Often businesses seek to streamline their core business operations for enhanced workforce efficiency that contribute towards better business decisions, stronger branding, and improved sales and revenue. Consequently, they usually focus on upgrading their technology infrastructure that enables them to meet their objectives.

One such method to centralize and consolidate their collaboration platform is by transitioning to Office 365 SharePoint through a SharePoint Online Migration. Enterprises using older versions like SharePoint on-premises for document sharing often prefer to upgrade their process to enable storage scalability, improve data security, and enable anywhere-anytime access. However, there are challenges in migration, ranging from broken links, to subtle changes in end-user experience.  While these issues can be smoothed out during the migration and transition, they can cause concern about the risk of such a migration. To migrate smoothly, companies should be diligent about managing their sensitive information while transitioning from SharePoint On-Premises to SharePoint Online.

Let us consider what types of challenges your company can encounter during the SharePoint Online Migration and how to fix them.

Top 13 Challenges during Migration

1. Unorganized Information

Often libraries, sites, content layouts, lists, and content types are maintained in a haphazard manner perhaps growing over time organically, managed by different administrators. This scattered data can be migrated to the new SharePoint environment, but still lead to user difficulty in locating documents and information rapidly. To enable your workforce, for their ongoing efforts, and manage content post-transition, content and its structure should be analyzed and mapped properly during pre-migration, to optimize the destination Office 365 environment and set your organization up for success today, and scalability and growth tomorrow.

2. Storage Challenges

Managing legacy large sets of document accumulated over potentially many years of operating an enterprise is a challenging task. If not managed properly it leads to loss of data or worse a perpetuation of organic growth that makes documents hard to find and manage.   Best is to plan to migrate based on a set of pre-agreed guidelines such as age by type, and library and archive for eventual deletion of older content.

3. Bulk Migration

Often, some files cannot be migrated during migration. Some of the causes are easily fixable, and others require some creative and exception handling during the planning and initial bulk migration process. This challenge occurs especially for specific blocked file types.  Other causes could be URL length restrictions, checked-out status or URL length. For ease of reporting, tracking, and retry, there is an advantage to exploring the use of third-party tools which facilitate a more nuanced and better managed SharePoint Online Migration process.

4. Loss of Metadata

Losing some of the metadata during SharePoint Online Migration process is normal.  Best is to determine which metadata needs to be preserved, and correctly defining the metadata hierarchically in the destination.  This could be though Content Types, and even centrally managed and published Content Types that could be defined to inherit from each other to build up the desired set of metadata.  This can be optimized by clearly defining an inventory of the content and organizing and aligning it with suitable content types, before the migration. Additionally, regularly adding metadata to content as migration continues will help preserve it.  Lastly centrally managed Content Types allow metadata to be updated in one master location, and propagated throughout the organization for consistency and ease of management.

5. Security

When managing files and contents on-premises at a local server; companies use their security tools and protocols to protect their data. However, during SharePoint Online Migration when the same data is transferred to the Cloud, best practice is to attempt to simplify security, and align it with ActiveDirectory groups that may already exist, for reduced and simplified management with the least possible redundancy, and leveraging the best practices around security and group management.

6. Mapping

Content migrating between fragmented domains can lead to confusion and even data loss, therefore correctly selecting and mapping destination and source domains is important. To plan for a streamlined SharePoint Online Migration, that optimizes the destination environment, groups and users can be identified for simplified grouping and factoring and created on the target system and/or ActiveDirectory with suitable permissions set across site collections, subsites, libraries and lists.

7. Permissions

For a seamless SharePoint Online Migration groups and users should be given relevant SharePoint roles including management of Administrative roles and delegated authority, mapped to their existing Office 365 roles and ActiveDirectory. This allows the users to access content and right-sizes the setup in the destination environment from the start.

8. Right Numbers Document and Libraries

To improve the document management framework only certain document types and libraries should be migrated from on-premise to online. Best is to not “pump and dump” migrating everything; the content should be selected with discipline based on heuristics and rules and filtered and reporting on for confirmation. Migrating selective content requires careful analytical reviews and discussions and signoffs.

