SharePoint Online Migration Issues & Solutions Guide

What is SharePoint Online?

SharePoint Online in Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based service designed to help organizations share and manage content, knowledge, and applications. It empowers teamwork, enables quick information retrieval, and promotes seamless collaboration across the organization. Cloud hosting of SharePoint Server has many advantages, such as anytime access, advanced security, more storage, advanced features, collaboration, etc., compared to on-premises servers.

Top SharePoint Online migration challenges

Some of the technical and strategic challenges that you may face during SharePoint Online migration are hereby mentioned:

Storage issues: There should be ample space to store the migrated content. The content needs to be in an organized and structured manner, as unorganized content is likely to consume the storage space allotted for the same. Maintaining enough storage space is a challenge for SharePoint users and administrators preparing the migration.

Active Directory health risks: Active Directory must be in a healthy state as the process of directory syncing, and identity federation would slow down due to the health issues associated with Active Directory. Users can manage it using the free Microsoft utility known as IdFix for locating and fixing health issues related to Active Directory.

Throttling and performance issues: SharePoint Online migration sometimes fails to start due to API throttling that temporarily blocks the process when a migration sends too many requests or API calls at once. It usually shows error codes like HTTP 429 (“Too Many Requests”) or HTTP 503 (“Server Too Busy”).

Metadata loss: Often there is a risk of complete loss or misplacement of metadata during manual SharePoint migrations. The metadata loss in SharePoint results in distorted document searchability and cluttered content. In the absence of tags, documents become orphaned and consume a lot of user’s time in hunting for their files. It also leads to failed audits and penalties.

Bulk content migration: Another issue that you can notice in SharePoint Online data migration is the transfer of massive data volumes. Bulk SharePoint migration often puts a strain on the cloud limits, has permission inconsistencies, and results in broken internal links.

Bandwidth challenges: SharePoint administrators and users encounter significant challenges related to limited bandwidth when conducting bulk data migration. In such cases, the migration process experiences slow performance, delayed content loading, and reduced quality. This issue particularly affects integrated applications like Skype for Business. To address this challenge in future SharePoint Online migrations, a thorough pre-analysis of internet connection is essential.

Security concerns: SharePoint Online migration involves transitioning data to the cloud, making it accessible online. This poses potential security risks arising from weak compliance policies, poor identity governance, and incorrect access control. However, the Cloud and Microsoft 365 offer advanced security features and settings that can be leveraged to safeguard migrated data against these risks.

Disorganized content: A common scenario is the presence of unorganized information within SharePoint. This inefficiency is typically attributed to the practices of the organization and its users. Properly analyzing and structuring sites, libraries, lists, content types, and content layouts in an organized manner simplifies the migration process. Failure to do so can turn even a straightforward migration into a challenging and time-intensive event.

Customization complexity: While third-party migration tools are valuable for SharePoint Online migration, extensive customizations in the existing solution present challenges. Manual intervention is required at multiple stages, especially in cases where the permission model does not inherit properly without a thorough discovery phase. Conducting a meticulous study helps organize elements outside the scope of third-party migration tools, necessitating manual migration efforts.

SharePoint Online Migration Issues when using SPMT

SharePoint migration processes fail when the solution doesn’t match the capabilities required to handle the migration complexities. Free methods like Microsoft’s SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) often tempt users because they are free and economical, but in complicated situations, it can be completely messy and cause failures.

SPMT tool is completely fine for migrating a small amount of data, roughly around 250 GB. However, it lags behind when it has to handle large files, bad network conditions, complex metadata, weak migration hardware, and throttling. These restrictions eliminate it from being a valid contender for migrations and often show SPMT issues and errors that require quick troubleshooting.

Troubleshooting steps: How to handle SharePoint migration risks?

Let us discuss some precautions that you can follow to avoid SharePoint Online migration challenges:

Be proactive and create a comprehensive backup strategy to save data before starting the migration.

Perform test migrations on small batches of data to diagnose potential issues in the devised process.

Clean up your source environment before migration to eliminate duplicate or irrelevant content.

Make sure that there is transparency in communication, provide end-user training, and support to help with easy user adoption.

Perform risk assessment by carefully analyzing the source and destination environments.

Perform pre-migration checks for user groups, site architecture, features, metadata, unsupported features, access rights, etc.

Use tools to map metadata correctly for a smooth transition and validate all the links once migrated.

Rely on a professional SharePoint data migration tool like Kernel Migrator for SharePoint to execute a hassle-free migration.

Final words

Learning about SharePoint Online migration issues prepares you to avoid errors that can result in migration failures. This blog underlines the ways to help you avoid the risks and you run a successful migration, accompanied by Kernel Migration for SharePoint. This tool can easily integrate into your migration strategy, resulting in reduced migration complexity and manual effort. It simplifies the migration of sites, subsites, lists, libraries, workflows, web parts, etc., with their permission structure and version history.

FAQs

Q. What are the key steps of SharePoint migration?

A. The simple guide that explains the process of SharePoint migration is as follows:

1. Analyze the current SharePoint environment of your organization.
2. Plan the migration of the data and site structure.
3. Use efficient SharePoint migration tools and techniques.
4. Executing migration while maintaining business continuity.
5. Check the destination for data integrity and data loss.
6. Train your team to adapt to the new platform.

Q. What are the considerations to remember during SharePoint migration?

A. Being cautious during migration will help you avoid SharePoint Online migration issues. However, if you don’t know the pointers to consider while migrating SharePoint versions, follow the SharePoint migration checklist below:

A. Evaluate your infrastructure, including hardware, software, and migration tools.
B. Organize your data to eliminate unnecessary storage.
C. Backup SharePoint site data before you actually migrate.
D. Be ready to face and handle downtime once the migration is completed.

Q. How can you avoid SharePoint Online migration issues?

A. It is important to stay updated with all the ifs and buts to execute a successful migration of SharePoint versions. The most important thing to understand is that the migration is not just an IT team’s job. Keep your team, stakeholders, and customers on the same page and consider the features of the platform before migrating. Find out what benefits your team and business would reap through this migration and analyze the cost, risk, and value involved in the process.