Upgrading From Sharepoint 2013: Step-By-Step Guide And Migration Strategies
Assessing Your SharePoint 2013 Environment
Conducting a thorough assessment of your existing SharePoint 2013 environment is a critical first step before planning an upgrade. This involves carefully evaluating key components like business needs, site functionality, feature usage, custom solutions, and performance.
Evaluating Business Needs and Requirements
Review business workflows, collaboration requirements, content types and storage needs. Identify gaps where users are lacking features or functionality. Understand if certain functionality needs to be expanded and enhanced in the new environment.
Taking Inventory of Current Site Collections, Features, Customizations
Document details on all existing site collections including purposes, templates used, number of sites and subsites. Note custom content types, libraries, columns and other configurations. Review built-in and custom features and solutions in use. Identify branding elements, custom style sheets and page layouts.
Identifying Compatibility Issues and Migration Blockers
Analyze any unsupported features, custom components or complex SharePoint solutions which may require refactoring during migration. Define workarounds for features and solutions which have no direct upgrade path or alternative in newer versions. Identify open issues impacting upgrade to prevent delays or blockers down the road.
Planning Your Upgrade Approach
Selecting the optimal SharePoint migration strategy is crucial for a seamless transition. You need to define the project scope upfront with milestones, resources and success metrics.
In-Place Upgrade vs. Database Attach Upgrade
Conduct build testing to determine if an in-place upgrade retaining customizations and permissions is feasible or if a database attach method keeping content but resetting settings is preferable.
Setting Timelines and Assigning Responsibilities
Declare key dates for deploying the new environment, migrating content, validating sites and lists, retesting solutions, delivering end user training and finalizing the cutover. Constitute project teams for upgrade preparation, troubleshooting, change management and communication.
Testing and Training Considerations
Account for overlapping test and production phases allowing users to validate sites and content before full launch. Schedule end user training for new features and enhancements during upgrade validation to ease adoption.
Preparing for Upgrade
Completing technical pre-requisites and content validation before attempting migration streamlines the process and prevents delays.
Backing Up Content Databases
Backup all SharePoint content databases and service application databases using preferred method such as SQL Server backup or third party tool. Test backup files to ensure recoverability.
Verifying Permissions and Security Settings
Document all permission levels, groups and policies applied on sites, libraries, lists and content types. Check for orphaned references or custom rights no longer needed to adjust access post migration.
Enabling Features and Solutions in the Target Environment
Activate features, site templates and solutions in new SharePoint Online tenant that need to be leveraged on sites post upgrade based on inventory findings. Deploy custom solutions not in the SharePoint app catalog and add required components to the tenancy.
Performing the Upgrade
Migrate content to the new environment using preferred technique based on assessment findings and upgrade approach selected.
Step-by-Step Instructions for In-Place and Database Attach Upgrades
Follow Microsoft documentation for running respective PowerShell upgrade commands. Monitor upgrade status and logs closely to quickly troubleshoot any issues like failed upgrades on individual sites using a phased rollout.
Troubleshooting Common Issues During Upgrade
Diagnose and resolve typical problems like migration delays due to throttling thresholds, missing features or customizations post upgrade and discrepancies in permission inheritance.
Validating and Finalizing the Upgrade
Verifying the accuracy of the upgraded environment and performing user acceptance testing ensures all business requirements are met before shifting end users to the new platform.
Verifying Sites, Libraries, Lists Post Upgrade
Methodically check sites structure, document and item count in all libraries and lists, retention policies and associated metadata in lists post upgrade.
Retesting Customizations and Solutions
Thoroughly test migrated customizations, solutions and integrations with other systems for desired functionality post upgrade before opening access to end users.
User Acceptance Testing
Organize user testing with defined scenarios, test cases and expected results, facilitating early feedback to resolve any defects before site launch. Request signoffs from key stakeholders once validated to avoid further issues down the line.
Switching Over to New Environment
Update DNS mappings and execute access cutover allowing users to leverage the new SharePoint environment once all validation and testing signoffs are completed.
Key Takeaways and Next Steps
Learn ongoing best practices for managing your upgraded SharePoint tenant and consider additional strategies to migrate any legacy or archived content.
Best Practices for Managing Upgraded Environment
Have a governance model for requesting and provisioning new sites, enforcing policies and security controls for accessing and sharing organizational content uploaded to SharePoint Online post upgrade.
Additional Migration Strategies
Explore using SharePoint content migration tools from Microsoft partners if more offline file shares or file based repositories like FileNet need to be brought into SharePoint Online after the initial upgrade.
Planning for Future Upgrades
Stay up to date with the latest SharePoint Online updates and features, creating an upgrade schedule accounting for release cycles to take advantage of ongoing cloud innovation.
