Steps to a Successful Microsoft 365 Migration

Introduction

More and more businesses are migrating to Office 365 to take advantage of the cloud suite’s industry-leading collaboration features and security. Over 879,851 companies in the US use the cloud suite as per Statista’s 2022 report.

If your company is planning an Office 365 migration to use the cloud suite for improving business processes and outcomes, it is crucial to have a proper strategy.

This guide takes a deep dive into Office 365 migration steps essential to taking a strategic approach to ensure complete migration success.

1. Pre-planning

Companies planning to migrate to Microsoft 365 first need to schedule an organization-level meeting involving all stakeholders. Migrating company data impacts every employee and the way they communicate with their coworkers. Therefore, a high-level discussion must take place.

It is crucial to perform a pre-migration analysis during the planning phase.

The analysis must prioritize these crucial factors:

• The size of data and the number of users to migrate
• Migrating to OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online or both
• Migrate sharing permissions, metadata, file versions, external shares, embedded links, and in-line comments
• Converting source cloud-specific files (E.g., Box Notes to Microsoft Word)
• Planning the Office 365 migration timeline

Performing a proper pre-migration analysis also helps in choosing the right Office 365 migration tool.

2. Choose an Office 365 Migration Service

A discrete third-party data migration tool like CloudFuze plays an integral role in helping SMBs, enterprises, and MSPs ensure complete Microsoft 365 migration success.

With a migration partner, it becomes simple for businesses to transfer TBs/PBs of data and many users along with all the crucial features.

3. Understand Microsoft 365 Limitations

OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online have several limitations that create Office 365 migration challenges for businesses of all sizes. These limitations include:

• File path length limited to 300 characters
• Support for only specific special characters in folder and file names
• No support for specific file and folder names

Learn more about OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online limitations.

Your IT team must have a system in place that helps overcome these limitations with an automated process.

4. Check Regular Migration Reports

It is crucial to check daily migration reports during the one-time Microsoft Office 365 migration to ensure the migration progresses as planned. Check for the accuracy and speed of the migration in daily reports to ensure the project progresses as per the planned timeline.

Another benefit of checking regular migration reports is it helps your team identify any loopholes (e.g., certain files going into conflict) and quickly have them resolved.

5. Migrate Incremental Changes via Delta Migration

The Office 365 migration can only be a complete success after transferring all the incremental changes the employees make during the one-time migration.

After the one-time migration is complete, perform a delta migration to update all the incremental changes in OneDrive and SharePoint Online.

Your IT team can also perform a comparison delta to be fully sure that all the incremental changes are updated.

6. Plan the user onboarding process

The IT team and other teams in your organization that are a part of the migration project must plan training sessions for all employees even before they use Microsoft 365. Switching to a new cloud service like Office 365 without any kind of training does not only trouble employees but also put critical business data at risk.

This Microsoft 365 Adoption Guide can help you and your team plan a smooth user onboarding process.