Several companies are planning to migrate from SharePoint On-Premises to Office 365 because of the inherent advantages of Office 365 over the On-premises version. There is better collaboration, security, and lower costs in managing SharePoint. The O365 adoption rates are steadily increasing over time because of these reasons.

Below are the considerations to be made before making SharePoint to Office 365 migration easier and successful.

• Content Discovery and inventory management
• Planning of the migration process
• Comparison of features
• Governance plan that will be administered
• The actual migration processes

Content discovery and inventory management

You have to estimate the time and resources available at your disposal in SharePoint content discovery. This process involves identifying the content that must be moved first. If you are wondering, why not simply move the files from SharePoint to Office 365 and finish with the process, unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. You must identify the SharePoint inventory available and identify the content that has to be moved first. Otherwise, there will be a lot of useless content that will be moved too escalating costs and time. There could be other issues also like governance, security, and compliance that must be factored. Therefore, it is imperative to perform an inventory audit to decide what content must be moved to archive and what has to be deleted.

Planning the migration process

Once you have completed the content audit, you will understand what contents have to be migrated better. This will help you prepare better for the SharePoint mi​​gration planning phase. Hopefully, you will be able to answer questions like.

What does the business need in terms of content, users, accessibility, etc.?

What are the extra advantages of moving from on-premises to SharePoint Online and how can I put them to use?

Do I need to use third-party tools?

What third-party tools may be required?

What are the costs that will be incurred during the migration process?

Comparison of features

All features available in the on-premises version must be available in the Office 365 plan you are subscribing to. Not all Office 365 plans have the same features as the existing on-premises versions. Choosing the right plan can save time and money.

Governance plan that will be administered

You will have to configure SharePoint in such a way that it is compatible with the existing governance plans of the organization. This could involve steps like

Identifying the right people who can access different features.

Performing a site analysis to identify the frequency of use.

Understanding of the permissions.

Security provisions of the SharePoint Online plan.

Site Templates utilization.

Understanding privacy settings like rating, tagging, status, etc.

Backup and restoration facilities.

The actual migration processes

Once you have identified the SharePoint inventory and performed the planning and assessment of various scenarios mentioned above, you can proceed with one of the migration types below.

Manually copying files to Office 365

Use the Explorer View in SharePoint to move files over manually to Office 365. This method can result in the loss of metadata.

API based method for Office 365 migration

This is the fastest method for migrating to Office 365 using the capabilities of Azure. This method needs a migration package.

3rd party tool-based migration

There are tools available to simplify the migration to SharePoint. This method is best done with the help of consultants.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you would have got an idea of the factors to consider for SharePoint to Office 365 migration. As a Microsoft Partner, Apps4Rent provides 24/7 assistance for Office 365 migration and technical support via phone, chat, and email.