9. URL Length Issues

SharePoint Online Migration allows roughly 400 characters in a URL. Any URL beyond this would likely surface an error. This varies, based on filename per file, and of course the impact of both folder naming, and also the use of special characters that require multiple characters to encode into a URL. There are clever shortcuts to reduce and manage the likelihood and frequency of such occurrences.

10. Broken Link Issues

When migrating massive content from on-premise to the cloud, broken links can pose a large challenge. These could range from a few hundred to millions as they are found in MS office suite tools and in other applications such as Adobe Acrobat, web pages, MS-Office documents. Broken links lead to user dissatisfaction.

Fixing millions of broken links manually post migration is a daunting task. Since it is a labor- and time-intensive job, it’s best addressed using third-party applications that automate the repair process—fixing links within documents or via redirection. This aligns with our earlier guide on how to migrate file share to SharePoint Online, where similar challenges were addressed. Contact Reality Tech to learn more about these solutions.

11. Special Characters In Filenames

SharePoint Online Migration rejects a few special characters (~, #, %, &, *, {, \, ;, <, ?, />, |, “). Further, it does not allow file and folder names to exceed 128 characters limit. These limitations make migration process cumbersome; but can be managed in several ways, with some automation and tools.

To combat this challenge, the file/folder names containing special characters can be replaced with approved character and limit in SharePoint. Thus, a script (set of rules) can be created to rename the folders automatically without manual intervention, as one option for a solution.   Most migration tools will also automatically replace the offending characters.  This tends to occur more often in migrations from non-SharePoint systems, such as File Shares / File Servers.

Similarly, truncating long file/folder names to acceptable length can be done prior to the migration.  The closer to the root folder that naming truncation occurs, the more content is affected and long URL lengths addressed.

12. Blocked File Types

For security reasons, SharePoint blocks all files that fail to meet the file extension criteria during a SharePoint Online Migration. To fix this problem, unblocking file extensions of SharePoint may be possible, but with SharePoint Online, it could well be that some file extensions cannot exist as per Microsoft policy, and an alternate and exception location outside SharePoint needs to be found. Microsoft applies such blocked filetype policies to prevent files from being centrally stored in SharePoint, to avoid security risks, such as for script files and executables, for example.

13. Ensuring the Ability to Navigate

Often, organizations prefer to retain the same file and folder structures for operational consistency and to reduce disruption during the SharePoint Online Migration. Thus, maintaining the same structure on the cloud may be preferred for seamless navigation. However, there are strategic reasons and methods to refine and enhance navigation during migration. These include using alternate navigation pages and restructuring content mapping to align with SharePoint security best practices and ensure secure, intuitive access.

Conclusion:

The SharePoint Online Migration approach poses several challenges for businesses seeking to migrate their critical business information from on-premise servers to SharePoint Online. However, with judicious planning, best practices, and the use of third-party migration tools, the transition can be streamlined, and made easier; both to migrate and on the end user experience.

If you plan on applying best practices, streamlining your structure, and improving the end-user experience during migration, working with a seasoned partner is key. You can also explore the top features and benefits of SharePoint Online for collaboration and teamwork to ensure your migration strategy unlocks SharePoint’s full potential. We provide a safe and hassle-free transition with exceptional collaboration and content management processes, and can surface all the features and functionality that Office 365 has to offer.

Why Migrate Email to Office 365

The email platform you use in your enterprise is key to a consolidated and integrated collaboration platform. The overall environment and ecosystem should indicate the direction to take on reviewing and possibly changing the email platform.

Migration Approaches and Tools

It can be a daunting task to find the right toolset and methodology for efficiently migrate email to Office 365. For any migration, it starts with an analysis of the source and destination, to understand the scope of the migration. Next is benchmarking the migration so you can baseline the migration throughput in storage (MB/GB) and in number of mailboxes within a period of time, and with confidence.

For effective migration, a migration tool to complete the process quickly, efficiently and accurately. To solve this challenge, there are 3^rd party tools for migrating email to Office 365, offering high fidelity and flexible and efficient email migration solutions for all-sized businesses.

There are Office 365 Migration solutions that can help migrate contacts, emails and calendars from your existing email, allowing a richer and more integrated end user collaboration experience.

