SharePoint, launched in 2001, has experienced the fastest revenue growth in Microsoft’s history. It is also the platform with the most extensive installed base of any product Microsoft offers—with more than 50 percent of all organizations using it. However, SharePoint Migration has been a popular tool for businesses for a straightforward reason.
It is software focused on content and deeply ingrained into businesses. It is most useful in settings with lots of knowledge. SharePoint may be used for various tasks, such as creating intranets, extranets, portals, and essential document management. Organizations may now utilize SharePoint for extensive social networking and the App Marketplace, thanks to the latest version of SharePoint 2013.
Over the past ten years, Microsoft’s SharePoint technologies and solutions have experienced phenomenal development, and the vast majority of enterprises today use the SharePoint platform in some capacity.
SharePoint Migration: How taxonomy benefits the information architecture
For organizations migrating to SharePoint 2013, taxonomy is an exciting consideration. As a result, organizations have a great chance to redesign and rebuild their information architecture throughout the migration process. For instance, using SharePoint 2013 metadata filtering to arrange documents is far more successful than relying solely on SharePoint folders.
The folder technique has drawbacks, such as being overly simple, not scaling effectively, and not being flexible enough to allow for numerous classifications of information. Metadata filtering does not share these drawbacks.
In conclusion, businesses must consider how the new feature sets could benefit and enhance information architecture. One of the keys to liberating SharePoint content and optimizing the return on investment of a company’s SharePoint farm is making use of new features.
After moving material into SharePoint, your work is halfway done; you still need to ensure that the information architecture is utilized correctly and that the organization’s information governance policy tags the data. This situation may be enhanced by long-term information architecture governance, which will lead to improved content organization and searchability.
Understanding how taxonomy functions in a SharePoint Migration context are the first step toward using it successfully. You may begin using taxonomies throughout your site without worrying about adding extra steps for your visitors once you have a basic grasp of how SharePoint works and have established a few simple taxonomies.
Planning For A Test SharePoint Migration
Planning for a test migration often includes the construction of a specified test environment from a logistical standpoint. While you should also take the following elements into developing a test plan:
- Custom software that requires porting
- Individual list templates
- Personalized website templates, like the “Fab 40” templates
- Deprecated functionality, such as SPS portal listings and feature mapping, including Custom web parts and third-party web parts.
The test strategy should always include a User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phase as well as the test environment, allowing users to evaluate the migrated data in the new environment before it is approved as production data.
To guarantee that they accurately represent the kind of users anticipated in the system, you should ideally select the UAT users from a subset of the members across an organization. A UAT makes it possible to spot problems and thoroughly test the migration procedure beforehand.
Why is SharePoint Online Important for Organizations?
SharePoint Online is essential to organizations because it offers them a complete solution for managing their content and collaboration needs. Additionally, SharePoint Online is constantly changing and developing, allowing users the option to modernize.
Organizations have been drawn to SharePoint Online by a few key characteristics, which have enabled them to start a new road of digital transformation. SharePoint Online allows users to easily manage large amounts of data and create a highly flexible, scalable, efficient, and cost-effective environment.
In addition, it provides them with advanced functionality such as search capabilities, document management with rich media attachments, user self-service portal applications, social media support tools, and much more. As a result, Gartner (2018) states, “SharePoint Migration Online has become the most used Office 365 application across enterprises globally by far.”
Leverage SharePoint’s Modern UI To Get More Done
You created the new user interface (UI) of SharePoint from the bottom up to be mobile device friendly. The old On-Premises version had several UI usability concerns, including difficulties with navigation, bulk editing, and file sharing, which have all been solved in the online version.
The modern UI is much more intuitive and easy to use than the classic On-Premises UI. Therefore, you can maximize your potential SharePoint Online environment by taking advantage of the new features available in this version.
Integrate and Automate SharePoint With Other Microsoft Products
Microsoft Power Automate is a comprehensive software suite that allows organizations to OneDrive, Teams, and Exchange, and you can integrate other products with SharePoint. It also enables internal sharing and collaboration amongst staff members, partners, and clients.
Using Power Automate, companies can automate the development and management of their SharePoint environments. That gives you a single interface for everyday tasks like creating new sites, customizing templates, and creating lists. Additionally, the program allows you access to a library of information on the best using SharePoint to meet your specific needs.
New SharePoint Site Templates
SharePoint site templates are the backbone of all SharePoint-enabled solutions. They help businesses organize, communicate and collaborate with their employees, customers, and partners. We offer a wide range of templates that cater to different business needs:
While communication site templates are designed to assist spread relevant material (on projects, events, and the most recent news) to employees, new team site templates support internal team interactions, document sharing, and task/project management. Finally, Hub sites get data as shared themes, navigation, and news roll-ups from multiple site collections through their connections.
SharePoint Migration Online with Machine Learning
Out-of-the-box SharePoint Online’s search web parts are AI-enabled and provide more relevant search results than traditional web parts.
The new search results surface a wide variety of content across a company’s intranet and Internet sites. You can use this content to surface relevant information to the end user, or you may use it to drive an automated process that generates new content based on user behavior. For example, if your organization uses a wiki to track project status, you might want to surface the most recent updates in a search result. If you’re looking for information about a particular product or service, you can use an out-of-the-box search result to find relevant resources.
Custom Web Parts Using The SharePoint Framework (SPFx)
Building custom web parts using the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is relatively straightforward. The JavaScript frameworks Angular, React, Knockout, and you may use many other open-source technologies to create bespoke solutions and web elements utilizing the SharePoint Framework (SPFx).
Wide Range Of Connectors In Microsoft’s Power Platform
To simplify data integration, teams can use a variety of standard connections offered by the Microsoft Power Platform (MPP) or create their connectors.
In addition to standard connectors, MPP also provides developers with a robust set of tools, such as the Data Connector Toolkit, which helps them create custom connectors that work seamlessly with their applications.
Conclusion
Migrating to a new platform—even when the original platform is still in use by your organization—can be complicated. With a few important exceptions, the migration steps are similar across all platforms: you will need planning, information gathering, and preparation, as well as testing and validation activities to ensure the successful migration of your data. SharePoint Migration is only part of the story, an equally important part involves ensuring that your SharePoint 2013 environment behaves as it should once it has been successfully migrated. EPC Group recommends that organizations must look at every angle before deciding to go forward with SharePoint migration. Considering all factors of the organization’s mission, culture and strategy, policies, security requirements, and budget will be able to guide a firm towards the best approach.
