SharePoint users planning to migrate sites from one tenant to another often use the Cross-tenant migration feature by Microsoft. Another method that most SharePoint admins use is “SharePoint Online PowerShell.” SharePoint migration is more complex than other Office 365 components and the success rate is very low. However, to resolve the concerns and technical complexity involved, using a trusted migration solution is a safer choice.
What is SharePoint Tenant to Tenant Migration?
As the name suggests, migrating SharePoint sites (Team sites, hub sites), subsites, lists, libraries, workflows, PowerApps, web parts, etc., from one Microsoft 365 tenant to another tenant (Microsoft 365) is referred to as SharePoint migration.
Businesses and SharePoint admins often migrate the data to merge two businesses, rebrand, or restructure your business into different units.
Prerequisites for Tenant to Tenant SharePoint Migration
Before moving ahead, arrange the migration prerequisites and the SharePoint source and destination environments. Here are some requirements that you should consider before executing the tenant to tenant migration SharePoint.
- An active subscription to Microsoft 365 is linked with SharePoint Online.
- Admin access to the individual responsible for the migration.
- Check the destination configurations, licenses & settings.
- Learn about the permissions and structure of the source tenant.
- Analyze the potential migration influence on your team and stakeholders.
- Find out the size and amount of data you need to migrate.
- Set SharePoint sites in source to Read/write mode.
Why Manual Methods aren’t the right choice?
Learn why manual solutions for tenant to tenant migration SharePoint aren’t practically suitable.
- Manual methods require technical proficiency and are time-consuming.
- No surety of migrating metadata (permissions, version history, etc.).
- Chances of broken permission inheritance.
- No way to sync incremental changes in the source tenant.
How Admins Migrate SharePoint Tenant to Tenant?
Download the Kernel Migration for SharePoint tool for SharePoint tenant to tenant migration followed by minimum downtime. The interactive user interface of the software makes it easy to move content while restoring the permissions and data hierarchy. Features like pre-migration analysis help in identifying potential errors before the actual tenant to tenant SharePoint migration. Migrating site collections, sites, contents, lists, libraries, versions, permissions, workflows, web parts, etc., is easier with this tool. The SharePoint Migration Tool follows a simplified process to add a SharePoint site as the Source and Destination to copy and move files between SharePoint.
Steps for SharePoint Tenant to Tenant Migration
- Launch the tool and right-click the SharePoint (On-Premises/ Online) and select Add New SharePoint Site.
- Provide a Project Name, select Site Connection, and Authentication type. Input the Site Address, Client ID, Tenant ID, and Client Secret Value. Click OK.
- The SharePoint Site tenant will be added as the Source. Expand the project name to see the contents in hierarchy.
- Now go to the destination pane and follow the same procedure to add the destination tenant.
- SharePoint tenant is added in the destination pane also.
- In the source pane, expand the project name and right-click on Tenant Administration to select Migrate to.
- Verify the source selection and use Edit Source Selection button to make any changes. Click Next.
- Select Site copy options to decide whether you want to migrate a new active site, existing site, or as an existing subsite.
- Select destination site from the tenant using Browse.
- Select from the Site Copy options to define everything you want in SharePoint Online tenant to tenant migration.
- Next, select List/ Library Copy options to include all that you want to migrate.
- Choose all the Item Copy options that you want to apply and data for selective tenant to tenant SharePoint migration.
- Mark the checkbox Migrate Permissions to migrate data with its access levels and permission hierarchy.
- Select from the options for scheduling the migration at a suitable period, or migrate SharePoint tenant to tenant immediately. Click Next.
- Check the migration summary that defines every detail of the content you’re migrating from the source to the destination. Click Next.
- The process of migrating SharePoint tenant to tenant has started. You can track the progress from the screen showing migration of objects.
- At last, you can get a whole migration report with the status of each migrated item. Click Finish.
Conclusion
With this article guide, we established that an automated SharePoint migration tool is the basis of a SharePoint tenant to tenant migration, as native solutions can cause unexpected business downtime. The Kernel Migrator for SharePoint has advanced features to process a straightforward tenant to tenant SharePoint migration. It provides complete control of the migration process, and provides a detailed migration summary with all the parameters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are the answers to some of the common queries users asked regarding the SharePoint tenant to tenant migration.
How to achieve a successful migration?
For an uninterrupted SharePoint tenant to tenant migration, you need to do the following pre-migration planning:
- Clean up the source environment.
- Categorize and label the folders based on their usefulness.
- Get rid of the duplicate files and folders.
Is it very important to backup SharePoint site before migration?
SharePoint backup is not an indispensable but a mindful practice of storing your SharePoint site data before migration. This will continue to provide you with access even if things go against your business.
How do I mitigate the changes of process failure or errors?
To avoid errors or SharePoint migration failures, you should always start with a test migration on a small batch of sites rather than migrating the entire tenant. During this process, test for the following:
- Check permission transfer
- Validate if document versions are carefully handled
- Test the user mapping between both the tenants
- Try migration with large files
Once migrated, validate the end results to see if the process was completely successful or were there any errors spotted.
