Convert our traditional Discussion Board list items into modern pages

[john john]

we have sharepoint on-premises 2013 site which we want to migrate inside sharepoint online. and i am using one of the best tools which is Share-gate to do the migration. but as part of the migration (more accurate as part of adopting the modern UI), we want to convert all the on-premises discussion board items to be modern pages.

so now the share-gate tool will not support such a conversion (which is understandable), but i am trying to find another approach to do the conversion, so not sure if these steps should work on reality:-

1. i will migrate the on-premises site as is.

2. i will write a remote power-shell script which will do these 3 main steps:-

 - will loop through the migrated discussion board items.

 - create a new modern page. where the modern page title & body will be equal to the discussion board item's title + body

 - will also add any reply to the discussion board item to be a reply on the modern page.

so can anyone advice if my above points should work on reality ? and is there an easier way to achieve what i am looking for?

[#2]

We replaced most of our discussion boards with Yammer (included embedded on pages), or with MS Teams. This works well for discussion in a group. If you are using discussions as a kind of announcement, then modern 'news' pages are the better way to go.

So the first thing to ask is if you want to have discussion (Yammer/Teams) or make announcements (news pages). I wouldn't use modern pages for discussions.

[#3]

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@Andrew Warland wrote:

We replaced most of our discussion boards with Yammer (included embedded on pages), or with MS Teams. This works well for discussion in a group. If you are using discussions as a kind of announcement, then modern 'news' pages are the better way to go.

So the first thing to ask is if you want to have discussion (Yammer/Teams) or make announcements (news pages). I wouldn't use modern pages for discussions.@

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@Andrew Warland  Yes most of the discussion board items we have are mainly news announcements, and some have comments. Also our discussion board list is titled as "news and announcements". so i think modern pages are best fit for us and not yammer.. but you did not actually answer my original question about converting discussion board items into modern pages?.

[#4]

Sorry for not actually answering the question. I don't know if it's possible to script the conversion of discussion boards to news pages as I don't do that. I'm sure someone knows how to do that!

[#5]

Basically your approach is not to do a real conversion, is to migrate the content of your discussions to modern pages...what I wonder is if this makes sense, but anyway, check CSOM SPO API / PnP to accomplish this...you need to test if the API allows you to read the discussions in the way you need...the API for sure allow you to create modern pages and write on them.

[#6]

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@Juan Carlos González Martín wrote:
Basically your approach is not to do a real conversion, is to migrate the content of your discussions to modern pages...what I wonder is if this makes sense, but anyway, check CSOM SPO API / PnP to accomplish this...you need to test if the API allows you to read the discussions in the way you need...the API for sure allow you to create modern pages and write on them.

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@Juan Carlos González Martín   but why the API will not allow me to read the discussion? i have never try this , but i would assume i can do so.

second point, what about the comments on modern pages ? can add them using powershell, and preserve the original created by?

[#7]

You should be fine to read the discussion, you could output this to text file then read it back in or just read -> create.

Please see this thread for adding a comment 

https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/248841/comment-on-o365-modern-site-page-with-pnp