft Teams Chat be migrated without using a third-party tool?
  4. Limitations of Migrating Microsoft Teams Chats
  5. Understanding What APIs Are?
  6. Various Other Problems to Migrate Teams Chat from One User to Another
  7. What is the Process to Migrate Teams Chat From One User to Another?
  8. Recreating the Microsoft Teams Chats to the User Account
  9. Migrate Teams Chat From One User to Another to Archives
  10. Which Automated Tool to Choose?
  11. Steps on How to Migrate Teams Chat from One User to Another
  12. Conclusion

What is Microsoft Teams Chat?

Microsoft Teams Chat are the conversations that come up when you choose the chat option from the side panel. These chats are associated with the users and not the teams.

Microsoft Teams Chat is a function of Teams where users can communicate with others, send attachments, and much more.

When you click on the side panel and select a channel, the conversations you see are channel messages. Both Microsoft Teams Chat and Channel messages can easily be confused with each other. Migrating chat history from one user to another can seem to be a complex process, but it is quite simple if we use an automated tool. It would help you perform the migration completely and securely. 

How are Teams Storage Allotted?

Microsoft Teams is built on Office 365 groups, manageability, and enterprise-level security.

When you create Teams, the following gets created.

  1. Microsoft 365 group
  2. Sharepoint Online site
  3. Document Library
  4. Exchange Online Shared mailbox
  5. Calendar
  6. OneNote
  7. Other Microsoft 365 apps 

Teams is heavily integrated with many other products such as Azure blob, SQL tables, and queue storage.

This is a table to understand how Teams handles its storage:

Teams Data Location of Storage and Remarks
Channel Conversations A copy is stored in the Exchange group mailbox
Shared Files SharePoint is created for every team and a document library is created for every channel.
Emails sent They are stored in a folder called email messages within the channel document directory.
One on One chats Stored in a hidden folder within the user mailbox.
Group chats  Stored in a folder in users’ OneDrive for Business.

Now we will understand how to migrate Teams Chat from one user to another

Can Microsoft Teams Chat be migrated without using a third-party tool?

Suppose you do not wish to use an automated tool. In that case, the only other way to Move Microsoft Teams chat history is with Microsoft’s APIs which requires experience and advanced development skills. Even with the expertise in development, it is a time-consuming and complex process. It would be more cost-effective to use an automated migration tool rather than using Microsoft’s APIs. 

Also Read: Microsoft Teams Licensing Explained

Limitations of Migrating Microsoft Teams Chats

The tenant to tenant migration in Microsoft Teams Chats are limited as compared to other tools in the Office 365 suite. You should have a good understanding go what APIs are:

Understanding What APIs Are?

APIs allow the developers to write codes that communicate with the program. These are not always are available to all the users, but Microsoft has made some of the APIs public that allow tools to interact with the Office 365 products.

Applications such as Outlook and Exchange were introduced a long time ago and have been the same for many years. Over these years, the process for migration has become refined and easier. On the other hand, Teams have been around for relatively a shorter time period, with functions that are changing rapidly. There are still parts of Microsoft Teams chats that are not included in the public APIs of Microsoft.

Following are the limitations that are generally true for all the tenant to tenant migrations:

  1. Chats cannot migrate for the users that do not have Microsoft Teams and OneDrive for Business license.
  2. Files that are migrated by the users are not migrated with the chats.
  3. Chats that were initiated by the external users cannot be migrated.
  4. Users are not allowed to be blocked from signing into the source or destination tenant.
  5. Users who have not been mapped during the migration process will not be able to be migrated.
  6. The Loop components in the chats cannot be migrated.
  7. You cannot truly migrate chats. You can only recreate chats in the target tenants.

Various Other Problems to Migrate Teams Chat from One User to Another

  1. Firstly, the Microsoft Teams APIs create issues while getting the channel chat data.
  2. When you try to move a group’s data to other teams, It converts into static groups sometimes.
  3. The configuration at the destination becomes complex. If it is done wrong, then there is a risk of data loss during the migration.

Despite all of these challenges, there are some ways that you can move Microsoft Teams chat history. You can either choose to perform the migration using the manual method or you can use automated software to make the entire process easy.

What is the Process to Migrate Teams Chat From One User to Another?

There are two main manual methods to migrate Teams Chat from one user to another: Recreating the chats in the target tenant, and migrating then chats to an archived location such as OneDrive. Regardless of the migration method that you choose, it is important to understand these methods since they handle the Teams chats differently.

Recreating the Microsoft Teams Chats to the User Account

A benefit is that this method of Teams chat migrations is that the users find it very straightforward to find the migrated chats. This is because they go to the same place to see the conversations that they have. The contents of all the chats can be searched for in the search bar.

There are a number of things that you need to consider that are essential to understand before the migration process.

  • The notifications of chats will be a nuisance for everyone after the migration. Every time a chat conversation is recreated by a service account, it looks like a new conversation and makes notifications. Depending on the activity of the user in the source tenant, Teams chat migration can make hundreds of notifications and other chats for users to click on. But, there is an option to mark all the chats as read.
  • Chats appear for all the users they are chatting with, whether you are migrating these chats or not. If you want to migrate from a target user to another in waves, you should avoid the live chat migration method. If this is available to migrate only the attached data, then you can do so through OneDrive, SharePoint, or Teams.
  • Due to the limitations with APIs, 1:1 chats recreation cannot be done, and only can be recreated by a service account, which will make them group conversations. After the migration is complete, when a user messages someone, the chat history will not be available which can be confusing to the users.

Migrate Teams Chat From One User to Another to Archives

Some of the migration tools can move the chat history to OneDrive for Business. These files may not be referred to as archive migration, but they can still be considered as to be archives since we are moving them to a different location than Microsoft Teams.

Which Automated Tool to Choose?

There is a huge variety of choices for automated tools out there, but the Migrator Wizard Microsoft Teams Migration Tool is the best out there as it caters to all your migration needs. 

Download Now Purchase Now

This tool helps move Microsoft Teams channel, chat, Groups, and files along with many more features such as:

  1. Helps migrate Teams data in bulk.
  2. Supports different Office 365 plans.
  3. Provides mapping between source and destination.
  4. Migration can easily be re-run.
  5. Maintains the data integrity.
  6. Generates a detailed report of the migration.
  7. Helps keep file folders and timestamps intact. 

Steps on How to Migrate Teams Chat from One User to Another

Here are the steps to perform the migration process using the automated tool:

  1. Download the migration software.
  2. Select the source and destination as Office 365 and click on the Teams checkbox.
  3. Provide admin email ID and application ID from both source and destination. 
  4. Verify all the permissions by clicking the Validate button.
  5. Now fetch the users by choosing from Fetch users, import users, or download template.
  6. Map the source and destination users and validate the permissions.
  7. Finally, click on the Start Migration button to move the Microsoft Teams channel, chat, Groups, and files.

Also Read: Simple Steps to Move Channels Between Teams Efficiently

Conclusion

Data migration, when involving the transfer of Microsoft Teams channel, chat, Groups, and files, is quite a complex process. This process becomes even more difficult when a user tries to carry out the process manually as there are not a lot of benefits. Moreover, manual migration involves a huge risk of data loss, which makes it less than ideal.

On the other hand, using an automated tool to carry out the process has many benefits including, data security, saving time, and the entire process is hassle-free.