SharePoint Online Migration Checklist for IT Admins

Is your organization planning a Microsoft 365 migration? In this article, we have prepared an extensive SharePoint Online migration checklist. Master a fool-proof SharePoint Online migration with our meticulously shortlisted checklist.

1. Requirement Analysis

The first step in a SharePoint Online migration is to know the exact requirements.

Strategize the migration timelines, the scope of work, migration responsibilities, computing resources, and choosing a migration partner. This provides a clear picture of what to expect and how to handle any challenges.

Define your company’s goals before moving to SharePoint Online. Have a clear idea on the need for your transition. Set the direction for your migration plan by having clear migration requirements.

2. Audit Your Current Environment and Source Data

Audit your source data to understand where it is stored, to check if it has duplicates, what is the underlying data architecture, its dependencies, etc. By learning this, you get to know which data to prioritize and retain and which to filter out or archive.

Internal IT teams must also inspect the source environment, including metadata, workflows, sites, users, groups, etc., to get a 360-degree understanding of your business data and its associated attributes.

Remove outdated or redundant data in your source cloud. Optimize your source environment for performance. Ensure proper working of your current systems. This helps you prevent unexpected delays during migration. A well-prepared source environment makes the transition smoother and eliminates post-migration issues.

3. Execute a Pre-Migration Assessment

A Pre-migration assessment helps you evaluate and decide on necessary aspects of the SharePoint migration. For example, choose from the list of metadata to migrate while transferring data from the source platform to SharePoint Online.

• Shared and embedded links
• Version History
• Comments
• Permissions
• Timestamps
• In-line comments

4. Overcoming SharePoint Limitations

When moving your data to SharePoint Online, your IT team must be aware of the limitations of Microsoft 365. Some of them are:

• No support for certain special characters in file/folder names and paths.
• No support for file names exceeding 400 characters.

Our SharePoint migration tool trims long file/folder paths to 350 characters, creates a folder called “LongFileName,” and stores the remaining data in it. With our advanced cloud migration platform, you can automatically replace unsupported characters with a hyphen (-) or underscore (_).

5. Map Relevant User Accounts

Accurate user mapping across the source and the destination platforms is one of the important points in the SharePoint Online migration checklist. With CloudFuze, you can achieve this through CSV or folder mapping methods.

6. Prepare your Destination Cloud

Before you move your business data from the source to SharePoint Online, it is essential to prepare it beforehand. You can do it in the following ways to ensure a smooth migration.

• Create Microsoft 365 accounts for the shortlisted users, cross-verify licenses, and storage space.
• Pre-provision the user accounts in the destination by creating respective sites.
• Transform your source data into lists, libraries, and folders for easier migration.
• Connect the SharePoint sites to relevant hub sites for easier navigation and tracking.

7. Executing One-Time and Incremental Migrations

While executing large-volume one-time data migration, incremental changes build up in the source as users continue to use the files. Therefore, in order to reflect these changes in the destination (SharePoint Online), the organization must also execute incremental or delta migration after completing a one-time data transfer.

Following this step as a part of the SharePoint Online migration checklist ensures the latest changes are captured.

8. Data Backup

As a critical step in the SharePoint Online migration checklist, it is essential to have a reliable data backup strategy in place to ensure that the data is not lost or corrupted during the migration process. A proper data backup strategy helps maintain the integrity of the data during the migration process. In addition, it provides a fallback option in case of any issues or errors.

Conduct a cleanup of your source environment. Review the existing user permissions and transfer all necessary data for backup.

9. Pilot Run

Performing a pilot run or Proof Of Concept (POC) before executing the data transfer must be another priority in your company’s SharePoint Online migration checklist. It allows you to identify and address potential issues or bottlenecks before the actual migration starts, eliminating downtime and reducing the risk of data loss or corruption.

A pilot run or POC also allows you to test the performance and scalability of the new cloud environment, giving you a better understanding of how it will function under real-time scenarios. Start with a small dataset using a reliable migration tool. Then, validate both performance and data integrity.