Categories Of Migration Toolsets

Either you can use the Out of the Box free migration toolset available from Microsoft, or step up to more advanced 3rd party tools with greater functionality and capabilities.

In short, the Migration can be done using two methods:

1> Using the Exchange Mailbox Migration tool which can be found in the Exchange Online Admin Center within Office 365

2> Third party migration tool e.g., BitTitan’s MigrationWhiz (Recommended)

We have had great success using BitTitan for robust migration capabilities, higher fidelity, features, logging and reporting.

Understand What Might Not Be Migrated

Not everything will be migrated. Mailbox functionality might differ as well. One example of what won’t be migrated includes Safer Sender / Blocked Sender lists. Additionality additional reminder fields, and contact list fields should be checked in trial migration to know what might not migrate perfectly, and to enable setting user expectations on migration.

Best Practice Migration Planning

The best practice for migration covers these steps to ensure you’ve planned for contingencies and cover all the bases:

• Map Source and Destination users and accounts
• Perform an initial migration for baselining
• Perform a full migration
• Perform Delta migrations, if needed
• Select a cutover date and inform users
• Perform cut over including DNS change.
• Communicate clearly with users (before and after); especially about what might not be migrated
• Provide post-migration support

The Complete Process to Migrate Email to Office 365

Before The Migration A Few Points to note:

• Given the Office 365 service will be provided from a different server than the existing service, changes in the DNS are going to be required.
• Users will face downtime until DNS domain propagation is complete, hence it is best for no email during this process, so doing the cutover off-hours is advisable.
• It’s recommended to create a backup of emails, calendar items, and contact in email before Office 365 Migration.

Migration Is A 4-Steps Process Which Is as Follows:

Step#1: Create Data Backups

• Launch MS Outlook and navigate to File > Open & Export > Import.
• Click on the option “Export to a File.” Select Outlook Data File (.pst).
• Select the account name from which the backup needs to created, and click Next.
• Select e a location for the backup file, suitably name it, and click Next.

Step#2 (a): Migrating Calendar Items

• In webmail open the Calendar application.
• Select the calendar data for exporting. Each item needs to be exported separately, if there are multiple items.
• Select the “Actions” icon available near the calendar and click on Export. It will export calendar items in the iCal format.

Step#2 (b): Migrating Contacts

• In webmail open the Contacts application.
• Select the address book for exporting. Each address book needs to exported separately, if there are multiple address folders.
• Select the “Actions” button and click on Export. It’s advised to use CSV format to export the address books.

Step #3: Connect to Office 365 Servers

To initiate the migration process, start with endpoint creation; it establishes a connection between the destination and source server. This link is created in the Exchange admin center.

Process:

Step#1: Click on New+ in Migration under Recipients option.

Step#2: Select the email users’ group for whom Office 365 Migration has to be executed. Now create batches and initiate the process.

Step#3: Delinking Accounts and DNS Update

The DNS propagation confirms that emails are redirected to Office 365 mailboxes. It’s done in the Accounts Manager section. Upon successful completion of the process, un-assign the mailboxes.

Step#1: Click on the “My Email” option in Account Manager.

Step#2: Select “Un-assign” option for each mailbox that has been migrated. To confirm, click “Continue”.

Step#3: Log out of the Account Manager. To confirm the process is successfully complete re-login.

DNS update procedure

Step#1: Download the Office 365 Migration application on your machine.

Step#2: Run the tool to select from the screen’s left panel.

Step#3: Enter credentials – Email Address and Password. To proceed further, click on Login button.

The software will load all mail folders, automatically. Check marks the required email folders for migrating email. Now, select Office 365 as file saving option. Enter the credentials. Finally, click on Migrate button to launch the process. You need to wait until the migration is successfully completed.

Key Features of Office 365 Migration Tool

• Users can simultaneously migrate multiple email to Microsoft 365 account.
• This software offers an easy-to-understand graphical user interface. So, you don’t need to be a technical pro to initiate a hassle-free migration. With a few clicks, you can perform the migration process.
• No third-party applications are required for the Office 365 Migration process. However, 3^rd party migration tools are available for specific migration needs.
• The tool preserves the email properties including structure and hierarchy folders. So, users can easily extract their emails after migration.
• You can selectively migrate email folders to save effort and time.
• You can save messages in a default folder, which you can easily manage and access post migration.
• You change the language of your emails.

