Migrating to SharePoint: Creating a Seamless Transition
September 25, 2015
Migrating to SharePoint can be a complex process.
The importance of a meticulous and expertly planned migration cannot be stressed enough.
When it comes to SharePoint migrations, we have seen it all at StoneShare. The good, the bad and everything in between.
Before setting your next migration in motion, consider our expert tips for creating a seamless, error-free and secure transition to SharePoint!
Prepare a high-level timeline of the migration process
Determine important start and end dates broken down by business unit or by the system that you are migrating. Identify whether the work will be automated using tools & scripts, manual or a mix of both and plan accordingly. You will also want to communicate with your business users to determine the course of action they want to take. Based on their needs, decide who will handle the bulk of the migration work: your migration team or the business users themselves, with your support along the way. Whether you are migrating an entire system or certain elements of it, this step is crucial for the success of the transition.
Organize a content inventory of all migration sources,
including the quantity of files, file types, file sizes and metadata. Prepare a list of migration cleanup and preparation tasks for your business users, providing them with clear directions and a generous amount of time to complete the tasks appropriately. Allow the business users to update your inventory to indicate the files they won’t be moving over. For the files they do want to migrate, assist them in choosing the destination location in SharePoint and identify what security measures and metadata will be applied during the migration.
Anticipate obstacles and plan accordingly.
As business users prepare their content, they are likely to ask for changes to their destination site, library and folder structures. Prepare a process for handling those requests and create corresponding structures in SharePoint destination sites. When migrating to Office 365, plan for possible delays or bottlenecks. It takes a lot of bandwidth to migrate millions of files to the cloud, and you may have to throttle the speed at which you migrate or avoid running the migration during business hours. No matter what, there will be some issues that result from a migration. Be transparent with business users ahead of time to mitigate this risk. Publish a FAQ on known issues and what steps need to be followed to resolve these issues. Implement consistent messaging to ensure that nobody goes off-script.
Ease the business users through the migration process.
Oftentimes, the business users will overlook certain files that they want migrated. Suggesting that they update their content inventory as they go, rather than in one fell swoop, will ensure that everything they want moved, is moved. Implement a process to explain how the content inventory works with regards to what is being migrated, where it will go and how to find it in SharePoint post-migration. In addition, business users often don’t allocate enough time to prepare the migration work. We recommend preparing a project schedule for them in advance to ensure that there is no last minute rushing or oversights in important migration decisions. Allocate lots of time for training and preparing users on the migration process. Depending on the tools you are using, it may require training on the migration steps, tools and validation and acceptance procedures.
Implementing a Change Management process is critical.
You are migrating the users from something they know to something they don't, which can be very overwhelming and disorienting. The business users know their content better than anyone else can, and they must ultimately own the successful validation of the migration by allocating a consistent amount of time over the course of the migration. Don’t forget to inform business users that search results in SharePoint are personalized and will only allow them access to files they should be able to see.
Security is a top priority.
Security is a top priority. Ensure the security of your files is properly set, ideally on the source location, so it can be replicated on the destination site. Don’t reinvent the wheel – buy a high-quality migration tool to assist with the work. Many migration obstacles can be overcome simply by having an excellent migration product.
A migration to SharePoint is often complex. The secret is to implement processes and strategies that ease the transition for everyone involved. It can be a daunting undertaking, but the end result is always well worth the effort!