Handling The Risks involved in SharePoint Migration

SharePoint Migration Risks management dictates the success of SharePoint Migration projects to a large extent. Just need to strategize it properly to improve user experience and have a hassle-free migration

SharePoint Migration and its Risks

Migration simply refers to the process of transfer of data from either an on-premise version or an older version of SharePoint to a new version. SharePoint migration is the need of the hour for every organization that wish to stay up in this competitive environment. You just need to strategize it properly and improve the user experience to many folds. But we also need to be aware that if there is any mismanagement or planning error, it might lead to the risks of data corruption or data loss.  Therefore, risk management becomes an obligatory measure. We must take up the complex task of making our system able enough, to identify, assess, and minimize risks, thus reducing losses. It might include processes such as accessing the severity, monitoring and mitigating risks whenever they arise. 

Strategization Before Migration 

Risk Assessment  

This is the foremost step for Risk Minimization. In this step, we evaluate the current environment and define if migration will be suitable. Once this is done, the ranking of data according to their importance is to be undertaken, so that we can prioritize the data during migration.   We need to have a detailed knowledge of all the technical glitches that might occur and the problems that might arise due to the versatility of data or its other security and sensitivity specifications.    Business Environment risks can be difficult too as our risks do rely upon the business and customer needs, personnel skills, organizational structure and shifting strategies.   Also, we need to beware of risks due to people, be it employees, customers, partners or outsiders which might include internal security breach and external hacking. 

SharePoint Pre-migration check 

SharePoint Pre-migration check ensures that we detect and eliminate copies, broken or obsolete content. These issues if not sorted out before migration, can make the process time consuming and erroneous. It is a read-only step, but with much significance. It detects all the potential errors and lists them with suggested solutions.  SharePoint Pre-migration process checks for the following: 

• Access Rights: This ensures that whether there are proper rights on the part of the administrator to conduct the migration. 
• User profiles and groups: It gives a pre-image of how users and profiles will be mapped when they will be transported to the new destination. It will define how much access each person will get and whether it is symmetric to the source platform. 

• Site architecture and features: Features specific to the sites such as templates, languages, quotas, navigation etc. are checked and listed properly so that after migration occurs, there are no missing cases. And even if missing cases happen, we can easily detect it.
• Metadata Present: All the metadata present in the source are detected, analyzed, backed up and kept in the record so that after the migration is finished, all the previous conditions in the source can be replicated in the destination site. And, in case of any missing metadata, they can either be restored by using the backup of the metadata or re-migration of that particular metadata can be run. 
• Unsupported features: Whenever a new version of SharePoint is introduced, some new features are included in it and few old ones are discarded. New features are always welcomed, but our old source is habituated with the features of the old SharePoint version. As a result, some files using features discarded in the next version of SharePoint might face some problems and the need to fit them within the new setup might arise. Pre-migration gives the premonition about this post-migration emergency and suggests solution to it. 

Selection of the right tool 

Now that we are well acquainted with what our requirements and risks involved; we must find the most compatible tool to carry out our process. This SharePoint migration tool should take care of all our priorities and ensure that we need to put minimum effort into the process with maximum accuracy.  Also, it should be able enough to solve any unexpected problem that might arise during the migration process. A tool high in terms of security measures is the one to be considered to eliminate the SharePoint online migration risks, even if it might cost more than the rest of its counterparts.   Click  here to opt for the free trial of our Saketa SharePoint migrator tool 

Validation After SharePoint Migration 

Validating our migrated content is quite essential as soon as the process is done to ensure that our SharePoint online migration approach worked as expected and if not, we will be able to timely recover any data that might get lost during the migration process. For a more detailed approach to the SharePoint post-migration process, have a look at the Checklist to be ticked off before undergoing migration.

Customizations 

In this process, we need to tally all the settings, templates, permissions and other customizations of the source site with the destination site. If both of them are found to contain the same data, then we proceed further. If we find any discrepancy, we need to run the migration process again for the missing content and then re- verify it till it is absolutely the same. 

Optimizations 

Once the Migrate phase is done, we just need to optimize it according to how our users want to use it and all other requirements that are exclusive to our organization’s needs so that we get to experience a more personalized working condition.  

Monitoring 

Unmonitored applications are among the major contributors to migrations fails. They can also lead to huge security holes, threatening us for major breaches. So, it is essential to know our system and monitor them to ensure the overall well–being of the organization and tackle all the SharePoint migration risks.  

Metadata verification 

After verifying the customizations and optimizations, ensuring that they’re migrated correctly, next we should check the condition of all the metadata. Here, we are to check the background details such as List contents, Libraries, author names etc. are same for the source and destination sites or not. If they are, go for the next step and if not, re–migrate and reverify the missing content. 

Final validation 

Migration is done among different versions of SharePoint, so it is obvious that the newer version will have some entirely new features and some of the older features will be replaced by their advanced versions. This creates a gap between the Source and Destination’s contents.   Therefore, during final verification, we try to overcome this gap by further customization.   So, these are the ways of Risk Management to avoid all kinds of SharePoint Migration Risks during the overall process of migration. But carrying out all by yourself can be very hectic and time–taking. Why not give SharePoint Migrator a try. Start a 7-day free trial.