Transfer your Vault data with Domain Transfer

The Google Workspace Domain Transfer service can’t transfer Google Vault matters and holds. Instead, administrators on the source and destination environments must follow these steps to make sure Vault items are transferred.

Before you begin

To transfer Vault matters and holds, you must use the Vault API. You can’t complete these steps through the Vault user interface.

Google Apps Manager (GAM) is a third-party command-line tool that supports the Vault API. You can find the tool on GitHub.

Step 1: Download matters & holds

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. You must be either a Google Workspace super administrator or a Vault administrator to complete the download.

You should complete the download at least 1 week before the transfer.

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 matters with that specific state. The default is listing matters of all states.

Matters cannot be created with a state of CLOSED or DELETED. If you want to include them, you must add them with a state of OPEN and then close or delete them.

Holds

API method	matters.holds.list Lists all holds within a matter. An empty page token in ListHoldsResponse denotes 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, inspect them to determine if optimizations can be made.

1. If holds are established at the organizational unit level, map all organizational units to the corresponding transfer organizational unit in the destination environment, using the Orgunits API. Learn more

   For holds on groups or shared drives, the mapping must be done on the transfer root organizational unit level.

2. (Optional) Remove empty matters and holds.

If you plan to create matters with a different owner, convert all OWNER permissions to COLLABORATOR permissions in the matterPermissions[] field. Learn more

Step 3: Upload matters & holds

Once the transfer process is complete, you need to upload the matters and holds to the destination environment.

You also need to set up the proper Vault retention policies. Learn more

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.