Migration of On-Premises File Shares to SharePoint Online for National Building Products Company

Overview
This project was a classic example of a common need: moving departmental file shares from local severs to the cloud. As with many such projects, our client recognized the need to tread carefully as users are often reluctant to shift away from local file shares—despite their significant drawbacks in searchability and security.

Our client wished to establish a model for migration, create a SharePoint user interface, put tools in place to accomplish the migration itself, and create training materials for users. Then, our client’s IT department would begin the actual migration of files, beginning with its own department and then moving, one by one, to others.

Solution
The Concurrency team assisting our client with this project included a SharePoint Architect, a Business Analyst, a SharePoint Developer and a User Experience engineer.

• Concurrency’s Business Analyst and SharePoint Architect conducted requirements gathering workshops to establish all relevant business needs.
• The team then created an interface to support the migration and introduced a third-party migration tool, Sharegate, to help in the process.
• We prepared the SharePoint Online user interface to provide users with a familiar and easy to use environment.

Our client’s IT department then moved forward with migrating its own files. The result was a secure system without the overhead of the on-premises file shares. From a user perspective, one of the most significant benefits was a drastic improvement in management of documents and searchability—eliminating time wasted as people recreated documents they couldn’t locate. The SharePoint Online context also enabled administrators to apply retention policies, version control and other records management tools, finally establishing the managed platform our client recognized it needed for security, cost savings and productivity.