The Google Workspace Domain Transfer Divestiture service can't transfer Google Vault matters and holds. Instead, administrators on the source and destination environments must follow these steps to transfer Vault items.
Before you begin
Use the Vault API—To transfer Vault matters and holds, you must use the Vault API. You can't complete these steps through the Vault user interface. For details on the API, go to Google Vault API.
Tip: You can use Google Apps Manager (GAM), a third-party command-line tool, to assist you with the Vault API. The tool is available on GitHub.
Step 1: Download matters & holds
You must be a Google Workspace super administrator or a Vault administrator to complete this task.
After the transfer, you can’t access Vault matters and holds in the source environment. To maintain access during the pretransfer process, download the matters and holds from the source environment at least one week before the transfer. Do so using the API methods and parameters in the following tables:
| Download matters | |
| API method |
matters.list Lists matters the user has access to. Learn more |
| Parameters | view: FULL
Specifies which parts of the matter to return in response. state: OPEN List only open matters. You can't create matters with a state of closed or deleted. If you want to include the matters, you must add them as open, and then close or delete them. |
| Download holds | |
| API method |
matters.holds.list Lists all holds within a matter. An empty page token in ListHoldsResponse denotes that there are no more holds to list. Learn more |
| Parameters | view: FULL_HOLD
Specifies which parts of the hold to return. |
Step 2: Clean up downloaded matters & holds
Once the matters and holds are downloaded, clean them to contain only Transfer Users.
Remove references to nontransfer entities, such as users, groups, and Shared Drives. Similar to the pretransfer steps, you’ll need to remove any references to nontransfer entities in order to upload matters and holds in the destination tenant.
Step 3: Upload matters & holds
Matters
| API method | matters.create
Creates a matter with the given name and description. The initial state is open, and the owner is the method caller. Returns the created matter with default view. Learn more |
Other items to keep in mind:
- Make sure you take note of the newly created matterId. It allows you to maintain a mapping between the source environment matterId and the destination environment matterId.
- There’s no uniqueness constraint on the names of matters. If you have failed matters from the source environment that you try recreating in the destination (in a non-failed state), you might create duplicate matters.
- When uploading matters, the user doing the upload becomes the OWNER. Learn more about how to impersonate users with a service account.
Holds
| API method | matters.holds.create
Creates a hold in the given matter. Learn more |
Other items to keep in mind:
- Unique names of holds are enforced within a matter, so you don’t need to worry about uploading duplicates.
- Make sure you take note of the newly created holdId. It allows you to maintain a mapping between the source environment holdId and the destination environment holdId.
- If the number of accounts in a hold exceeds the account limit that can be added at creation time, more accounts can be individually added to a hold after the hold creation. You can use the API method matters.holds.accounts.create. Learn more
Step 4: Wait 24 hours
After the upload is complete, wait at least 24 hours to make sure the new holds are propagated to all relevant users.