This risk-free software supports all Window editions.

Key Benefits of Office 365 Migration

1. Improved Email Service Efficiency with ML and AI

Users can leverage the technological benefits offered by Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Microsoft Ggraph uses this intelligent technology to render valuable information that defines how businesses can improve on their internal communication system.

Further, the software supports features like intelligent detection of delivery, intelligent auto-meeting scheduler, and intelligent email search results. The AI-driven options allow users to obtain metrics by email click-thru rate and reader addresses.

2. Enhanced Email Security

To prevent cyber-attacks on servers, Office 365 Migration software contains superior security features, such as, anti-spoofing with sender validation tools – DKIM, SPF & DMARC, multi-factor authentication with notification, encryption (SSL/TSL), mailbox auditing, intensive mobile device security policies with controlled users’ access, unlimitedly secures business mailboxes with litigation hold and Microsoft secure source support.

3. External and Internal User Collaboration

Easily collaborate with team members, vendors, and customers with team collaboration options. These include Shared mailboxes with access control to specific roles, OneDrive integration and storage capacity of 150MB mail attachments.

The Two-way synchronization method allows for enhanced collaboration between global teams. Users can sync their devices with Outlook emails, calendar, contacts, and notes to share business documents anytime, anywhere.

Multi-platform support – Windows, Android & iOS, multiple device support – you can connect 5 devices, simultaneously.

To collaborate, users can avail services of Skype, MS-Teams, and SharePoint and of course all the other O365 products.

4. Migrate to Office 365 to be mobile at Work

Migrating to a cloud platform allows users to store, access, manage, and share documents and files from any location, anytime. Staff can efficiently and easily work and collaborate from any remote location around the world.

Conclusion:

With this guide, you can perform an Office 365 Migration. For special requirements, reach out, we’re glad to share our experience and offer guidance and help with any aspect of your planned migration.

There are many reasons to fully migrate to Office 365. Before undertaking any project, it’s important to define the major goals. That allows both the executive presentation of objectives, and also declaring success on project completion. This is even more important given many competing priorities and user demands and a nearly endless set of features and services within Office 365 SharePoint.

1. Intranet:

   Create an intranet that’s the centerpiece for corporate information, news, updates, and surfaces the values and culture of the organization.

2. Document Organization and Structure Searchability:

   Structure sites, libraries and folders.

3. Metadata Management:

   Centrally define the metadata for your organization. Enable tagging and even automated tagging of metadata.

4. Searchability:

   Refine the search experience to enable search focused on the needs of each department, and surface refiners to allow metadata-based drill downs to quickly find documents.

5. Centralize Storage within Redundancy:

   Provide a single version of the truth for all your organization’s documents, reducing the risk of version inconsistencies and issues.

6. Enhanced Collaboration and Communication:

   Enable our teams to work together on documents in real-time, so that they can improve productivity and streamline processes.

7. Delegated Permissions and Access Control:

   Enable your users to manage their permissions, by exposing groups and owners to manage the permissions.  Separately put in place the right level of granular control over who can access and edit specific documents, ensuring sensitive information stays secure and users get quick access by working within their departments and without burdening IT with tickets/requests.

8. Recycle Bin

   : enable user self-service, by exposing the recycle bin for user self-management of restoring documents.

9. Mobile Access:

   Enable user access on any device and from anywhere, smoothly and securely, as we move to hybrid and remote work environments.

10. Enabling Versioning of Documents:

    Automatically track document versions, making it easy to revert to a previous version if necessary. Enable document version comparison within MS-Office.

11. Co-authoring:

    Enable multiple users to work on a single document concurrently and see edits of others in real-time.  This is the heart of user collaboration in a literal sense.

12. Customizable document libraries:

    Ability to create custom document libraries, with views, groupings, and exposing document metadata to meet the needs of your projects, teams, departments and organization.

13. Workflows:

    Enable document approvals, and streamline automating within the organization. View consolidated dashboards of workflows in process, escalations, notifications, and speed multi-stage processes.

