You’re looking to migrate to SharePoint Online, but unsure where to start, or if this is something you should be taking on yourself? It’s a feeling that many of our clients have experienced, and we’re familiar with addressing those common concerns before beginning a SharePoint online migration project.
Client Director
When you move home, you need a plan of action to get you through the process, and you will inevitably discover that there is much more to do than you initially expected. The trick to both moving home and going through a SharePoint migration is to make a list upfront of what needs to be done and then create an action plan that addresses all those points.
Just as you would go through your home, deciding what needs to stay with you and what can be disposed of, your business will need to go through its file servers and cloud storage systems (think dropbox, Google Drive) and establish what information is to be moved and what should be archived or deleted.
Moving your files to a new structure in SharePoint is a great opportunity to validate that you are complying with your GDPR obligations by setting up appropriate retention policies and deleting data you should no longer be holding. Your SharePoint information architecture will help your organisation to stay compliant, secure and accessible.
Our experienced SharePoint consultancy team typically migrate over a million files a month to Microsoft 365, they work with our clients to implement a plan that follows our detailed content migration SharePoint strategy, ensuring we meet client needs and provide an efficient, cost-effective solution to complete their SharePoint migration.
If you’re happy going it alone, we’ve provided our SharePoint online Migration checklist below and also as a download, but if you want to know more about our SharePoint migration services, please feel free to get in touch.
We divide the needs of our clients into one of three scenarios. These are:
While the SharePoint migration checklist below will improve the outcomes of any of these scenarios, it is specifically tailored for file-server to tenant migrations.
The SharePoint Migration Checklist has over 70 steps in total and is broken down into five stages as follows:
Our SharePoint Checklist is evaluated after each migration we perform as best practice for SharePoint migrations continues to evolve. From complex security mapping to designing target structures for those with high compliance needs, we love finding unique solutions that suit each organisation we work with as no two migrations are the same.
The most important takeaway from this guide should be that you need to give yourself sufficient time, proper planning, and a rollback strategy if things don’t pan out correctly the first time. If you’re in any doubt about how to proceed, our team at Information EXP are here to take you through the process.
When migrating to Microsoft 365 from a file server, we recommend SPMT, the free SharePoint Migration Tool from Microsoft. If you want to move a significant number of files within your tenant or move tenant-to-tenant, consider Sharegate. Read about all the tools we use
SharePoint migration may take only a weekend, depending on the data volume, the connection speed between your source and target, and whether a batch approach is necessary. Planning, preparation, and file reconciliation take significantly longer.
The duration to migrate files to SharePoint Online depends on your source environment, connectivity, and throttling by Microsoft. 100GB per hour is possible, but often data is transferred at a lower rate. Perform a test migration first and try to mirror production conditions as much as reasonably possible.
Microsoft’s free SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) will do the heavy lifting, but a migration project needs to consider much more from designing a target information architecture, file mappings, batching planning and reconciliation.
Yes. Microsoft’s migration tools make it possible to migrate Google Drive content to Microsoft 365 and convert G Suite / Google Workspace files to Microsoft Office Format. It’s important to plan the project carefully, not only because SharePoint is a more comprehensive platform but also because the user experience is very different.
Using Microsoft’s migration tool you can migrate from dropbox. Our experience is that due to a lack of governance, the data requires significant reorganising before it’s ready to be migrated – this can be addressed as part of a mapping process.
Mapping user permissions when migrating to SharePoint isn’t generally a good idea. As a rule, we will not do this. Experience has shown that taking shortcuts to accelerate the migration project does not pay dividends. File permission migration functionality simply doesn’t work due to the different ways that SharePoint and file servers manage permissions.
Client Director
Click through to see our other blog posts.
You’re looking to migrate to SharePoint Online, but unsure where to start, or if this is something you should be taking on yourself? It’s a feeling that many of our clients have experienced, and we’re familiar with addressing those common concerns before beginning a SharePoint online migration project.
To achieve Microsoft Solutions Partner status, companies must demonstrate expertise in a Microsoft solution area, such as Microsoft 365, Business Apps or Azure. This is evidenced by having certified staff and meeting customer onboarding and end-user adoption goals.
There are any number of reasons why you might need an intranet. It might be that your current intranet isn’t working. Or maybe you’re considering a first-time investment. In defining the purpose of an intranet, you can gain clarity on your project expectations; both in relation to your internal audience and any intranet solution supplier being considered.
Ask how we can help you:
• First steps in helping your business do this?
• Taking a step back and building your strategy?
• Stuck in the mud and needs help getting out?
Whatever the question, you can expect a response within a business day.
