Super Asia Foods: A Seamless Google Workspace Transformation

Prior to their move to Google Workspace, Super Asia Foods’s 25 employees used GoDaddy for email with Outlook as their mail client. They did not have a file, calendar, or contacts solution. Their final decision to make the move to Google Workspace occurred when they discovered it as an ideal solution for CRM integration. They also looked forward to the storage and collaboration benefits of Google Workspace. Ready to implement the change, Super Asia Foods management reached out to HiView in May 2021.

The challenge

On the data migration side, the HiView engineer opted for an IMAP migration. This required either a reset of all user passwords, or reaching out to each user to obtain their passwords. Looking to minimize user impact, the engineer chose the latter.

Additionally, the Super Asia team was concerned about the loss of their Outlook email filters which routed incoming mail. These could not be migrated by the project team.

As a lean team of 25, the users’ schedules were highly busy. This made downtime minimization a major priority for the project team.

The approach

The migration tool CloudM allowed for a swift migration of all users simultaneously. The technical migration completed in 5 days, moving all emails, folders, and attachments under 25MB. Additionally, the domain sherbon.com (formerly attached to a Google Workspace account which needed deletion) was added as a secondary domain for all users.

On the Change Management side, a Google Site was published by the HiView consultant. This contained training agendas, videos, user guides, and additional support resources. Email communications were also sent to guide users through the transformation.

The HiView consultants led two 1-hour training sessions: one for end users covering Gmail, Meet, Calendar, Drive, and Contacts, and one for IT leadership covering key Admin Console functions. Users were highly engaged during the sessions, especially during the Gmail section. Because email filters could not be migrated, users were instructed on how to create filters and work with labels in Gmail.

Accustomed to Outlook’s email interface, the Super Asia team was pleased to discover that Gmail included the same key features and more. The transition to Google Workspace was made without issue.

The results

• Overall project timeframe: 21 days
• User data successfully migrated in 5 days
• <30 minutes of total downtime for users (MX records cutover)
• 1 end user training session executed
• 1 Admin training session executed