14. Enable Chat Services:

    Deploy teams to allow users to communicate in real time with document management of SharePoint fully integrated.

15. Compliance and Security:

    Provide extensive reporting, document lifecycle management, document disposition, security management and compliance capabilities including digital rights management and access controls, to keep your organization’s sensitive information safe, secure and provably so.

This is just a sampling of what might be some organizational project goals, and within easy grasp for any Office 365 project. What might be your goals?  How might you structure such a project?

Reach out to Reality Tech for a discussion on how Office 365 can be the centerpiece of your organization’s collaboration, document management and communication strategy.

Even though your company needs the best and cutting-edge SharePoint collaboration technology, are you still using SharePoint 2016 or earlier? Perhaps your company supports SharePoint On-Premises concurrently with utilizing the cloud for other corporate software? You should migrate your environment to the cloud, for the very latest features, functionality and security.  To get there, a migration is essential.

What is SharePoint Migration?

Moving all of your information and existing solutions from your current environment to another environment, usually with a newer version or to the cloud, is collectively known as a migration. There are several reasons why a business could choose to migrate to or between versions of SharePoint, but one of the main ones is to take advantage of the newest functions, features, security, integration, workflows and communication and productivity capabilities that come with the latest version. Your business’s needs, strategies, and direction are entirely responsible for your decision about when and how to undertake this migration.

Types of SharePoint Migration:

1. Migration from SharePoint 2016 to 2019

Businesses relocating in 2022 typically have significant IT investments and constraints that make it difficult to switch to the cloud. Thus, some enterprises upgrade in place from versions such as 2013 to a more recent on-premises version.

Benefits:

• Protect sensitive information and adhere to regulations.
• Keep customizations with minimal update, that would require redesign to go to the cloud.
• The cost of migration is minimized.
• Lower impact on end user experience.

Disadvantages:

• Cost of patching and maintaining security and the IT infrastructure.
• Looks and feel remains somewhat outdated.
• Newer features are only available in the cloud online edition of SharePoint in O365.

2. Migration from On-premise to SharePoint Online

Benefits:

• Recent additions include Modern UI, Teams integration, Power Automate workflows, Viva, and Security and Compliance tools.
• Microsoft primarily maintains and provides support for infrastructure, security, and redundancy.
• User licenses could be less costly, especially considering server operating systems and software and hardware, as well as backup, networking and firewalls.

Disadvantages:

• Storage restrictions and limitations, although these are overcome by simply purchasing more storage.
• Issues with data residency Since some aspects of SharePoint Online can only be used in US-based data centers, which can be a problem for some enterprises that are not US-based; requiring some more involved configuration to geo-locate the data to a specific Microsoft cloud region.
• There is a chance of a slower page load or less control over the hardware allocated to service a tenant. SharePoint Online utilizes common internet infrastructure.

3. Migration from On-premise to Hybrid

Benefits:

• Utilize the more recent capabilities, including Power Automate, hybrid links, and shared hybrid search that can crawl both cloud and on-premises content.
• Maintain adherence to legal requirements.
• Save money by not having to rebuild incompatible applications designed for the SharePoint Online cloud.

Limitations:

• Costs and complexity of setting up the hybrid environment, such as additional licenses.
• Maintenance fees for hybrid infrastructure, including security, patches, monitoring, and support.

SharePoint Migration Tool to Consider:

The market is overflowing with SharePoint migration tools, making it tough to choose the best option. The best course of action is to compare the many SharePoint migration tools and determine where each should be used.

1. Cloudsfer:

With worldwide support and expertise throughout a tried-and-true migration process, we are expert in Cloudsfer for migration. The tool is designed to satisfy businesses of all sizes’ migration and deployment needs.

     Pros:

• Trustworthy expertise.
• Quick turnaround times and delivery.
• Reliable project management.
• Fixed-Price Packages.

2. ShareGate Desktop:

ShareGate is a trusted migration solution that can transport both non-Microsoft and all core SharePoint content objects. The utility is notable for having no data size restrictions and the ability to execute transfers quickly. Additionally, while maintaining site navigation and information between tenants, ShareGate may migrate term stores, site settings, customizable displays, and forms. Its error reporting and remedial suggestions are very useful if something goes wrong.

