Administrative permissions

In this article you can find details about each administrative permission you might need to perform certain actions in ShareGate Desktop.

For a quick reference of all these permissions, see Permissions reference tables.

Note: For more information on Microsoft 365 roles, see About admin roles in Microsoft's documentation.

Index

• Recommended permissions
• Global admin and SharePoint admin (Microsoft 365)
• Site collection admin (Microsoft 365 and SharePoint on premises)
• Farm admin (SharePoint on-premises)
• Term store admin
• Full control
• Manage user alerts permissions
• Read-only lock

Recommended permissions

If you wish to get the most of the app with optimal results, you can follow these permissions guidelines:

1. In Microsoft 365, get a global admin to grant consent to the Azure ShareGate Desktop application. This will allow SharePoint admins to work on Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups, and it will help to reduce the amount of throttling.
2. Get SharePoint admin permissions if you are in Microsoft 365, or farm admin permissions in SharePoint on premises.
3. For migrations, get term store admin permissions on your source and destination.
4. In the app settings, toggle on Allow auto-assign as a site collection administrator when required on SharePoint only (you can also use the option on OneDrive for Business, but we do not recommend it unless you run a OneDrive for business migration).

Note: These recommended guidelines are applicable in your source and destination for migration.

Global admin and SharePoint admin (Microsoft 365)

Required to:

• Connect to your Microsoft 365 SharePoint admin center.
• Access all your site collections.
• Access all your OneDrives.
• Add/remove site collection admins.
• Perform migrations of multiple site collections (Requires a connection to your admin center).
• Perform migrations of permissions.

Note: The only difference between global admin and SharePoint admin for ShareGate Desktop is that a global admin can consent to the Azure ShareGate Desktop application. Without consenting the app, you will experience limitations with Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups in ShareGate Desktop. Consenting the app also helps reduce the amount of throttling in Microsoft 365.

Site collection admin (Microsoft 365 and SharePoint on premises)

Site collection admin permissions are also required when running most operations in ShareGate Desktop, even if you have Global admin or SharePoint admin permissions.

Without site collection admin permissions, many interactions with the SharePoint APIs will fail, causing unpredictable issues.

It is recommended to have site collection admin permissions at both the source and destination environments in order to:

• Perform most procedures in Explorer and Migration.
• Run a structure migration (lists, libraries, sites, etc.).
• Perform OneDrive for Business and MySite migrations.

If you are using a global admin or SharePoint Admin account, you can enable Auto-assign as a site collection administrator when required in your ShareGate Desktop settings. This setting will add you as a site collection admin automatically.

Farm admin (SharePoint on-premises)

Required to:

• Connect to your SharePoint central admin and access your web apps in Explorer and Migration.
• Access all your site collections.
• Access all your MySites.
• Access all your OneDrives for Business.
• Add/remove site collection admins.
• Perform migrations of multiple site collections (Requires a connection to your central administration).

Term store admin

Required in the source and destination to:

• Migrate managed metadata applied to your list items and documents.
• Migrate Terms, term groups, and term sets.

Full control

Can replace site collection admin in the source and destination to:

• Migrate content with Copy content only, Import from file share, Import from Google Drive, and the Import-BoxDocument PowerShell command.

Note: Though you can perform these actions with Full control permissions, you need to use site collection admin permissions if you want to use Insane mode.

Manage user alerts permissions

Required in the source and destination to:

• Copy user alerts in Migration (note that you also need to have the server extension installed in the source and destination).

Read-only lock

Must be removed from your site collection(s) to:

• Perform any migration action in ShareGate Desktop.

Some SharePoint services do not respond correctly when your site collection has a read-only lock and the requests will not be processed as intended. This can cause many unexpected issues.

For more information, see read-only lock.