Prerequisites for Businesses To Copy Box Data to SharePoint

Avoiding missing out on any area during the pre-migration stage is critical for businesses planning a Box to SharePoint migration to structure the entire project. By checking all prerequisite boxes, companies and their IT teams can also remove loopholes from the processes and lower the risk of unforeseen challenges.

This guide helps IT managers, IT admins, IT teams, CTOs, and other decision-makers cover all important parameters during the pre-migration phase and streamline the entire migration project.

1. Coordinating with Box Team for Data Size and API Limit

Having full clarity on the accurate data size in Box is important for planning out a budget for the Box to OneDrive and SharePoint migration and getting it approved by the finance team. Sharing the accurate data size number with the migration partner is also a needle mover in planning the entire scope of work during the pre-migration analysis stage.

Another important area to cover is to coordinate with the team at Box and learn about the API limitations based on the annual plan that your company uses. Learning about the API limitations helps you coordinate with the migration partner and plan the migration timeline accordingly.

The recommended approach is to avoid choosing data migration speeds that raise the risk of crossing the API limitations and start API throttling.

2. Finalizing the User Accounts and Mapping Them

It is during the pre-migration assessment stage that businesses must identify all the user accounts, analyze and finalize them, and map them to SharePoint Online.

Many businesses often take the strategic approach of skipping user accounts that are not necessary to bring down the overall migration cost. You can also work with your IT team and management to identify static user accounts that are no longer needed and skip them.

During the mapping part, it is crucial to take the approach that the migration tool supports. For example, the industry-standard format for mapping user accounts is through CSV sheets. After your company’s IT team maps all the user accounts in a CSV sheet, you must get it validated by the migration service provider and create multiple duplicates of it as backups.

3. Reviewing and Amending Migration Partner’s Security and Legal Policies

The security and legal policies of your company and the migration partner may not perfectly match, which may create friction in executing the project to copy Box data to SharePoint and OneDrive. Therefore, it is crucial to have all the stakeholders of your company involved in reviewing the migration partner’s security and legal policies and amending them as required for mutual benefit.

4. Checking if Solutions for Specific Needs Are Available Out of the Box

If your company has highly specific Box to Microsoft 365 migration needs, your IT team must check with the migration partner to learn if the solution for it is available out of the box. If not, planning out tool customization in time helps you and the migration partner get buffer time prior to initiating the project.

For example, your company may have the need to transfer files with the last four years of modified timestamps to OneDrive and files with five years of modified timestamps to SharePoint. If the migration tool does not support this requirement, it is crucial to plan customization, such as creating a new filter.

5. Setting up the Expectation To Complete the Migration Within the Deadline

Many businesses have the need to execute and complete the migration project within the deadline to meet specific goals, such as decommissioning the source cloud before license expiration and being in sync with a merger or acquisition activity.

If your company has such requirements, it is crucial to set a proper project completion expectation for the migration partner and start the migration process on time.

Get More Insights From Our Migration Team

Get in touch with our dedicated migration team to learn more about the processes to follow and strategies to implement to ensure the complete success of your company’s Box to SharePoint migration.