In this article, we will review the migration steps of the Asana -> Planner migration scenario.
Please note: All information in this article also applies to the Asana-> Planner (basic plans) migration scenario.
To launch the migration from Asana to Planner, you will need to take several steps:
Step 1 - Connect to source and target systems
To start the migration process, perform the following:
1. Open the Project Migrator home page and select the 'Asana -> Planner' migration scenario.
If you plan to migrate data from Asana to Planner (basic plans), select the corresponding scenario.
2. Click on the 'Connect' button to connect to your Asana account.
3. Provide your credentials and log in to Asana. Any active Asana user account can be used for the connection to the Asana environment as the source system. An account with the Admin role is not required.
Asana Workspaces/Teams and Projects will be available for migration depending on the connection account access level in Asana.
Click 'Allow' in the 'Grant Permission' window that appears.
For detailed information about the account requirements for Asana, please refer to this article.
4. On the next step, click on the 'Connect' button to connect to your Planner account or Planner (basic plans) account, depending on the selected scenario.
Provide your credentials and log in to Planner using your Office 365 account.
If you connect to Planner for the first time, Global Administrator consent is required.
Before adding a connection for the first time, Office 365 tenant Global Administrator consent (Admin Consent) is required to grant Project Migrator app permissions to access Office 365. Admin Consent should be granted to Project Migrator only once. When the consent is granted by Global Admin, any other Planner Account (that meets the requirements described in the 'Account requirements' article) can be used to add more connections within the same Office 365 tenant.
If you use an account that does not have Administrator permissions to add a Planner connection for the first time, the 'Need Admin Approval' window will be opened instead. The 'Need Admin Approval' window may be opened after the login attempt. This window appears in case it is not allowed by your organization for users to add apps to the Office 365 tenant without admin approval.
In this case, contact your Planner application Global Administrator for Admin Consent, it is required to grant Project Migrator app permissions to access Office 365.
When the credentials are added once, they are encrypted and stored for your convenience. The next time when you need to launch the migration process, you can select from the list of credentials added before.
If you need to change the account you have provided, click on the 'Change' button.
When the source and target systems are added and connected, you can proceed to the next step and select source data for migration.
Step 2 - Select source data
Project Migrator allows selecting all data for migration or only the required items from the list.
All – all Public and Private projects that the Asana connection account has access to will be migrated.
Selected – only the projects which you select from the available project list will be migrated.
Click on the 'Selected' radio button to select the projects.
Available Projects window will be opened displaying the available projects for selection. There are several fields on this page that you can use to filter the information out and make the selection faster.
Select the required projects from the list and click the 'Add Selected' button.
Please note: If you have not purchased any subscription plan yet, a free plan (for 2 projects) will be applied. If you have exceeded the limit of projects that you can select for migration according to your subscription plan (free or paid one), you can upgrade your plan from this page directly by clicking on the 'Upgrade to (number) of projects plan' button.
For more information please refer to the 'Project Migrator Subscriptions' article.
When the items are selected you can proceed to the next step: Step 3: Object Mapping.
Step 3 - Object Mapping
1. Migration settings
Microsoft 365 Group Creation Mode: In this section, you can select whether to create separate groups or to create all Plans in one new or existing group.
'Create groups using Project names': if this option is selected, each project will have a separate Microsoft 365 group created. The groups will be created with the same names as the Projects names in this case.
If a group with the same name already exists in Planner, a new group will not be created. Project Migrator will find this group by name and will use it for migration (taking into account the setting below 'Create new or merge with existing Plans').
Please note: If there is an existing group with the same name and mail nickname in the target tenant, but the connection account is not a member or an owner of that group, a new group will be created with a bit different mail nickname.
With this group creation mode, the Project members (both with Edit and Comment access), users that are assigned to tasks and subtasks, and are added to the Task Collaborators in the migrated source Project(s) will be added as members to the target Microsoft 365 group(s) on condition they are mapped with the corresponding target users.
The Projects Privacy will not be preserved for the target group and Plan.
'Create groups using source workspace names’: this group creation mode allows preserving source workspace or team names for the selected Projects in the target. Target Microsoft 365 groups will be created with the same names as the source Workspace(s) or Teams (if an Organization is enabled in the Asana environment).
With this group creation mode, the Project members (both with Edit and Comment access), users that are assigned to tasks and subtasks, and are added to the Task Collaborators in the migrated source Project(s) will be added as members to the target Microsoft 365 group(s) on condition they are mapped with the corresponding target users.
The Workspace/Team and Projects Privacy will not be preserved for the target group and Plan.
The users that are Project Owners will not be added as owners, but members to the target group(s).
Check the 'Migrate all source Workspace/Team members' checkbox if needed. If it is enabled, all members of the source Workspace or Team (even if they are not added to the Project Members or assigned to the Project tasks) where the selected Projects are placed will be added to the target Microsoft 365 group members on condition the corresponding users exist in the target tenant and are mapped correctly.
If the 'Create all Plans in one group' option is selected, then all Projects will be added to the same group during migration.
In the Group Name field, you can provide the name of an existing group or a new group name to create a new group during migration.
With this group creation mode, users that are assigned to tasks added as Task Collaborators and Project Members in all the migrated source Projects will be added as members to one target Microsoft 365 group on condition they are mapped with the corresponding target users.
Other members of the source Workspace(s) or Team(s) will not be added to the target M365 group.
If a group with the same name already exists in Planner, a new group will not be created. Project Migrator will find this group by name and will use it for migration (taking into account the setting below 'Create new or merge with existing Plans').
