Why I need to migrate when I am doing good with Existing On-Premise?
In this competitive world you always need to be updated to survive in the competition. Stay up to date and enjoy the new features provided by Microsoft. It doesn’t look good in using old version when we have a new version with lot more to offer. SharePoint online offers more features when compared to On-Premise. We have many new features in Online such as power automate, power apps, Microsoft graphs, delve and more. There are many features deprecated in On-premise and there may be more in future. There won’t be any support provided by Microsoft for these features.
What More Features SharePoint On-Premise lack of Online /Office 365?
Moreover, maintaining SharePoint online is much easier than On-premise. This doesn’t require extra space or a SharePoint admin to maintain the server. Everything is maintained in Microsoft cloud with all security. Storage needs to be provisioned with extra cost in on-premise whereas online offers some storage space with every subscription. Online/Office 365 helps in reducing administrative costs in maintaining the servers.
Inventory analysis and site structure:
In migration for On-Premise to Online we can’t blindly migrate from source to destination. There are lots of things to be taken care before migration. Site structure followed in on-Premise and Online completely different. There is no concept of web applications in Online SharePoint. If you want to Choose Modern SharePoint You can only create Site collection, subsites are not entertained in Modern SharePoint. The following things needs to be taken care.
- Please make sure to get an inventory by using PowerShell.
- Get all the details web applications, site collections, sites, lists, Modified, Created etc through this PowerShell scripts.
- Get an analysis on data using Power BI and try to split the data based on categories.
- Try to divide the data into two halves in active and archive based on the attributes such as Less usage, old files and files you no more need. This will Increase you site performance in a way that your search is going to be faster, by deleting the files you no more will result in saving more storage.
- Based on the analysis prepare Your site structure you are going to have in online, as you are not going to have web application in online create all site collections required in destination.
- If you are going with Modern SharePoint get all web applications, site collections, sites, subsite list and create all these as site collections (Team Site and Communication site) in online. All these cite collections can be connected using Hub site.
- Create all Archive site collections separately and connect these archived sites through Subsites.
Get all these details at a place, analyse all the data and have a clear idea on how you are going to approach the Migration.
How to Migrate?
You have all the data and site structure ready for migration. Now you have a question how I am going to migrate. Best way and safe way to migrate Is by using Third party tools. Again, you May be having a question which tool I am going to use for migration as there are many tools for migration. One of the best tools I have gone through is “Saketa migrator”. This tool provides may options according to your requirements. Let’s go with some of the options provided by the “Saketa Migrator”.
- Saketa migrator have a module ‘Object Migration’ Where you can migrate Sites, List\Libraries. You can also migrate Permissions, Users\Groups, Manged Metadata, Workflows, site columns and content types individually based on your requirements.
- Other module ‘Content Migration’ allows to migrate content from specific List or library. This allows you to choose required content you wanted to migrate.
- Bulk Update Module Allows you to Update specific column that you wanted to update. This Module comes handy when you are dealing with Circular lookups. There are many chances of missing column values when you have circular lookups, this module allows you to update missing column values.
- You have an option to Map site template .
- You have option for user mapping when have unresolved users. This tool also helps you to get all unresolved users.
- While doing content migration you can also map Columns and Content type to specific columns \content types based on your requirements.
- Saketa migrator provides Pre migration check to know all the possible errors that are going to occur during the migration. This also have post migration check to know all the errors after the migration.
- You can have all the reports provided in the report section to track your migration process.
There are many more options provided by the Saketa Migrator such as file system migration, cloud migration etc.. we can discuss hole Saketa migrator in one more blog. This could be your best tool in SharePoint migration.
What else can I add to this to make it more beautiful.
After successful migration adding an intranet page would make your site more beautiful. Saketa also provides an intranet suite (Saketa intranet suite) to make your site collaborative and Beautiful.
- This intranet suite makes your site more collaborative.
- It has wide Range of widgets.
- You can have events, News, Upcoming birthdays etc in this intranet Page.
- Saketa Intranet Suite is Mobile Friendly.
- You can access any site or documents form this page.
This is just an overview about “Saketa Intranet Suite”. There is more specification that needs to be discussed about “Saketa intranet Suite” which we will be discussed in next Blog.
Conclusion:
Inventory analysis will make your migration run safely and very fast. Saketa Migrator and Saketa Intranet suite will come handy in migration and making your site collaborative. This has been written based on my experience. Hope this would be helpful to you.
