SharePoint Migration Services

Identify business problems

Before moving forward with SharePoint migration, identify and understand the existing problems/limits in the current environment and make sure moving to the new environment can solve these issues. Some of the common reasons for organizations to migrate their SharePoint are advanced features and tools, shortage of storage with the current environment, reduced or no maintenance, improved security for contents, continued product support from Microsoft, and more.

Study the current environment and create a migration plan

Study the data in the existing environment and understand it better. Know where its located, who has access to it, where are all the highly sensitive data and know how users are using the data. Understanding these processes will help in creating new workflows and data structures. To create a perfect migration plan, find out what kind of storage space will be required and are the number of users going to increase. Finding the answer to these questions will lead to knowing whether or not a custom solution is needed to achieve business goals and it will help in designing an effective plan accordingly.

Prep the migration team

Prepare the team for successful data transfer. The teams are divided for strategizing, assessing the process and procedures within the system, revamping SharePoint information architecture, documenting, and evaluating. Set the expectation for each team and establish communication strategy and goals. Make sure each member understands their significant role and deadlines in the process. Alternatively, there is an option to hire an external SharePoint migration team like Congruent for a seamless migration.

Analyze existing environment and set up destination environment

For a successful migration, examine data inventory in the current environment and choose the data that needs to be migrated. Take a closer look at site collections, custom solutions, sites, branding, pages, list & libraries, site columns, and more to choose what needs to migrate and what needs to be discarded. Take time to plan and structure the destination environment before starting the actual process.

Conduct a pilot migration

The pilot process will ensure that no factors are going to affect the migration process. If there are any gaps/issues in the current plan they can be identified and rectified before starting the actual process. It is important to understand the data from pilot process, analyze it and make changes to the plan accordingly.

Migrate to a new environment

Once the pilot process is done and necessary changes are made to the plan, it’s time to start the actual migration process. Some of the important things to note during the process are,

• Migrate sites by collaborating with the business team or stakeholders. Try to keep the downtime to a minimum. Frequently used sites should be migrated at last with a sound strategy.
• Restrict site permissions for users during the time of process. Sites that are created during the process will not get migrated.
• It is better to have a central portal with a dashboard that shows the migration performance for business stakeholders, site owners, the SharePoint team, and others if needed.
• Site migration can be automated with the help of PowerShell. PowerShell works well with all migration tools.

Test environment post migration

Testing the environment after the process is crucial to the success. Need to make sure that all the customizations and workflows are performing without any errors.