     Pros:

• Unlimited migration
• Simple and intuitive user interface
• Reports on post-migration validation
• Cost effective
• Easy to use
• Industry standard
• High throughput with option for “Insane Mode” high throughput
• Licensed by 1 or 5 servers, and for one or more years

3. Tzunami Desktop:

Enterprise-focused SharePoint migration tools and expert SharePoint migration services are available from Tzunami Deployer. Fast and safe conversion from Confluence, Documentum, Open Text Content Server, HPE Content Manager, and many other systems to any version of SharePoint and Office 365. It reduces standard migration times by up to 90%, lowering labor costs and speeding up accessibility to more accurate content.  Tzunami is our go-to system for uncommon data source migrations to SharePoint.

    Pros:

• Reports on export, deployment, and post-migration
• 24/7 technical support
• Simple to use
• Advanced and sophisticated time-tested tool

4. BitTitan – MigrationWiz:

You can move email and data from various destinations and sources with the help of MigrationWiz, the best SaaS solution in the industry. Multiple cloud workloads can be migrated using a single solution. The 100% SaaS migration solution, MigrationWiz, is fully automated and available from any location at any time. Everything is streamlined through a unified interface, from straightforward mailbox migrations to enterprise-scale migration operations.

     Pros:

• Collaborative
• Scalable
• Simple to use
• Our go-to tool for highest fidelity mail related migrations

How to choose an outsourcing partner for SharePoint Migration Services:

1. Determine the Work’s Scope:

You should be aware of the tasks your company will need an outsourcing partner to carry out as part of any migration, even before you choose them. The objectives for your business are ones you set for yourself.  One can outsource a project, but one cannot outsource the ultimate responsibility and that starts with a well-defined scope of work.  A fashion company will have migration criteria significantly different from a financial firm, for example. Therefore, they must be aware of these differences before engaging in an vendor’s assistance. To better meet your needs during the migration process, they also need to be completely aware of your business’s objectives, downtime, system availability, critical user capabilities, security oversight and core business processes.

2. Examine the Technical Expertise of the Outsourcer:

A good start after establishing a very clear scope of work, is to assess the candidate migration vendor. Make a list of a few migration vendors. Consider factors like skill set, core experience with the specific migration planned, whether the vendor has worked with the size of the migration source, and their experience with associated workflows or whatever external 3^rd party systems for which integration or specific handling might be needed.  Some factors to consider are deep experience with the selected cutting-edge migration tools, technical expertise, and enthusiastic knowledge about collaboration capabilities of the destination system are things to consider. Your vendor must have the expertise to address serious issues identified during migration to ensure smooth mitigation and on-time project delivery. Price is a consideration, but it should not be the primary concern. The vendor you choose to work with should have experience with the range of technologies required and a bench of staff available on demand. It is preferable to work with a company that has above-average experience with the technology set than with one that specializes in just one or two associated technologies that are relevant.

3. Give your Organization Post-Migration Assistance:

Every trustworthy migration partner will offer you post-migration help for a limited time without charging extra. Partners who have extensive migration expertise will make sure to share documents and best practices to aid in your post-migration process. Your users will be better able to exploit the new features at their fingertips and make the best use of key collaboration functionality if you provide supporting documentation and even better to schedule training session(s). To help you overcome any problems you might run into, the ideal Office 365 migration partner will also set up a support center in SharePoint with FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) and a support document repository.

4. Timeline Management Services:

The management of timelines is essential while migrating. You must have a clear plan for when you will be completely migrated, and a sequence and timeline for specific department migrations. Planning is essential to ensure that all standards are satisfied before the major move. You can ensure a seamless transition with adequate planning and even better to plan for migration benchmark testing. You should have a list of specific due dates for each activity, just like any other migration plan. Doing this will increase your chances of a successful SharePoint Migration.  We often say “Take time to make time” as planning will smooth the migration project.