10. Post-Migration Evaluation

Run a post-migration checklist to evaluate the various parameters of the migration to validate the results. Check for the following during a post-migration evaluation.

• Batch & delta migration validation
• Data size verification across source and target
• Running a comparison delta to cross-verify the accuracy of the files

With these steps, conduct comprehensive testing across the migrated environment. Review libraries, lists, permissions, and workflows. Ensure that all data, structures, and user access rights are accurate in SharePoint Online.

Identify missing or corrupted files and address discrepancies with extra caution. Testing at this stage helps you resolve issues and ensure a smooth transition for your end-users.

Ensure to perform monitoring and periodic reviews post-migration. This helps ensure long-term value. Train your users and help them with adoption. Keep a close eye on the new SharePoint environment. This enables you to support your team’s productivity with the major transition.

11. Train End-Users

Switching to SharePoint Online from a different source can be challenging for the end-users to adopt. The SharePoint environment’s new set of processes, workflows, and user interfaces can cause confusion and lower employee productivity. Eliminate this challenge by communicating with the users and giving them hands-on training in the new cloud platform for a smoother transition.

Check out the Microsoft 365 adoption guide, which can help onboard your employees to the new platform.

To ensure a successful adoption, create a comprehensive communication plan with teams throughout the migration. Early and ongoing engagement helps employees understand what’s changing, why it’s happening, and how it will impact their daily tasks.

Encourage feedback, answer questions, and address any concerns, since changes to familiar workflows can cause anxiety or confusion. Your communication plan should go together with training and change management initiatives.

Offer tailored training sessions to help users become comfortable with SharePoint Online. Establish clear channels for ongoing support after migration. Additionally, update users on any new governance policies, such as the rules for creating new sites or libraries, so that everyone is aware of best practices and expectations from the start.

A well-structured approach to communication, training, and change management will boost user confidence, drive adoption, and eliminate disruptions as your team transitions to SharePoint Online.

12. Decommissioning the Source Cloud

Decommissioning the source cloud license is crucial for businesses planning to adopt SharePoint Online and leave the existing source cloud altogether. Not doing so may lead to unnecessary costs and complexities, as your company may end up paying for both clouds. This can make it challenging to maintain multiple licenses and manage IT operations.

Beyond simplifying IT management, decommissioning offers substantial cost savings. Because SharePoint Online is a cloud-based solution, you no longer need to invest in or maintain expensive hardware or software, such as servers and physical infrastructure. Eliminating redundant cloud licenses and on-premises equipment helps you streamline operations. This also allows your business to avoid unnecessary expenditure over time.

Hence, consider decommissioning the source cloud license as an integral step in the SharePoint migration checklist.

A Quick Overview of our Migration Tool:

What Do Customers Say About Us?

As a reliable cloud migration partner, we at CloudFuze, have helped some of the top companies to seamlessly move files to SharePoint. Here is a Gartner review from one of our customers. As per the review, the customer used our migration solution to transfer to SharePoint successfully. We helped them migrate data to SharePoint along with necessary metadata such as permissions. They praised us for quicker adaptation to requirements and benefitted by accurate transfer.

Move to SharePoint Online Smoothly with CloudFuze

Our comprehensive SharePoint Online migration checklist lays out a well-planned strategy and helps optimize migration performance.

To enquire about the tool, contact our team today!

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How to migrate data to SharePoint?

CloudFuze Migrate helps you migrate data to your SharePoint account accurately and secure way. Our advanced migration tool seamlessly migrates files and metadata to SharePoint from source clouds like Egnyte, Box, ShareFile, Dropbox, SharePoint, Google Drive with complete replication.

2. How to transfer to SharePoint with minimal downtime?

CloudFuze’s SharePoint migration tool helps you transfer PB/TBs of high-volume data with no downtime and complete accuracy.

3. Why switch to SharePoint?

SharePoint can be the best cloud platform choice for your enterprise. You can collaborate with your teams, customize workflows, using Microsoft SharePoint with advanced security and governance controls built in.