SharePoint 2007 to Office 365 Migration with ShareGate

After looking at supported migration scenarios, Active Directory synchronization and planning your move from SharePoint to Office 365, you're finally ready to start your migration.

Since there are currently no tools available from Microsoft to migrate directly from SharePoint 2007 to Office 365, I will show you how to do it using Sharegate.

1.       Download and Open the Sharegate Migration Tool:

Of course, the first thing to do is to download Sharegate. Once installed, we’ll be able to choose Migration from the panel on the left of the tool’s home screen.

There, select the best-suited option based on what kinds of objects you want to migrate.

The first, Copy Structure, will help me bring bigger chunks over to the destination. You will be able to migrate entire Site Collections, individual Sites, Lists, Libraries, Groups and more.

The second one, Copy Content, provides granular options that can sometimes be more effective than moving everything at once.

In this example, we are migrating a basic SharePoint 2007 Intranet to a new SharePoint, on Office 365.

The thing is, a lot has changed since SharePoint 2007. The architecture of the platform is very different, but most importantly, there are Site Templates that no longer exist. We’ll take a note of that and see what we can do later on.

Because Sharegate isn't installed on a server and can run from your desktop, it doesn't have access to the same options in the Central Administration. You need a Site Collection to exist at the destination, so that Sharegate can hook on to it.

It can be blank, or one where content already exists. Either way, Sharegate will give you the options to merge with it if you need to.

If you have a lot of Site Collections, you can look at my post on creating an inventory with PowerShell of your SharePoint and create another PowerShell script that takes this inventory, to create new blank Site Collections with the same name.

2.       Migrate SharePoint Sites from 2007 to Office 365

The migration itself is pretty straightforward with Sharegate. Once you’ve planned your migration, you can start migrating your SharePoint 2007 Sites quickly and easily.

In this case, I am going to use the Copy Site Objects tool, because I plan on migrating larger objects as a whole to my Office 365, rather than taking the content from one List or Library to another.

Then, we need to enter the URLs for both the source and the destination. Sharegate asks me where I want to copy from, as well as which credentials I want to use to connect to each of these SharePoint URLs.

It’s important to connect with credentials that have the necessary rights to perform the actions you are planning to do.

For example, if I am planning to migrate just a Document Library, then I need to make sure I have at least access to it at the source and that I can create libraries at the destination.

Next, you’ll find yourself in front of Sharegate Desktop’s migration interface, which shows you the source and destination.

On the far left, we can see the Site Objects navigation, to change the type of objects we see in the squares that represent our environments.

Today, I don’t need a granular migration by object, so I’m going to select the Current Site in the Navigation on the left. This is because I want to take the site at the URL typed in the previous step, and migrate it to Office 365, along with all its subsites.

All I have to do is select the site on the left, drag it and drop it in the square on the right, which represents the Office 365 environment.

Before the migration starts, I’m prompted with the Copy Now screen where I can see the current settings or go into the advanced migration options.

For example, I might want the content, but only with the last 10 published versions. I might also want to merge, which will be the case in this example, because I want my old Site Collection become the new Site Collection in Office 365. Otherwise the default copy option would do so as a subsite.

When you're happy with the copy options, you're ready to start your migration.

3.       Report on SharePoint 2007 Migration

Reporting is a crucial piece of any given migration, because we want to make sure everything worked as it was supposed to. If it didn’t, reporting helps to know exactly what failed and why, so that it can be fixed.

Sharegate offers a lot of flexibility in terms of building reports, but if you want one quick and effective automatic report, you can view the report for the migration we just completed in the All Task panel.

From there, you will quickly see the results.

I can see from the report that I have a few errors that occurred during the 2007 to Office 365 migration, so I’ll double-click on it to find out more.

What I love about these error and warning messages is that they actually mean something. I can tell that the Translation Management Library is deprecated and thus was not enabled on my destination Office 365. There is also a URL to a Sharegate Documentation article that helps me solve this issue.

However, depending on your method of migrating, you could have chosen between Automatic Mode and Manual Mode. These are two approaches to the migration, one that is completely silent, but asks you before the migration starts what to do if various things happen.

The other, Manual Mode, stops and asks what to do as each warning or error occurs. With Interactive Mode, I could see while I was migrating my SharePoint 2007 Sites, that certain Site Templates no longer exist at the destination.

Challenges in Migrating to SharePoint Online

The path along which you traverse while migrating to SharePoint Online may not be as smooth as you think it to be – there are some “bumps” along the way and I will review the common some fairly common challenges you are likely to face while migrating to SharePoint Online.

1. Disorganized Information

A major challenge – which has NOTHING to do with the framework itself but rather a lack of organization on our own part, is information which is disorganized. This invariably proves to be one of the most critical challenges while migrating to SharePoint Online.

And the solution – as would be obvious to you is to ensure that your information remains as organized as possible. So whether we are talking about:

·                     The sites themselves

·                     Their respective libraries

·                     Lists within these sites

·                     Content types such as documents, images, spreadsheets, databases, etc.

·                     Content layout such as in stacks, columns, etc.

All have to be properly organized. Remember that when you do so, migration becomes a breeze, and when you don’t it becomes a very big challenge.

A term that we will stress here is pre-migration analysis – you must spend adequate time on this if you are to get your migration right.

2. Storage Challenges

A second challenge that is faced all too often is with regard to storage of data – there may be less or more space available (more is of course not a problem per se but you need to organize it accordingly).

The solution to this challenge lies in ensuring that you double check on storage available and amply provide for it beforehand, before you commence with the migration process.

Remember that this is as much a consideration of the pre-migration analysis process we mentioned in the previous point, as here.

3. Bulk Migration

Bulk migration is often a challenge when migrating to SharePoint Online; files may get corrupted or may not end up in the place you intended them to go.

Herein there is no quick fix per se, yet with adequate planning as well as the deployment of third party tools which make the migration process easier, you can certainly have more files migrating together than otherwise.

This is especially true for similar file types, though it is just as true that similar file types may not necessarily be intended for the same location…you don’t always have images together and documents together in separate locations – they may all very well co-exist.

So as we mentioned, using third party tools which are intuitive and can easily determine the way in which content is to be laid out when migrated can certainly make a big difference.

4. Loss of Metadata

The probable loss of metadata is certainly a major challenge when we talk about migration to SharePoint Online. At the same time, this challenge can be overcome by having a clear “inventory” of your content before you begin the migration process and also have it well organized say in terms of content types.

Another tip would be to continuously add metadata to content as you migrate – this will definitely go a long way in keeping it preserved.

5. Security

Security is often a challenge when migrating to SharePoint Online, particularly since at a local level, when you have your content say in the in-house location, you also have your own set of security tools at your disposal; once you take things to the next level onto the cloud, you may not have the kind of security that you had previously.

At the same time, remember that this challenge is more about perception than reality – more often than not, the cloud is just as secure and impermeable, perhaps more so, than the security you have at your disposal currently.

The key is to double check on this and work accordingly wherein you ensure security of your content.