What to consider before packing up and heading to SharePoint

What we'll cover

• Comprehensive SharePoint migration guide focusing on data integrity, permissions, and ownership.
• Process analysis for pre-migration cleaning, automation via PowerShell, and robust testing.
• Performance considerations like volume, throttling, and application dependencies when migrating data.

Understanding the Landscape

Picture this: You've just been tasked with migrating all your company's files to SharePoint. The piles of data seem daunting, like a mountain range stretching out into the distance. Getting ready for this mammoth task, you might ask yourself, "Where do I even start?" or "What will the journey involve?" But fear not! This is your trusty guide to traverse the rocky terrain of file migration.

Migration to SharePoint involves more than just packing your digital belongings and shifting them to a new location. Planning, organising, and strategising is a journey to ensure a smooth transition. The path has unique challenges, like maintaining the integrity of your data, handling metadata, and managing user permissions, to name a few.

Think about the benefits of having all your files easily accessible anywhere and anytime. It creates an environment of collaboration and efficiency. I'll guide you through the advantages, help you address any challenges, and ensure a successful migration to SharePoint.

What’s at stake

The files in your company are precious and make up the sum of what you do and how you do it. Can any company operate without them? You'll have thousands, if not millions, of these digital footprints diverse in size, structure, and type.

To truly comprehend the extent of their influence, let's delve deeper into the significance of your files. They are not merely bundles of data but rather the fundamental components that drive your business processes. These files are layered with metadata and access permissions and organised into folders tailored to your organisation's needs.

During a SharePoint migration, preserving these files' integrity, structures, and relevant metadata is crucial. Missteps here can lead to data loss, broken links, misplaced files, or even security issues - a quicksand pit on your migration path. But fear not; we're here to help you navigate these challenges safely.

In the following sections, we will detail each potential challenge. We will map out the possible issues, highlight the pitfalls to avoid, and provide the tools to ensure your files make the journey to SharePoint unscathed and ready for use. This article will focus on the more intricate processes and considerations regarding data management.

Understanding how migrations work

There are a lot of stages to migration, but regardless they will have these main elements.

1. The what and why: What are you moving and why?
2. Let people know: This might be focused on technology, but communication should always be done.
3. Inventory and mapping: Know what you're moving and where it will end up.
4. Resource provisioning: You'll need somewhere to put your data in SharePoint.
5. Access control and permissions: Know who should access what resources.
6. Testing, testing, and even more testing: Ensure you know it works before going live.
7. Set data to read-only: People need encouragement to stay in the new place.
8. Moving the data: It all comes down to this.
9. Remediation and clean-up: Nothing moves perfectly on the first run.

You'll be able to repeat the end steps for each sprint at this point- please feel free to change course.