Barley migrated from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 in days—no disruptions, no downtime

Workleap—ShareGate’s parent company—is an AI-powered talent management platform used by 20,000+ organizations to elevate hybrid teams. This summer, Workleap acquired Barley, a compensation management platform.  

Barley was a Google-first company, Workleap uses Microsoft 365. It was only natural to use ShareGate to migrate Barley’s data, as we’ve done for other Workleap acquisitions.

Merging two stacks after an acquisition—fast, clean, no downtime

The stakes were high: sensitive customer data, legacy shared inboxes, and day-to-day operations all had to move across platforms with minimal impact.  

Adding pressure, we’d be using a brand-new ShareGate feature. We released Gmail migrations on July 15^th. On July 18^th, we put it to the test with Barley.

Complicating matters, Barley’s team was working in two systems at once—Gmail and Outlook—which slowed everything down and risked mistakes. They needed a fast, confident cutover.  

“I thought this was going to be a nightmare.” — Jafar Owainati, CEO at Barley

Of course, Workleap used its own migration software—ShareGate—to bring Barley’s Google-first world into Microsoft 365.

We kept it simple: prep smart, move files, move mail, flip the switch, and make it feel boring-in-a-good-way for end users.

This is what we at ShareGate live, eat, and breathe. We give migration advice every day, and this was a great opportunity for us to walk the talk.

Planning: Blueprints before bulldozers

Before touching a single file, we spent a few days planning. The first step was figuring out exactly what was in Barley’s Google Workspace, then deciding on the RMR—what we’d remove, what we’d migrate, and what we’d rebuild.  

We pulled reports from Google Workspace to map Shared Drives, owners, large folders, label usage, mailbox sizes, shared inboxes, and any oddballs (shortcuts, orphaned items, huge attachments). That became our single source of truth.

Every Shared Drive got a matching SharePoint site (clear naming, right hub), and every My Drive mapped to its owner’s OneDrive. Mailboxes and shared inboxes were paired with Exchange Online mailboxes and M365 shared mailboxes, including alias plans and what to archive vs. move.

We know how important permissions are for ongoing tenant security, so we translated Google roles to Microsoft groups (Owners → Site owners, Managers → Members, Viewers → Visitors), noted external shares to re-share post-cutover, and created a temporary Google super-admin with least-privilege access for the migration runs.

Then we got Workleap’s Microsoft 365 environment ready for Barley. We preprovisioned SharePoint sites and libraries, ensured OneDrives were spun up, created mailboxes and membership, added the new domain in Microsoft 365, lowered DNS TTLs, and lined up SPF/DKIM/DMARC so mail would work as expected on day one.

We wanted to keep Barley and Workleap’s teams in the loop, so we created a short “what’s changing” guide, a day-of comms plan, and a help channel for quick questions. No long trainings, just the stuff people actually need.

Finally, we moved a small drive and a non-critical mailbox in pilot migrations to validate speeds, item counts, and permission mapping. Then we scheduled the full move with realistic windows and rollback points.

Migrating Google drive to SharePoint and OneDrive

This is where the heavy lifting paid off. Each Google shared drive got a like-for-like destination: a dedicated SharePoint site (and team, where relevant). Owners became site owners, managers landed as members, and viewers mapped to visitors so access “felt” the same on day one.

For My Drive content, each person’s files went to their OneDrive with the original folder hierarchy intact—no scavenger hunts required. We converted Google docs/sheets/slides to their Office 365 equivalents to avoid read-only links post-cutover, and flagged edge cases (long paths, odd characters, orphaned files) before they could bite us.  

External shares were noted so we could re-share from SharePoint after the migration under the new domain.

The last step before the switch was to do a few quick delta passes to scoop up late edits and new files. Throughout all of this, users kept working in Google while we synced in the background, so nothing stalled.

“All it took was one kick-off call and then the actual migration only took 2 hours in total!” - Jafar Owainati, CEO at Barley

Migrating Gmail to Exchange Online

We started with a clean map. Every Gmail mailbox and shared inbox got a one-to-one home in Exchange Online. We captured aliases, send-as/on-behalf-of, and delegation so replies came from the right address on day one.

Next, labels became folders. Nested labels mapped to nested folders. We sanity-checked a few mailboxes to catch dupes, giant archives, and filter-as-label oddities.

Then we rebuilt the automations people actually use. Key Gmail filters/forwarding turned into Exchange rules, and shared inbox workflows (assign, triage, reply) were kept intact.

Then we pre-provisioned user and shared mailboxes with the right members and permissions. The new domain was added and default “From” behavior set.

The time had come to start actually moving messages. Folders, messages, attachments, timestamps, and read/unread state came over. Shared inbox history came too. While this ran, users stayed in Gmail.

We tested like we meant it. Send/receive across teams, external checks with partners, and spot-checks on big threads and chunky attachments.

Right before cutover, we ran a quick delta. After the MX switch, we did one final sweep. Profiles were updated, mobile apps were signed into, and it was done! Users had the same access, same addresses all in one Outlook home sweet home.

Validating the migration

We compared item counts, spot-checked high-stakes libraries and shared mailboxes, tested search and restore, then got stakeholder sign-off. Legacy access was decommissioned safely, external shares were re-established under the new domain, and we closed the book on the old stack.

SharePoint/OneDrive became the source of truth, and the two-tools-at-once limbo ended. Users signed in with Microsoft 365 and kept rolling—one secure environment, no disruption. High fives all around.