How to plan and execute SharePoint Online migrations

With the ever increasing trend for cloud adoption, SharePoint online provides an excellent means of collaborating and sharing documents within the modern business – negating the need for on premise servers.

Pre-migration considerations

Choosing the right version of SharePoint
Microsoft provides different subscription plans for SharePoint Online and at first glance it can be quite difficult to work out which version is best for you. The key things you need to consider when choosing a subscription plan are:

- Storage per user
- Storage base per tenant
- Additional storage
- List view threshold in site libraries or lists
- Site collection storage limit
- Site collections (#) per tenant
- Subsites
- Office 365 Groups file storage
- Public Website storage default
- File upload limit
- Sync limits
- Maximum number of users per tenant
- Number of external user invitees

It’s also worth noting that SharePoint Online sites have limits for their site elements (namely, List and Library limits, Page limits, and Security limits) and a fixed value for personal storage space available on OneDrive for Business.

SharePoint also has an upper limit for file sizes and URL lengths; it doesn’t not support file names with some special characters. Files must also not contain invalid end strings; some file types (file extensions) are completely blocked too.

Choosing the right SharePoint Online migration method
There are a number of different ways you can perform a migration to SharePoint Online from file servers, SharePoint Server, and Exchange public folders. Here are a few:

File Servers to SharePoint Online data migration
One of the simplest methods of performing File Server to SharePoint Online migration is using the drag and drop functionality:

• Upload or drag & drop files to document library
  The Upload button can be used to move a file to the SharePoint document library. Alternatively, you can drag files to the library. These methods are best suited for moving a small number of documents.
  
• Move files using ‘Open with Explorer’
  Open with Explorer (in the Connect & Export group in the ribbon) allows you to copy and paste documents to the SharePoint library or OneDrive for Business. Simply drag and drop up to hundred files at a time. Just remember that only files can be copied, not folders. Open with Explorer is suitable in migrations where only a small volume of data is being migrated. This method won’t help to detect invalid characters in file names, file restrictions or path lengths. Meta data and version history will also not be preserved during the migration.
  
• Sync a site library to a computer folder
  SharePoint Online doesn’t have a feature to upload or copy a computer folder directly to SharePoint or OneDrive for Business. But the same result can be achieved by syncing a SharePoint site library to a computer folder. When synced, the content of the folder is copied to the SharePoint library and vice-versa. However, there is a limit to the number of items that can be synced.
  

Moving data from SharePoint Server to SharePoint Online
One cannot import SharePoint on-premises data to SharePoint Online (Office 365) or OneDrive for Business directly from the SharePoint admin center. So, one will have to rely on Microsoft Azure or professional migration solutions.

Moving data from Exchange public folders to SharePoint Online
When carrying out a public folder to SharePoint migration, the method you use will depend on the type of items being migrated.

• Drag & drop public folder items by connecting to Outlook
  
  
  Calendar items, tasks, and contacts can be moved from public folders to SharePoint Online using a simple drag and drop method with the Connect to Outlook option.
  
• Move mail data with the help of a PST file
  Mail data can be moved from public folders to SharePoint Online with the help of a PST file. Steps are given below:
  
  1. Create an Outlook PST file, copy the public folder to the PST file, and then move its data to PST file.
  2. Drag the data from the PST file to a network drive after mapping it with the SharePoint document library.

Pros and cons of native SharePoint Online migration
SharePoint Online has a small number of migration features that are simple and free to use. They are suitable for moving data to SharePoint Online on a small scale – the Upload button, drag & drop and Open with Explorer features are fine if you have a small amount of data. However, if you are thinking of performing a larger migration then you may need to consider other options.

Blog Summary
While you can perform the migration using the native tools you might find it’s not the best option if trying to perform a larger migration. It’s worth considering a third party solution as a more effective way of performing such a task. LepideMigrator for Documents is one such solution that could be considered.

by Satyendra Tiwari via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community