ShareGate Migrate carries your associated permissions during a migration and will attempt to preserve their integrity from the source to the destination whenever possible.

This article explains what happens to your permissions during different scenarios when running a Copy structure and content migration.

Your users and groups are automatically mapped at the destination. This association is done through the SharePoint people picker to preserve your permissions, and Person or Group metadata values.

SharePoint uses three default groups for your sites. These are:

These default groups are created with your site collections, and their names are a combination of your site name and group type (i.e. YourSite Members, YourSite Owners, and YourSite Visitors).

Your migration’s default group will depend on your scenario (merge, demote, or promote), and other groups can be defined as default.

You can redefine your default groups at any time once they have been created. If you are not sure which SharePoint groups are default, they are configured under:

[your site collection URL]/_layouts/15/permsetup.aspx for SharePoint 2013+

or

[your site collection URL]/_layouts/permsetup.aspx for SharePoint 2010.

Example (SharePoint 2013): http://myfarm1/sites/mysourcesite/_layouts/15/permsetup.aspx

When migrating a full site collection (connected to the admin center or central admin at the destination), ShareGate Migrate will re-create the permissions as-is at the destination.

When merging a site collection to an existing one at the destination, ShareGate Migrate will add the permissions from the source to those that already exist at the destination.

Default SharePoint groups (Members, Owners, Visitors) will be merged even if their name does not match.

Any other SharePoint group will be merged based on name (users from the source group are added to the destination group).

When migrating a subsite directly to the web app (while connected to the admin center or central admin at the destination), ShareGate Migrate will handle the creation of the new site collection at the destination.

If permissions are inherited on the subsite, the new site collection at the destination will take the permissions from the source's parent site collection.

If permissions are custom (not inherited from the parent) on the subsite, then ShareGate Migrate will re-create the permissions as they are in the source.

Default groups (Members, Owners, Visitors) removed at the source will not be recreated at the destination. You can set these back at the destination by accessing the permission setup page and adding /_layouts/permsetup.aspx after the name of the site (in the destination site's URL using a browser).

When merging a subsite in a pre-existing site collection at the destination, the permissions will be copied based on their inheritance. Your default groups (members, owners, visitors) will not be copied or merged with the destination's default groups.

Note: To keep default groups from the source, copy the default groups (visitors, members, owners) before running the site migration. This will make them available at the destination, and apply them to the new Site Collection after copying your site.

Site collections have custom permissions by default since they are at the top level of the hierarchy. When you migrate a site collection as a subsite, all the groups will be recreated at the destination with the exception of the default groups (visitors, members, owners). The default groups will be at the destination's site collection level. Users in the default groups in the source will not be added to the default groups at the destination to avoid security issues.

Note: To keep default groups from the source, copy the default groups (Members, Owners, Visitors) before running the site migration. This will make them available at the site collection level and apply them to the new subsite after copying your site.

When migrating lists and libraries with custom permissions, ShareGate Migrate recreates the permissions at the destination.

If permissions are inherited from the parent at the source, the inheritance will be preserved and taken from the parent at the destination.