5. Check to See if the Costs Are Reasonable:

The overall project cost is of course a primary consideration for most organizations when choosing a migration partner. Although this is necessary since you must be able to pay for their services, picking the partner with the lowest cost is rarely the ideal choice. Determine the long-term worth of a potential partner’s services for your business when searching for one. Price should not alone be the deciding factor when evaluating and selecting a SharePoint Migration vendor if it one proposal would help your firm position itself with a better and more advanced platform for your operations that’s truly tuned to the organization needs. It is frequently a good idea to evaluate the service’s value in terms of the level of productivity you will experience after the solution is implemented as well as support services that can be provided seamlessly after the migration.

Conclusion:

When planning a migration project, you can go internal or bring in the outside experts.  Finding a vendor who can satisfy your needs can take some planning and analysis. However, it could boost your project success probability. Choose the SharePoint Migration service partner that is best for you and your enterprise success.

Along with SharePoint migration, we can also provide services to migrate from one cloud or from a range of on-premises data sources to Microsoft 365 SharePoint and Teams:

1. Box to SharePoint Online migration
2. GSuite to M365 Outlook
3. Teams migrations
4. Private Teams chat migration
5. Content Server to SharePoint Online migration
6. Confluence to SharePoint Online migration
7. PWA (Project Web App) migration
8. One SPO (SharePoint Online) tenant to another SPO tenant migration

Do you have an unusual data source to move to Office 365? Give us a call, we relish tough migration challenges.

Fewer businesses are migrating to on-premises SharePoint as they increasingly switch to cloud-based SharePoint Online/Microsoft 365. The trend is for embracing cloud-based productivity capabilities needed for a distributed workforce. Customer data has shown this trend, which serves to confirm a perception we’ve had for a while: for organizations, the cloud is now the standard and default choice, rather than an eventual possibility, across all industries and enterprise sizes. These SharePoint migration best practices, tips, and techniques will help you successfully switch from on-premises to SharePoint Online in your company, without risking broken permissions or user disruption.

What is SharePoint Online?

An intranet can be created using Microsoft SharePoint, a platform for collaboration and communication. This can be the central landing page for an enterprise, with relevant content for all staff. This can be calendars, events, links, news, announcements, weather, stock price, company pictures, and more. Additionally, it drives document collaboration throughout the whole Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Understanding that SharePoint is not desktop stand-alone software like MS Word or MS Excel is crucial. There is no installation required, and everyone generally receives the same product, or we should say service. With your Microsoft 365 subscription, SharePoint Online comes with a built-in cloud document management solution. Members of your organization can use it to securely access files from any location and collaborate in real-time and even co-author a document simultaneously. For example, whenever you create a team in the Microsoft Teams platform, a SharePoint site is automatically created to collaborate on shared files. It is one such way through which SharePoint can be also used as a collaborative content management system instead of only being an intranet or a browser-based file-share.

SharePoint Online is hosted in Microsoft data centers. Microsoft and their army of engineers handle system maintenance, upgrades and patches on their servers. Microsoft guarantees uptime of 99.99%. As part of this division of responsibility, SharePoint Online does not permit client access to the servers, including the usage of server-side code; instead, SharePoint Apps, SPFx, and client-side object model code (CSOM SharePoint) are permitted. A fluent and modern user interface is a key part of the SharePoint Online experience today. The interface is more intuitive, full featured and responsive than in classic SharePoint, making it simple for users to use, and easy enough to modify and adapt to your organization’s current and evolving needs.

What is SharePoint On-Premises?

When your company’s data center, or internal IT staff, manages SharePoint locally, it is called SharePoint On-Premises. The organization’s IT department is burdened by handling all server related tasks, including server updates, patches, maintenance, database administration, service accounts and more. There is the Active Directory mapping and filtering for account and profile availability in SharePoint and myriad policies and settings to consider and manage. Intranet sites are licensed for On-Premises utilizing a Server/CAL (Client Access License) approach. A SharePoint on-premises instance has one or more SharePoint servers and a database server, preferably multiple servers and a dedicated SQL Server. Every person or device visiting a SharePoint Server needs a CAL. In SharePoint on-premises, an organization and its administrators have complete access to every aspect, including scripts, underlying code, add-ons, and custom code. The SharePoint fundamental features, such as sites, communities, search, and content, are provided by the Standard CAL. While the Enterprise version of SharePoint offers complete features, including business solutions and business intelligence.

