ShareGate product update: November 2021

Get yourself a warm drink and let’s go over what’s changed in your ShareGate apps during the month of November.

Welcome to another product ChangeLog, our monthly series where the ShareGate Product Marketing team recaps recent updates and changes to ShareGate and ShareGate, helping you make the most out of your ShareGate software.

What’s new

As of November, you can incrementally migrate Teams or select a subset of channels to copy into an existing team using PowerShell, directly from ShareGate. We’ve also upped our reporting game with the introduction of Team Reporting on the migration side and the Activity log report in ShareGate. Last but not least, we’ve added the option for you to ask owners to review external shares via our Teams chatbot, rather than just by email.

Incrementally migrate Teams using PowerShell and create custom Teams reports with ShareGate 15.3

We’ve been spending a lot of time improving our Microsoft Teams migration tool to cover every possible use case that you might have. Whether you’re migrating your whole Teams environment from one tenant to another, or moving hundreds of channels between teams, our goal is to help you move exactly what you want, right where you need it as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

With ShareGate 15.3, we’re adding two new capabilities that’ll make your Teams migrations even smoother.

Incrementally migrate Teams and copy into existing teams using PowerShell

We know that when you perform incremental migrations or copy channels in bulk, it can be time-consuming and a bit of a pain. You’ll be happy to know ShareGate now allows for larger incremental Teams migrations thanks to the newly added ability to migrate via PowerShell within the UI.

With this time saving feature, you can migrate only what’s changed since your last Teams migration no matter the size of the migration rather than starting each incremental migration separately. Plus, you can easily migrate the channels exactly where they need to be, even if it’s copying data into an existing team. And if you want to migrate a team’s select channels as a new team, we got you covered!

Create custom Teams reports

Migrating Teams is no easy feat, and you might want to make sure to migrate only teams that have owners to the new destination. It isn’t always easy to see all information pertaining to your teams such as membership, channel count and privacy in one single place.

That’s no longer an issue with the new “Teams summary report.” Accessible from the reporting section of ShareGate, you can customize the filters and columns to show the exact information you need about your teams, before running the report.

Based on your report, you might want resolve the issue with orphaned teams before migrating them to your new tenant. For more information on how to run a Teams summary report, refer to our documentation.

Easily export your Activity log in ShareGate

As IT Admins, we know how important it is for you to have visibility on what goes on in your tenant, whether it’s actions taken by you, colleagues, or team and group owners. That’s why our Activity tab is a client favorite as it gives you an overview of all activities that have taken place in your tenant through time.

To make your lives easier, you can now filter and customize the information needed from the activity log, before easily exporting and saving it as a CSV file. With more than 35 filters, you can select the exact information you want to further analyze in order to better understand what’s been going on in your tenant, or how users have been using Teams. It also comes in very handy if you need to share details with different stakeholders within your company.

Some of you have already mentioned how lifesaving this small but powerful addition is. Try it yourself! For more information, refer to our documentation.

Contact owners via ShareGate’s Teams chatbot for external sharing reviews

In the second half of this year, we’ve solidified our external sharing review policy with the addition of guest access reviews which allows you to ask owners to review the guests in their teams or groups, easily revoking access to those who should no longer have it. In addition to asking owners via email, you can now choose to contact them via ShareGate’s Teams chatbot.

By doing so, when it’s time for an owner to complete their external sharing review (which includes the review of externally shared links and guest access), they’ll automatically be poked on Teams by our chatbot and will be guided to a user-friendly interface to complete their review.

We’ve seen a greater response rate when owners are contacted directly in Microsoft Teams, where they work, rather than by email. And don’t forget, you can always customize the frequency at which you’d like owners to review links and guests based on how sensitive the information shared within a team is.

If you’re new to ShareGate’s external sharing reviews, here’s how you can get started!

Other changes and improvements

Here are some other notable improvements and bug fixes for November. Check out the release notes in our ShareGate support documentation for the full list:

• ShareGate:
  • [Release 15.3]: To avoid missing crucial metadata, you can no longer delete the default source properties in your property mappings with Import from file share
  • [Patch 15.1.5]: You can now connect to an on-premises environment with the server extension installed on it without any issue. Check out the patch notes for all improvements and bug fixes.

Coming soon

We’re always working hard on new features and improvements based on our users’ needs and requests. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming up next on the product roadmap:

Increased visibility on what goes on in your Teams with reports and notifications

Our Product team is working on giving you more visibility on what goes on in your Teams, beyond flagging problems that have arisen within your tenant. Our goal is to equip you with information on the day-to-day status of your tenant, so that you can report and analyze it, and put in place the right policies that help keep it safe and secure.

Soon, you’ll be able to export the Manage tab as a report and will be able to customize notifications that inform you what’s going on with your teams directly in Microsoft Teams with the help of ShareGate’s chatbot. Time to be more proactive, and less reactive!

Free webinar: Get the most out of Microsoft 365 with Microsoft MVP Marc D. Anderson

Join us on Tuesday December 14th 11am ET, as we sit down with Microsoft MVP and Sympraxis Consulting cofounder Marc D. Anderson to discuss methods for uncovering how well your organization is using Microsoft 365 and the next steps for increasing adoption in collaboration apps like Teams.

If you’re looking to unleash the full potential of Microsoft’s modern workplace, this is for you. Sign up now!