Office 365 is among the most prominent cloud\nsolutions adopted by businesses around the globe for accessing productivity\napplications like Exchange, Word, Excel and the like. An integral part of this\nsuite is SharePoint Online that organizations use to share and manage content,\nknowledge, and applications online. This service gives businesses the\nunprecedented capability to seamlessly collaborate within the organization and\nbeyond prompting users to upgrade their legacy systems to the new SharePoint\nOnline platform that is a part of the Office 365 suite. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article is intended to be a comprehensive guide\non migrating from on-premises SharePoint to SharePoint Online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The primary difference between on-premises\nSharePoint and SharePoint Online is the way the application is delivered and\nconsumed. While on-premises SharePoint is a product that is installed on the\nclient infrastructure, SharePoint Online is an application that is delivered as\na service by Microsoft. Consequently, the onus of applying security patches and\nupgrades is transferred to Microsoft in the case of SharePoint Online. This\nsimultaneously reduces the resources required for maintaining SharePoint while\nensuring persistent availability. Besides, there is no requirement for SharePoint Client Access License in the case of SharePoint Online allowing users to procure it either as a standalone plan or as a part of Office 365.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to a typical\non-premises SharePoint version to SharePoint Online. Each scenario would\ninvolve careful consideration of the Governance Plan and an Information\nArchitecture to plan and create a roadmap unique to the business. This involves\ncreating and enforcing rules that would be used for the maintenance and\noperations on SharePoint during and after the transition apart from identifying\nappropriate milestones along the migration process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The features of SharePoint 2010 are different from\nthat of SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint 2016. SharePoint 2019 has even more\nupdates. The migration path from any of these on-premises versions to\nSharePoint Online would vary significantly from each other. Also, there are\nvariations in the SharePoint Online plans. It is, therefore, necessary to\nevaluate the differences thoroughly and identify the features necessary for the\nbusiness before choosing the appropriate plan. Then it boils down to adopting\nthe right migration strategy to review the inventory and decide what must be\ndone with each site and application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both Microsoft and third-party providers have developed various tools for SharePoint migration. The techniques for migration would depend on various factors like the on-premises version, the size, number, and features of sites and applications apart from other factors. The SharePoint Assessment Tool can simplify some of these challenges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are some of the techniques and the associated\ntools that can be used for SharePoint Online migration: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the simplest but arguably the least\neffective method for SharePoint migration. Most organizations have several\nsites, applications, files, and collections to that warrant the use of\nSharePoint in the first place. While it is possible to copy each item to the\nnew SharePoint Online subscription, it is impractical in most cases. If you\nhave only a handful of items to migrated and choose to proceed with this\nmethod, anyway, be mindful of the fact that the information such as created by\nand created date will be lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Microsoft has provided API solutions like SharePoint\nImport Migration API for moving data into SharePoint Online. The API approach\nrelies on Azure for storing data. In layman terms, the migration package is\nsent to Azure Storage that can be imported into the Office 365 environment.\nUsing API requires significant technical knowledge to create the migration job.\nBut it is one of the fastest and most efficient methods available for the\nprocess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n