Beginners guide to migrating from on prem fileserver to sharepoint online

Brass Contributor

Hi all,

so, due to an ailing and failing on premise fileserver with no spare storage and because we already have Office 365 E3 licences i want to start to migrate our data into sharepoint online.

It's basically a WS2016 on premise domain where file access permissions are set using AD security groups. Mapped drives are used etc.

We don't currently use sharepoint in any sense.

Myself, i'm playing around with Teams, which i understand effectively builds data into sharepoint, but i've been told its best to start planning and creating your data shares in sharepoint first and then 'point' Teams to that data(?) not even sure if that makes any sense?

I'm struggling to find any decent training that deals with what i think i'm trying to achieve.

"i don't know, what i don't know" if you know what i mean. I don't have a budget so i'm trying to learn as much as i can before paying to enlist the help of companies that do this for you.

Any starting advice would be most appreciated.

Thanks

8 Replies

Hi, that’s a good question, with lots of different possibilities, I have a few general pointers, I’m sure you’ll get more responses possibly around Teams etc.

 

I’d first take a step back, look at the data, what state is it in, it’s a great opportunity to optimise and better arrange the contents as you move to the cloud.  You can take a ‘lift and shift’ approach and migrate everything, or have a data cleanse, for example looking at old data, unmanaged data, how much of that should be migrated, if any of it. Dumping everything from a file server onto SharePoint is usually not the best approach but it does happen, you can also rearrange the data once it’s on the cloud but that’s not without it’s difficulties either. Also what about home folders and migrating them to OneDrive for Business, that’s another possible consideration to plan for.

 

The preferred way to arrange contents in SharePoint is with sites (site collections), for every unit of work create a site. Each site has a document library/shared library, which is where the documents live.  You add members to the site and that’s grants access to the data, users can then sync the document library using OneDrive, where the contents can be easily accessed as if it was a drive.

 

This guide has some more specifics, this is using Microsoft’s free SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT). This covers lots of the things to look out for and that should be done upfront like mentioned in the Access and remediate your content section as well as the overall planning.  

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointmigration/fileshare-to-odsp-migration-guide

 

There are other options that are covered here for example Migration Manager:

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointmigration/migrate-to-sharepoint-online

 

I hope some of that helps!

Hi @kevjackson ,

 

I wrote a post a while back about migrating file shares to SharePoint Online. If you create site collections per business team you can add on Microsoft Teams at a later date. This article just covers migrating to SharePoint Team Sites:-

 

https://www.thinkshare.uk/migrating-files-shares-shared-drives-to-sharepoint-online/ 

I'm borrowing your thread because I hope I'm helping you at the same time too.

We (a small company) are migrating to SharePoint Online too. I've been spending many hours to trying to figure this out. SharePoint Online is almost completely new to our users and I want to keep this as simple as possible but at the same time leave room for growth, changes and future adoption of extra features such as Teams. But at the beginning, SharePoint would be a file and document library that is mostly synced to the local file explorer because that's familiar to users.

1.
I considered creating one Team Site (and the Team) for each unit and save all files in Teams-based SharePoint sites. Then, the team could start using Teams or they could not - their choice. Is this a good idea?

But, even that could be too complicated. So, an even simpler (or not) migration:

2.
Store all company files on one site, probably the root site; Put each unit's documents in a separate document library. Assign unique permission for each library (using security groups or Office 365 groups). I would also create the Office 365 group and Team for each unit, to have the email list, calendar, planner etc...and if they wanted to test Teams. What do you think about this?

@rupie100

 

1.
I considered creating one Team Site (and the Team) for each unit and save all files in Teams-based SharePoint sites. Then, the team could start using Teams or they could not - their choice. Is this a good idea? But, even that could be too complicated. So, an even simpler (or not) migration: 

 

Spot on - I have deployed SharePoint Team sites to a number of clients recently without Teams for the simple reason of not overloading them with change. If more technically minded/savy business teams want to use Teams then just "Teamify" the SharePoint site collection. 

 

2.
Store all company files on one site, probably the root site; Put each unit's documents in a separate document library. Assign unique permission for each library (using security groups or Office 365 groups). I would also create the Office 365 group and Team for each unit, to have the email list, calendar, planner etc...and if they wanted to test Teams. What do you think about this?

 

I wouldn't recommend this, for example having the possibility that users could accidentally see HR or finance data would give me sleepless nights if the permissions weren't setup correctly. Also would be a proper pain when you came to do point 1 eventually.

@Andrew Hodges 

 

Thanks for the quick reply, appreciate it.

 

...

 

Spot on - I have deployed SharePoint Team sites to a number of clients recently without Teams for the simple reason of not overloading them with change. If more technically minded/savy business teams want to use Teams then just "Teamify" the SharePoint site collection.

 

The more I research about the subject, the more convinced I'm becoming this is the way to go. Although my boss will probably object because he'd like to see all the libraries in one place (central navigation). This can of course be achieved but I don't think there's a way to easily list and link all sites you have access to?

@rupie100 borrow away my friend. It sounds like your situation is very similar to mine, so the more info we can share and the more advice we can get, the more progress we can make. :)

Right, so having been pulled away onto other projects i'm now back onto this.........
So, i've got quite a few teams going on, and i can see in the SP admin center that sites have been created from these team, but i've been advised its best to do it the other way round, SP then Teams.
So, i want to perform a test on the IT share on our Z: drive. Only i have access so its no biggie if i break it.
I'll create a Team site (not a communication site), and start to copy over the data i want.
Do i create a subsite for 3rd party IT providers? Is that a good idea?
How did it go? I have a small office 3 employees currently but at times up to 5 or 6. We have sales, customer folders, support, hr, marketing shares on or file server. I’m wanting to do away with the on premises file server and go this route. What can you share from your experience?