Project Online: Migration into or between PWA sites and tenants
Published Mar 06 2019 01:55 PM 10.6K Views
Brass Contributor
First published on TECHNET on Jun 24, 2015

We get quite a few questions on this topic of migration to the cloud, so for example Project Server 2010 or Project Server 2013 to Project Online - and also moving data between tenants.  Perhaps a trial to the real one – or even making a copy of production in another PWA instance in the same Project Online tenant.  Unfortunately there are not any short cuts here.  We don’t have any capability to move 2010 or 2013 databases up to our datacenters (the schema is now quite different – and we are in the content database…).  Neither can we pull data out from one PWA instance and move it to another - either within the tenant or to another tenant.  Also we have no means to move PWA to/from dedicated farms.

The options for migration are listed on the TechNet page that compares Project Server 2013 and Project Online - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn268595.aspx - A feature/function comparison of Project Online and Project Server 2013. Look around 1/4 of a way down the page:

The article does continue on to cover resource migration options too.  If you are a partner with a solution we don’t suggest above then I’m sure we would be very pleased to update the list.  If you have developer capabilities you could also use some of the programmatic interfaces and write your own migration package – see the SDK information at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30435 .

One of the challenges of using the manual methods is carrying over the metadata – particular where lookup table based fields are concerned.  One potential option is even for lookup table fields to create another non lookup table field and copy in the data, so you can at least carry over the actual field setting – then use this in the new instance to re-set the lookup table values.  Although we don’t endorse any of the 3rd party solutions it is certainly worth reviewing if they would help to give you a cost effective migration and help overcome some of these challenges.  And with this next suggestion I’m not just trying to put a positive spin on things – but migration is a great time to reconsider how you have things configured – and if your current configuration is best serving your needs.

6 Comments
Copper Contributor

Hi Brian

With the velocity of Office 365 usage, migration of Project Online from one tenant to another is growing,  this is a good time to discuss again tenant migration in this blog (suggestion of idea).

QUESTION: I do not see the point with the lookup table option quoted here: what is the trick behind ? does this help filling the lookup values to use non lookup field instead ?  and then re set the customed fields with a value and set the values in the lookup list and reset the customed field with this lookup list  in the destination? 

In the tenant migration I prepare, I just thought to set manually the lookup up table as a strict copy of the source lookup table to migrate. As such, no issue should appear at the migration stage, when importing projects.

Copper Contributor

Brian,

 

Does this mean there is no way to take and existing PWA online instance and migrate into a new one? Is the best method to just reload the MPP into the new PWA online environment?

 

Thanks,

 

James

Hi @James Lucier 

There is no out of the box way to do that unfortunately. You either manually re-configure the target PWA instance and move projects by re-saving the mpp files to the new target PWA instance or you look at a 3rd party tool / develop your own tool.

Paul

Copper Contributor

Feel free to  contact me. We have tools to migrate PWA across tenants. Happy your discuss your specific requirements. 

Copper Contributor
We have tools to migrate from PS2013, PS2016, 2019 to POL and also migrating PWA across tenants. Please contact us (projectsolution.com) to discuss specific requirements.
Copper Contributor

@Paul Mather - I have re-configured the target PWA instance and am ready to re-save the mpp files to the new target PWA instance.  Is there a way to do this that will keep the values of the project Enterprise Custom Fields if the same field exists in both instances?

 

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