SharePoint Migration

Introduction

APPtechnology was approached a fast-growing financial services organisation to migrate its SharePoint estate to SharePoint Online.

Background

As the organisation continues to grow and evolve, it became evident that a more advanced, scalable, and cloud-based solution is necessary to meet its dynamic needs.

The existing SharePoint 2013 environment was to be moved to a Microsoft 365 (M365) SharePoint Online environment. The key objective of the migration was to take advantage of M365 and SharePoint advanced features, such as better collaboration capabilities, mobile access, heightened security, and reduced infrastructure costs.

To assist with this migration, our client initially engaged the services from a 3rd Party SharePoint consultancy. Their remit was to manage the transition of SharePoint 2013 sites to the SharePoint Online environment. The 3rd party’s work provided a foundation for the migration and we identified areas to build upon in their approach and execution. Some key issues encountered included insufficiently detailed mapping of SharePoint 2013 features to SharePoint Online, incomplete inventory and assessment of SharePoint 2013 sites, and handling of issues related to customisations and third-party solutions.

Scope and Objectives

The migration plan was designed to ensure a seamless transition from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online, minimising downtime, optimising resource utilisation, and ensuring minimal disruption to the end-users.

Migration Strategy

The migration strategy adopted a phased approach, taking into consideration the unique attributes of each site, including business criticality, data volume, and customisation complexity.

Phase 1

Map all site collections, sub-sites, libraries and lists to a new M365 environment: Prepare each environment to enable customised solutions to seamlessly integrate.

Phase 2

Pilot Migration: Select a small group of singular site collections for migration. These sites will serve as a 'pilot migration' to test and refine.

Phase 3

Singular Site Collection Migration: Upon successful pilot migration, proceed with the migration of remaining singular site collections.

Phase 4

Heavy Site Collection Migration: Migrate all remaining site collections and sub-sites to new M365 environment.

Harnessing the capabilities of SharePoint Online and M365 the suggestion was to comprehensively redesign and rebuild the workflows, InfoPath Forms, libraries, and scripts. Power Automate offered a robust tool for constructing workflows, while Power Apps modernised and replaced InfoPath Forms. PowerShell scripts were restructured and integrated with Azure Automation, resulting in improved manageability and scalability.

Outcomes and Benefits

Delivered on time and within budget, our client now realises, a fully migrated SharePoint to Online and increased user adoption to M365 and Power Platforms, already seeing an increased demand from the internal business users to adopt Power Apps and harness the Power Platform.