What's supported in Domain Transfer?

Here are the supported features for Google Workspace Domain Transfer.

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Source licenses

Important:

• Supported licenses apply only to the source environment.
• The destination environment can contain unsupported licenses. However, the destination environment must first meet the primary license eligibility requirements under system requirements.
• All special licenses must be bought before the transfer. Consult your sales representative or partner if you have questions regarding Google Workspace licenses.
• Grace or trial licenses can be used in the source environment for temporary license procurement to avoid costs. However, note the following points:
  • These licenses block the process of swapping the placeholder domain with the primary domain. Swap the placeholder domain with the primary domain before you provision any temporary licenses.
  • If the available licenses in the destination environment are full licenses, users are assigned full licenses as a result of the transfer.
• Several pretransfer tasks related to licensing are required for both the source and destination environment (for example, cancellations, potential upgrades, and automatic licensing configuration). Learn more
• For details on Google Workspace licenses, go to Choose your Google Workspace edition.

Source licenses
Archived User
Business Plus, Standard, Starter
Cloud Identity Free
Enterprise Plus, Standard, Starter
Vault Former Employee (VFE)

Administration (domains, users, organizational units, etc.)

Active & suspended users
All active and suspended users under transfer domains within the source environment are moved. Standard contact data (attributes) about transfer users in the Directory for Google Workspace are moved from the source environment to the destination environment. However, custom user attributes are not moved. Learn more Also, shared external contacts from the transfer domain (those at the root level) do not transfer. Learn more
Organizational unit structure in the source environment
The organizational unit structure in the source environment is copied to the destination environment, nested underneath the transfer root organizational unit. Admins can manually replicate their organizational units before the transfer, in the same hierarchy, to set up specific policies. Learn more All transfer users are bound to the same organizational unit in the destination environment. Child organizational units that would be empty in the destination environment are not replicated.
Transfer domains in the source environment
Secondary domains in the source environment are added as secondary domains in the destination environment. Associations between aliases and domains remain the same. To transfer a primary domain, it must first be converted to a secondary domain. Learn more about swapping the primary domain with the placeholder domain.

Core applications

Connected Sheets
Connected Sheets files transfer using Google Drive, but the Google Cloud projects that back them do not. The organization policies of the source environment still govern the Google Cloud projects. Connected Sheets only store a link to the underlying Google Cloud project and no other information. Permissions are checked at time of access for all users. Since the transfer process doesn’t change underlying IAM permissions, access to the Connected Sheets and any associated functionality remain intact.
Gmail
All email messages and their metadata transfer. All user-specific settings and configurations are maintained.
Google Calendars & calendar resources
All primary calendars and secondary calendars transfer. All calendar resources (for example, meeting rooms) transfer. All events keep their currently booked rooms. Buildings and features are copied. A version of each building and feature remains in the source environment after the transfer. Calendars maintain their current sharing permissions (for example, share all information). If calendars were using the default sharing options, after the transfer these calendars are set explicitly to the same sharing level they had in the source environment. The default in the destination environment does not apply. Learn more
Google Cloud Search
Content appears in the destination environment though it may be subject to delays. Learn more
Google Contacts
All personal contacts transfer.
Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms & Drawings
Transfer process & permissions: User's My Drives, including documents and folders, transfer. Shared drives, including documents and folders, transfer. No email notifications regarding sharing are generated as a part of this transfer process. No explicit access permissions in documents are modified (for example, sharing with specific users and groups inside the destination environment). If policies are set to prevent this, sharing permissions with external users might change. Sharing files with everyone in your organization: When you transfer files that are shared using the default target audience (all users in your organization), you choose one of the following options to specify how you want the files to be shared on the target domain:  Stripped—Link sharing is removed for content that's owned by users or in shared drives in the source environment. Content that's owned by destination environment users remains shared with the entire environment (including transfer users). Expanded—Link sharing with the source environment is expanded to include all users in the destination environment. The transfer expands sharing from source environment users to source and destination environment users. This option applies to content owned by users and in shared drives in both environments. If a document is shared with the source and destination environment, users in both environments get the highest sharing level. For example, if the source environment has edit permissions and the destination environment has view permissions, after the transfer process completes, the destination environment has edit permissions. Updates are not applied to content owned by external users. Learn more about sharing files from Google Drive and how to create and manage target audiences.  Shared drives within organizational units The organizational unit structure in the source environment is copied to the destination environment. However, no policies or settings from the source environment are included in the transfer. Shared drives in the source environment are moved to the transfer root organizational unit of the destination. Administrators in the destination have access to the Shared drives, but they might be restricted to others. The transfer process might also cause additional organizational unit-scoped policy restrictions or trust rules to change, but it won't affect the Shared drives' Access Control List. Note: If someone outside of your organization's domain is on the Shared drives' Access Control List, but policy restrictions or trust rules prohibit sharing, the user outside of the domain won't gain access. Applications using Drive Applications like Google Sites, Google Apps Script, and Connected Sheets can be found in Drive but they include extra components such as the use of Google Cloud projects and web publishing. These applications are listed separately as either supported or unsupported. Drive files associated with these applications still transfer and the effect on permissions and link sharing described above still apply. Note: There's a known issue where Drive templates generated from files inside shared drives don’t appear in the destination environment's template gallery posttransfer. To get these files to display in the destination environment's template gallery, a user must reset link sharing (make the file private and then reshare it), and resubmit the file to the template gallery posttransfer.
Google Groups
All groups with the domain name of a transfer domain will transfer to the destination environment. If a group includes "all users in the source," it will include all destination users posttransfer. No group memberships are modified as part of the transfer. Even if the destination environment has group settings that prevent owners from adding members external to the domain, transferred groups remain as is. If transferred groups have external members, those memberships are preserved and remain active. Calendar events that have a group as a guest send invitations to any new members added to the group. For example, if the group in the calendar event includes all users in the company, then the group expands to include all users in the destination environment. Note that this action might generate large amounts of invitations during the migration process.
Google Keep
All Keep content and metadata transfer.
Google Meet
All Meet video recordings created by a transfer user, which are stored in Drive, transfer along with the other Drive content.
Google Sites (new, classic)
Any sites associated with the transfer domains move to the destination environment and remain linked with their owners (for example, a user or shared drive). Custom URL mappings in the Admin console, along with the associated domain, are copied from the source environment to the destination environment. The URL for the site does not change and continues to include the original source environment name.

Google Vault

Archived content owned by transfer users

Archived content owned by transfer users is transferred (for example, Gmail messages, Drive documents). Google Workspace Domain Transfer places indefinite retention policies on both the source environment (during a pretransfer task) and destination environment (at execution). Learn more After the transfer process completes, you must review the Vault policies in the destination environment. You also need to confirm the settings applied to the transferred data and users before removing the custom retention policies. Learn more

Other Google applications & services

Mobile device access (Android, iOS)
Transfer users do not have to remove and add their accounts to their mobile devices. Google Sync continues to work (both for Android and iOS) as long as the destination environment settings are properly set up. Learn more After a transfer, users must set up their device to align with the destination environment's mobile management policies.

Connected or third-party applications

User & administrator OAuth tokens
OAuth tokens transfer and remain valid. OAuth tokens might not work if they have scopes the source environment has turned on, but the destination environment has restricted.
Connected or Google Workspace Marketplace apps (user installed)
Connected applications installed at the user level should continue to work after the transfer (unless the needed scopes are blocked). Google Workspace Marketplace apps are made by third parties and while we expect them to work, we cannot guarantee it.

Related topic

• What's not supported in Domain Transfer?

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