Migrating from Server to Cloud but we have users in both versions and don't want duplicates

[Gregory Muir]

Woe is us, we have to make this work. lol 

The problem is we have a parent company Confluence in the cloud. We have a subsidiary company on server. We now want all the spaces in the subsidiary to come float with us in the cloud. 

Users had been given rights in both instances as required. Cloud users are all bob@foo.com and server users are all bob@bar.com. 

Server users are all SSO and my understanding is the unique account identifier in Confluence the username and is taken directly from the UPN. 

I know there's not an actual account merge tool for Atlassian users, unfortunately. Is there a way to neatly handle this import or would we need to import the sites and then run a script to make all the imported users automagically change from bob@bar.com to bob@foo.com and thus preserve user rights? 

I searched the community and didn't find an answer to quite address our situation here. 

[Pramodh M]

Hi @Gregory Muir 

I would prefer taking a downtime and as it is server you could change the email address stored in db from bob@foo.com to bob@bar.com and the migrating the spaces using CCMA.

Note: Once you do this you need to again change the email addresses to format with bob@foo.com for users to login on server

Commands are documented here in the pre-migration checklist 

https://support.atlassian.com/migration/docs/confluence-pre-migration-checklist/#6.-Fix-any-duplicate-email-addresses-

Let me know if you nee any help

Thanks,
Pramodh

[Gregory Muir]

Thank you for the reply, @Pramodh M

I'm not sure what you mean by preferring to take a downtime. 

Our server is tied to AD with SSO. Would we be able to change the email addresses without breaking things pre-migration. 

We're still in the process of seeing how well we understand all the steps and whether or not we can handle it for ourselves or need to call a lifeline for assistance. :) 

[Pramodh M]

@Gregory Muir 

Downtime in the sense, making the Confluence Read only if your Confluence Version is latest or preferably communicating users with the change that is happening!!

If you need to be sure of steps, I would prefer performing the steps once on Staging environment and doing a test migration.

And changing the email address in backend would be okay before you perform the migration via CCMA

Thanks,
Pramodh

[Benjamin]

Hi Gregory,

Would recommend to update the e-mails on the server side to match up. Once its done, you can migrate over and use the exact same e-mails. 

Probably can script this to update the database if you have a pattern. However, if the e-mails pattern vary, it might be safer to update them manually.

-Ben

[Gregory Muir]

Thank you for your reply. 

So would it be correct to say that migrated users will be checked by email address and not username? 

For example, then... 

username Bob is given example@email.com from the server instance. 

Run the migration tool and now his space is sent to the cloud. 

On the cloud Sally has example@email.com. All the spaces Bob had access to now Sally has by virtue of the email address? 

I use Bob and Sally as a crazy example of two different users but our issue is more like we have First Last and they're first.last on the source system and they're flast on the destination. Humans know they're meant to be the same person but as far as the computer cares they may as well be Bob and Sally. 

[Benjamin]

Correct. That is the distinction between server and cloud. Cloud unique identifier for users is by e-mail. As long as the e-mail matches up from server to cloud, then it should align your data when migrating over. 

-Ben

[Gregory Muir]

That's fantastic. Looks like we have a lot of editing to do to clean things up. 

[Benjamin]

Sound good. 

Make sure to test everything out with stage server instance and a sandbox cloud environment before moving everything over. Good luck with your migration.