SharePoint Online vs SharePoint On-Premises

The preferred approach today for creating a scalable intranet is SharePoint Online. It minimizes complexity and expense. You can save time and money by choosing this option instead of building the necessary infrastructure. Many organizations already have licensed SharePoint as part of the existing software licenses, so the SharePoint Online service is essentially free to utilize. On the other hand, on-premises is ideal if you already have a dedicated infrastructure.

Let’s discuss some critical distinctions between SharePoint On-premises and SharePoint Online:

1. Dedicated Hardware:

SharePoint Online: Using data centers for the Microsoft Cloud. does not need special hardware installed on site.
SharePoint On-Premises: requires purchasing specialized hardware for on-site use.

2. Data Security:

SharePoint Online: Data is kept up to date following industry-specific security requirements.
SharePoint On-Premises: Data security will be the organization’s responsibility.

3. Data Storage:

SharePoint Online: The cloud is used to store data.
SharePoint On-Premises: Your local network is where you store data.

4. Data Backups:

SharePoint Online: Microsoft controls backups, but with restrictions.
SharePoint On-Premises: Your local environment will require your IT support team to develop, test, and manage backups. Even more importantly, the ability to restore!

5. Updates and Infrastructure:

SharePoint Online: Microsoft executes updates and patches automatically.
SharePoint On-Premises: Patches and other updates are applied by your IT support team to keep your system up to date.

6. Costs:

SharePoint Online: As part of your Microsoft 365 subscription. Per user, monthly billing is generated by Microsoft.
SharePoint On-Premises: You manage the cost of purchasing and maintaining hardware as well as the price of licensing and other expenses such as servers, network, and firewall.

7. External Users:

SharePoint Online: External users are easily enabled.  Azure services can be added for additional capabilities.
SharePoint On-Premises: It is necessary to manually construct and modify the infrastructure for connecting external users.  It is awkward and presents some risks to do.

8. Scalability:

SharePoint Online: It is managed by Microsoft.
SharePoint On-Premises: It should be handled by your enterprise.

9. Introduction of New Tools:

SharePoint Online: Microsoft regularly introduces and updates its tools and features and services.
SharePoint On-Premises: Your IT support team creates or manages or acquires tools and functions.

Why you should Migrate from SharePoint On-Premises to SharePoint Online

Companies can switch from SharePoint On-Premises to SharePoint Online using a range of tools. You can quickly transfer your document repositories and files from SharePoint On-Premises sites or your local drive to SharePoint Online or OneDrive. Evaluating your system needs, settings, and permissions behavior is crucial before starting your migration, including baselining any selected tool. The several advantages of SharePoint Online, which was created to enhance collaboration and increase productivity, include:

1. Multifunctionality:

This collaborative platform is adaptable and serves various purposes. It can serve as a corporate intranet for updated news and announcements, planning and managing projects, managing documents, calendars, tasks, and exchanging data. Additionally, you can build up social networking platforms to promote engagement among your staff members or modify the user experience to suit your demands.

2. Microsoft Office Suite Seamless Integration:

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook are just a few of the Microsoft business productivity products integrated with SharePoint Online. Additionally, SharePoint Online works with your preferred browsers, including Edge, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, enabling you to edit documents directly on your desktop or work on them in your browser.

3. Advanced Security:

The security features in SharePoint Online authenticate users and guard against unauthorized access to confidential data. By enhancing shareability and access to data, with the appropriate security, data integrity is preserved. Security settings can also be for a document, folder, library or site. Additional Digital Rights Management capabilities can be enabled to control and restrict access in a fine-grained manner, including restricting the ability to download or print documents.

4. Simple Accessibility:

As SharePoint Online is cloud-based, you only need a web browser and internet access to view files from any location and device.  This enables team productivity on-the-go.

Conclusion:

Your platform direction and choice will ultimately be based on your organization’s needs for information security, compliance standards, license and cost management and business continuity. In terms of basic functional coverage, on-premises and online can be compared but have a good deal of overlap. Your internal resources and legal requirements will affect your willingness to move from SharePoint On-Premises to SharePoint Online, but for many organizations that decision was long ago made in favor of the cloud.