The Geneious Cloud Migration Tool provides a reliable, automated way to move your Shared Database to Geneious Cloud. This page explains prerequisites, user and group mapping, folder permission handling, re-run behavior, and how to interpret the migration report.
Is the Migration Tool Right for You?
The migration tool copies the entirety of your Shared Database to Cloud. Consider using drag-and-drop instead if any of the following applies:
- Your Shared Database is much larger than your available Cloud workspace's storage limit.
- You only wish to transfer a subset of your documents and folders.
- You do not need to transfer users, groups, or folder permissions.
Important: Geneious Cloud only supports folder permissions for top-level folders. Any permissions set on subfolders in the Shared Database will not be transferred. You can review and manually apply subfolder permissions in Geneious Cloud after migration. This will be noted in the migration report.
If the tool is not right for you, consider using Geneious's drag-and-drop functionality to transfer folders and their contents to Cloud one at a time.
How to Run the Migration Tool
Prerequisites
- Geneious Prime version 2027.0 or later.
- Log into both a Geneious Cloud workspace and the Shared Database you want to migrate from.
- You must be an administrator in both your Cloud workspace and the Shared Database.
- Enterprise (or Enterprise Plus) subscription.
- Cloud workspace must have enough available user seats to accommodate the users you plan to migrate.
- Cloud workspace must have enough available storage to support all data from your Shared Database.
Starting the Tool
In Geneious Prime, right-click the Shared Database folder and choose Migrate to Geneious Cloud. This will open a dialog allowing you to create user mappings (see below). Once ready, press OK to start the migration process.
Note: The migration tool can take a long time to complete, ranging from hours to days depending on the size of your Shared Database. Keep your computer turned on and connected to the internet throughout the entire migration process. If the connection is interrupted, you can re-run the tool safely (see Re-running the Tool below).
Re-running the Tool
The migration tool supports re-running after a partial or cancelled run without duplicating data. However, different types of data are handled differently on re-run.
Warning: When re-run, the tool will delete all documents in Cloud that were previously migrated from the same Shared Database, then migrate them again from scratch. This is necessary to maintain correct document relationships. All documents migrated by the tool receive a special hidden tag, which is how the tool identifies which documents to delete on re-run. Any data that was transferred to Geneious Cloud manually (outside of the tool) will not be affected.
Other types of data are handled more conservatively on re-run:
- Users are checked by email address. If a user with that email already exists in Cloud, they will be skipped.
- Groups are checked by name. If a group already exists, it will not be re-created, but any missing members will still be added.
- Folders are checked by name. If a folder already exists in Cloud, it will not be re-created, but the tool will still attempt to migrate its documents.
- Folder permissions are re-checked on each run. New permissions will be added, but existing permissions will not be modified.
The tool will not delete or modify any data that was transferred to Geneious Cloud manually.
Migrating Users
In Shared Database, users are identified by a unique username. In Geneious Cloud, all users are identified by an email address and also have a first name and last name.
To migrate users, you need to specify what email address each Shared Database user should be mapped to. This mapping is done in the User Mappings text area in the tool's options. Each line tells the tool how a Shared Database user should be mapped to Geneious Cloud, using the following format:
Shared Database Username, Cloud First Name, Cloud Last Name, Cloud Email
The tool will auto-generate a line for each user in your Shared Database. All you need to do is fill in the remaining three items on each line.
If a line is not fully filled in, or a Shared Database username is omitted, that user will not be transferred to Geneious Cloud. Any permissions or groups that included that user will not include them in Geneious Cloud after migration.
If an email address already exists in Cloud, that user will not be re-created, but they will still be added to all relevant groups and permissions.
Migrating Folders and Documents
The migration tool copies all folders and documents from your Shared Database to Geneious Cloud. Data in the Shared Database will not be changed, and existing data in Geneious Cloud will not be touched. Your folder structure will be maintained.
All migrated folders will be owned by the Cloud user who runs the migration, regardless of original ownership in the Shared Database or the user mappings.
If the tool encounters a problematic document, it will skip it. Skipped documents will be recorded in the migration report at the end of the run (see Migration Report below).
Migrating Groups and Folder Permissions
Shared Database and Geneious Cloud have different models for how groups and permissions work.
In Shared Database, a user is added to a group with a permission level, and each folder can be assigned to a single group. Within a group, different members have either View, Edit, or Admin permissions.
In Geneious Cloud, a group is simply a collection of users without any permissions attached. Folders can then assign different levels of permissions to groups or individuals separately.
When the migration tool runs, it splits each Shared Database group into up to three separate Geneious Cloud groups: one for read-only members, one for read-and-write members, and one for full-access members. If a Shared Database group has no members with a particular role, that corresponding Cloud group will not be created.
Example
In Shared Database, there is a folder called "Lab Results" assigned to a group called "Experiment Group". The Experiment Group contains:
- 2 members who are admins.
- 3 members who have edit permissions.
- 4 members who have read-only access.
After migration, the tool would create the following groups and folder permissions in Geneious Cloud:
| Cloud Group | Members | Folder Permission on "Lab Results" |
|---|---|---|
| Experiment Group (Full Access) | 2 admin members | Full Access |
| Experiment Group (Read and Write) | 3 edit members | Read and Write |
| Experiment Group (Read Only) | 4 read-only members | Read Only |
This maintains all correct folder permissions while converting the Shared Database group model into the format supported by Geneious Cloud.
Remember: Subfolder permissions are not migrated. Any permissions set on subfolders in the Shared Database will need to be applied manually in Geneious Cloud after migration. These will be listed in the migration report.
Migration Report
At the end of every migration run (including partial or failed runs), the tool produces a migration report. This report is an HTML document uploaded to a folder called Shared Database Migration Logs in your Cloud workspace.
If the report cannot be saved to Cloud (for example, due to a network issue), it will be saved to the Shared Database Migration Logs folder in your local database instead. You can find your local database in the Geneious Prime source panel on the left-hand side.
The report includes:
- Overall migration status, including who triggered the migration and when it started.
- Statistics on how many documents, folders, users, and groups were migrated.
- Warnings about non-fatal problems encountered during migration, such as subfolder permissions that were not transferred.
- Details on any documents or items that were skipped.