SPO WBBag April 2023 The Ultimate Problem Challenge in a SharePoint Migration – Part I

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The Ultimate Problem Challenge in a SharePoint Migration PART I

In this SharePoint Online Brown Bag I will talk about Governance in a company point of view about the ultimate problem challenges in a Migration as a Consultant.

One of the main obstacles in a migration context are the tools (3rd Parties) that are made available in SharePoint in a product context, On-Premises.

There are many tools that make life easier for users, namely in the construction of extremely attractive pages and designs, but they are true Migration blocking points. On the other hand what are we going to do with the custom fields? What if we mix all this with a Governance that doesn’t allow migration with EnableCustomScripts, se my post about this topic. And to make matters even worse, there are no SharePoint Administrator rights? This article is in this context.

Ya I’ve been there. REMEMBER You are solving a problem and you have to be part of the solution.

My usual note

Perfect people or companies don’t exist. I’m the first to admit I’m not mistake free, that’s because I learn and share. If so please comment to Improve

SUMMARY

These days performing a migration in some industry sectors can bring many challenges. Why? Because security is very tight and nothing can go out the corporation environment.

All WBBags are past experiences and for me they represented overcoming in projects with environments that are often extreme and where there are many Blocking Points. You’ll never go anywhere alone, value your Team.

CHALLENGES IN THIS POST

  1. The 3rd Parties
  2. Custom Field Type
  3. Grounds

The 3rd parties. In this first point how to migrate these famous plugins? there are some, but SharePoint Online has rules, namely, and in my opinion the most attractive and that I cannot break, the RESPONSIVE DESIGN.

If you ask me how I’m going to migrate these tools, my answer is simple, purely DON’T MIGRATE, So if my answer is clear, what to do? in the case of tools that generate wizard friendly pages, be prepared to calculate your FTE’s because the pages are to be created from scratch. and in this context YOU CANNOT migrate this pages.

If there is such a requirement that you really want to replicate what has been done, then be more prepared, because you will need a lot of custom development. If the requirement is not so demanding, prepare your team to use what SharePoint Online gives you, namely the OOTB Webparts and a lot of List, Columns and Form formatting based on JSON and some custom development. SPFx And of course Extension Customizers.

How to approach this issue?

  1. You have to know Migration Governance very well
  2. You have to ask and negotiate how flexible the migration is, always explaining the advantages and disadvantages
  3. You never break the basic rules of SharePoint Online, as it is a Service and not a Product and remember that it belongs to an ecosystem that is Microsoft 365.
  4. You have to draw up an effective plan with what you intend to do after the negotiation, create a Governance for your migration based on the Governance guidelines resulting from the Government Committees.
  5. Be flexible and thoughtful. Never put yourself in a commitment situation if you are not sure what you are going to do and if it is compatible
  6. Always ask and negotiate a communication channel if there is an active ticket for the Tenant, before migrating you have to know the impact of your migration

The Custom Field Type. At this second point life doesn’t get much easier, your custom fields all go straight to the trash. Maybe you can convert them to text fields and reuse something. It all depends on how the fields are built and what you can reuse from them.

You have to attack this point in a paradigmatic way, “my friends, what we can do is purely convert some information because it is not possible to migrate it as it is”. It is obvious that you are not going to say things like that, you have your soft skills to know what to say.

You have to recreate with Field Customizers in this case

The last point of this article, the GROUNDS. You might imagine it’s impossible to migrate sites without administration rights, either on SharePoint or on your Virtual Machine, and yet someone might not want to negotiate a service account to carry out the migration. DOES THIS REALLY HAPPEN? YES, more times than you think, looks crazy? of course yes, but happens, in tight security Governances, that’s because I write this WBBags, search in my site for my set of articles, “do I need“?

Now mix everything together and ask yourself how to MIGRATE in this severe environments?

CONCLUSION

When you go to an interview for a migration role, whether it’s just SharePoint or taking advantage of everything that Microsoft 365 gives you, such as migrating Mapped Drives to SharePoint, as well as Workflows to Power Automate, Power Apps etc. you have to ask key questions, if you have the flexibility to participate in the decisions of the government committees, if you are going to have SharePoint Admin, And most importantly, you have to ask effective questions to have an idea if you are going to be able to set up an Automated System in the Cloud, in Azure , as well as the Migration VM’s, because you want your VM’s next to the tenants. What are the 3rd parties, rules and so on, quoted above and more, imagine…

Even so, when you start a project, you’ll start to see that what was overlooked in the interview may not fully correspond to the reality, and since you can have a B2B contract, you’ll have to guarantee the service. If you are self-employed you may have even more problems. B2B contracts are very well paid, but if you don’t guarantee the service and some clause is activated you will spend a lot of money, think about it, because you don’t go to an interview just to evaluate your skills, you go there to assess how you will have to guarantee the service, so don’t try to please anyone, you won’t do anything but your job, because you know how to do it. Have an attitude and don’t let yourself be lured by millionaire contracts, my friend, you’re not going anywhere alone, things can go wrong from one moment to the next, work with TRUSTWORTHY people, namely get a financial and legal structure that supports you.

In Part II I’ll talk about more complex scenarios and in what way Microsoft can help you with the Fast Track Team and his Partners

joao

Joao Livio

Joao is a Consultant with more than 27 years of experience in various technologies, he has been working with SharePoint since version 2003, an area in which he decided to specialize. Today he works in the Modern Workplace area with focus in Migrations to Office/Microsoft 365 as well in the Ecosystem Development, having fun in amazing projects and in amazing Corporations and Clients. MCP, MCTS, MVP Alumni, Nintext and Certified Lean Specialist

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