How to Migrate SharePoint Permissions Easily?

Read time 6 minutes

Before starting the migration, you should understand the basic concept of the SharePoint permissions.

• Permissions – Permissions give a specific right to the user related to an action. When a user has permission to view a file, then only he/she only can view the file and but not create or edit the file. The SharePoint administrator assigns the permissions at the site or site content levels.
• Fine-grained permissions – When the administrator assigns the permission at a granular level to a securable object that comes in fine-grained permissions. For example, permission assigned to a specific file in a large library, list, or site. The fine-grained permission gives the user in-depth control over the SharePoint data for better customization.
• Permission level – Permission Levels are the set of permissions that is assigned to users to function several tasks. A good example of permission level is Read Permission that includes multiple rights like open a file, read a file, view pages of the file, view versions of a file, etc. All these rights are required to access the file.
• SharePoint group – A SharePoint Group makes it efficient to assign permission to a whole group rather than assigning permission to users individually. Each SharePoint Group has at least a single default permission like owners, visitors, members, etc.
• User – A user is a single SharePoint account of a person. It is better to assign the permission to the user through groups as it becomes difficult to monitor each user.
• Securable object – A securable object is the file, document, folder, list, library, site, etc. that is affected by the permissions. The administrator can assign item-level, folder-level, and site-level permissions for a variety of controls.

It is beneficial to get complete information about these permissions and then plan your migration method.

Read Also: Learn How to Customize Permissions in SharePoint?

1. Default Permissions Levels – Default Permissions levels are various permissions which authorize a user to perform multiple actions on the objects. Here is a brief list of default permissions levels –
   

   Permission Level	Permission Included	Description
   View Only	View Items, View Versions, View Pages, Browse User Information	User can view application pages and related items.
   Limited Access	View Application pages, Browse User information, User Remote Interface	User can access the shared resource
   Read	View Items, Open Items, View Versions, View pages	User can view pages, list items, and download documents
   Contribute	Add Items, Edit Items, Delete Items, Edit Personal User Information, Add Personal Web parts, Remove Personal Web parts, Update personal web parts	User can edit user information, delete version in lists and libraries.
   Edit	Manage Lists, Contribute Permissions	User can manage lists.
   Design	Add and Customize pages, Apply Style, Edit permissions	User can Add, View, Update, Delete, Approve, and Customize items or pages
   Full Control	All Permissions	User has full control

   Note: A user can customize the permission settings for the initial five levels. To change the permission levels for Limited Access and Full Control, you can make individual permissions unavailable for a complete web application.

2. User permissions

   User permissions are further categorized into three categories – list permissions, site permissions, and personal permissions.

   1. List permissions

   Some of the prominent list permissions are:

   Permission	Permissions Included	Description
   Manage Lists	Edit, Design, Manage Hierarchy	User can create and delete lists, add or remove columns or views of a list
   Override List Behaviors	Design, Full Control	User can check a document for another user and can read/edit their terms
   Add Items	Edit, Design, Full Control	User can add items lists, and add documents to libraries
   Delete Versions	Contribute Edit, Design, Full Control	User can delete previous versions of list items or documents
   Create Alerts	Read, Edit, Design, Full Control	User can create alerts
   View Application Pages	Full Control	User can view application pages and enumerate lists

   2. Site Permissions

   Site Permissions are applied to site items. Some important permissions of them are the following:

   Permission	Permissions Included	Description
   Create Subsites	Full Control	User can create subsites, meeting workspace site, and document workspace site.
   Manage Web Site	Full Control	User can perform complete administrative tasks for the site
   Add and Customize Pages	Design, Full Control	User can add, modify, or delete HTML pages or the site
   Manage Alerts	Full Control	User can manage alerts for all users of the website
   Open	All	User can open a website, list, or folder to access site items
   View Pages	Read, Contribute, Edit, Design, Full Control	User can view pages in a website

   3. Personal Permissions

   Personal permissions are attached to single objects and items in the SharePoint.

   Permission	Permissions Included	Description
   Manage Personal Views	Contribute, Edit, Full Control	User can create, change, and delete personal views of lists
   Add/Remove Personal Web Parts	Contribute, Edit, Full Control	User can add/remove personal web parts on a web part page
   Update Personal Web Parts	Contribute, Edit, Full Control	User can update Web Parts

How to migrate SharePoint Permissions

After gaining complete information of various SharePoint permissions, it become easy to migrate permissions. But due to lack of a proper manual method to migrate the permissions, you need to take assistance of a professional tool. It reduces the complexities to manage permission migration and directly migrate the Permissions along with respective data.

1. Using Kernel Migrator for Sharepoint, you can migrate complete sites, lists, and libraries from SharePoint 2010 to 2013, SharePoint 2010 to 2016, and SharePoint 2013 to 2016. After selecting the migration, you can check the Migrate Permissions option.


Note: If you have checked the Migrate Permissions, then you can also check the second option of Remap Users/Groups. It will help you to map SharePoint accounts.

2. Click Add New Mapping button and add Source User Name and Destination User Name in the respective boxes. Then click OK.
3. Finally, you can see that the source and the destination are selected to migrate the permissions directly.

Conclusion

If you do not migrate the permissions along with SharePoint data, then you will need to assign new permissions after migration. It will take time and energy of SharePoint administrators. If you want to avoid this situation, take the services of Kernel SharePoint Migrator. This SharePoint migration tool can be used to upgrade or downgrade the SharePoint platform and also to migrate data from Windows file system to Sharepoint, from public folder to SharePoint, and from file system to Google Drive/OneDrive for business.