Migrating to Microsoft SharePoint 2013 introduces a number of capabilities which could provide a new perspective on you current Intranet as well as the integration of social and collaborative functionality.
New features provide organisations with enhanced collaboration management, native integration of enterprise social networks, and a significant improvement of search-related functions.
However, successful migrations - either on-premises or SharePoint Online - require an in-depth study of the current environment to identify critical points.
Exclusively for Computerworld New Zealand, Fabrice Di Giulio, Technical Solutions Professional, AvePoint presents the most important questions for pre-migration and solutions to these issues.
What is the state of your current collaboration platform deployment?
It is necessary to have a good overview of documents, taking into account network and hardware infrastructure, user mapping, security directory and implementation, and interactions with other systems.
Uniting IT roles can also provide a complete overview and help identify the individuals involved at different migration project stages.
How much content needs to be migrated?
Take into account existing content residing in your current environment, including documents, images, pages, the number of versions for each object, and content hosted on external file shares.
Clearly understanding the totality of content will help you size up your destination environment and define an appropriate migration strategy.
What is the level of customisation in your current environment?
This question is most applicable for migrations from previous SharePoint versions to SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint Online. Aside from this, it becomes more complex to consider a customised migration.
You must distinguish multiple types of customisation, including graphic customisations and those related to a third-party tool, such as workflow software. If it’s possible to support SharePoint 2013, consider a migration tool or technical support.
What level of technical requirements are necessary for migration?
Technical requirements are not an issue once the auditing of the current environment has been carried out. However, the level of functional requirements will often impact the duration of the pre-migration phase.
A common business requirement is the structuring of data and can become difficult to reach a consensus. Some environments will need to be organised by site collections, while others will require organisation based on sites.