Please note: Maximum of 200 Plans can be created in one Microsoft 365 group.
Please note: If you are migrating the Projects to an existing Planner group (or to different groups but there is a group in Planner with the same name as the migrated Plan name) the migration Planner account that you have provided in the Target System section should be a member of this group in Planner.
Plan creation mode: In this section, you can select how plans should be created if there are Plans in Planner with the same names as Projects in the source system.
'Create new or merge with existing ones' option allows creating new Plans or merging the data to the existing Plans with the same names as the source Projects if any.
'Create new and remove existing Plans before creating' option allows creating new Plans from scratch deleting the existing ones with the same names as the source Projects if any. In this case, existing Planner Plans with names that match selected source Project names will be removed together with all their tasks.
2. Project Field Mapping
In this section, you can review Project field mapping. The Project name corresponds to the Plan name and the Section name to the Bucket name.
3. Task Field Mapping
This section is used to map task fields from Asana to the target Planner system.
It is necessary to perform the task field mapping for the correct migration of their values, as the field types and names may differ between the systems.
Once the connection to the source and target systems is established and projects to migrate are selected, Project Migrator maps some of the existing source and target task fields of compatible types automatically. In case multiple source fields compatible with a target field are found by name they all are added for mapping.
The task field mapping can be edited and adjusted to a particular migration scenario to include all needed source task fields or remove unnecessary ones.
It is also possible to add custom fields for the mapping. All the compatible source and target fields available for mapping are listed and can be selected in the drop-down menus in the Task Field Mapping.
You can also check the Multiple checkbox and select several fields for mapping.
If you select several source fields for mapping, you can also select the Join Values option. In this case, values from all the selected source fields will be added to the target field (for example, Notes and Description source fields can be mapped to one target field Notes, and the values from both the fields will be migrated and joined in the target field).
In case the Use First Found option is selected, the values from the first mapped item field, found in the source Project, will be migrated to the mapped target item field.
If a custom field that allows having multiple custom values (e.g. field of the Drop-down type) is selected for mapping, check the Use Custom Lookup option to map particular values of the source task field with values of the target field.
The Use Custom Lookup option is recommended to use for mapping values of such fields as ‘Progress (Percent Complete)’ and ‘Priority’ that have a set of predefined values which may differ between the source and target systems. Existing custom field values can be selected in the field drop-down menu.
If you do not need to migrate any of the field values, you can remove such fields from the mapping.
4. Task Migration Settings
Microsoft Planner allows adding a maximum of 10 attachments per task via API. Using the Task Migration Settings it is possible to choose how the rest of the attachments (if there are more than 10) will be added to Planner.
Migrate excessive attachments to task Notes if this option is selected, all attachments from the source will be added to the Documents -> Task Attachments folder of the Planner SharePoint Site. Ten first attachments will be added to the Planner task. For the rest of the attachments, the links to the files from the Documents folder will be added to the Notes Planner field.
Skip excessive attachments if this option is selected, all attachments from the source will be added to the Documents -> Task Attachments folder of the Planner SharePoint Site. Also, the first ten attachments will be added to the Planner task.
5. Users Mapping
This section is used to map the users from Asana to the Planner system.
Please note: User mapping will include users from all Workspaces that the connection account has access to, and Project members of the Project that the connection account has access to.
It is possible to map the users manually, if the users were not mapped, you can find the required user manually in the User Mapping section.
User Mapping can be exported to an Excel file. You can map the users in the Excel file if needed and upload the mapping from the Excel file to Project Migrator, User Mapping section.
Please note: The users cannot be migrated from Asana to the target Planner tenant. User accounts should already exist on the target environment (in the Active directory of your Planner tenant) before the migration starts. In this case Project Migrator will find the required users by their names and will map them automatically to migrate the assignments and other resources data to the target Planner environment.
If there is no corresponding account on the target system (Planner), then the line with such a user will be highlighted in red and will have 'Not Mapped' status. Such users will not be taken for migration.
If there is incomplete correspondence for some of the users (for example, the email is the same but different user names), they will have the ‘Partial Match’ status and will be marked with yellow color. Pay attention to such lines and correct the mapping if needed.
If there is complete correspondence found, such users will be marked with green color with the 'Match' status.
You can review the mapping summary at the top of the section.
Step 4 - Launching the migration process
When you complete all steps: set up the connection between source and target, select data for migration, perform mapping you can launch the migration process.
Please note: Planner sends notifications to all group members about comments, assignments, and when users are added to groups. Because of this, users may receive numerous notifications during data migration to MS Planner. Please refer to this article to disable them before the migration starts: How to turn off email notifications sent during migrations to Planner.
To launch the migration process click on the 'Proceed' button under the 'User Mapping' section.
Migration Summary window will be opened. Review the information in the Migration Information section and click the 'Start Migration' button to launch the migration process.
Please note: If you have not purchased any subscription plan yet, a free plan (for 2 projects) will be applied. If you have exceeded the limit of projects that you can select for migration according to your subscription plan (free or paid one) and did not upgrade your plan while selecting the projects, you will see the 'Proceed to Checkout' button instead of the 'Start Migration' one. You can upgrade your plan by clicking on this button and then launching the migration process.
Data Migration Summary window will be opened displaying the Summary Information and the progress for the migrated groups and Projects as well as Migration Settings and Mapping.
You can close this window.
The operation details will appear on the Home Page at once in the Migration History section. You can track the migration status here as well.
You can always click on the migration to open the Migration Summary page and review the details for your migration. Also, the migrated projects can be opened and reviewed in Planner system from the Migration Summary page.
