Top O365 Migration Mistakes

Avoiding the 5 Biggest Mistakes in an Office
365 Migration
Dan Barker
Global Product Manager - Dell Software
@barking

2 Confidential SharePoint
Who the heck is Dan Barker!?!
dan.barker@software.dell.com
• Global Product Manager for Dell Software
• Worked with SharePoint since the “Tahoe” days
• Engineer, architect, financial/data analyst, GM
• Prior work at multiple fortune 500 companies
• Work from the Microsoft campus in Redmond
• Sports Nut
www.software.dell.com

Agenda
• The Current State of Office 365 (5 minutes)
• Considerations for adopting Office 365 (5 minutes)
• Current Office 365 options (5 minutes)
• The 5 Mistakes (20 minutes)
• Other migration considerations (10 minutes)
• Q&A (15 minutes)

The Current State of Office 365
• Microsoft’s “Cloud First” Strategy
– Microsoft says: cloud first
– Update cycles are more rapid than on-premises
– Simplifies licensing, reduces piracy
– Pay for what you use – right need at the right time
– Allows the vendor to control the platform
• Software As A Service
– For Exchange, Lync, SharePoint & Office
• Good balance of control and cost
– Exchange, Lync and SharePoint
– Office client licenses to boot!
– Per user, per month charges
• No servers to maintain yourself

Considering Office 365
• Storage Area Networks
– iSCSI or fibre-optic
– Storage hardware
• Software licenses
– Operating systems
– Server software
– Client-Access licenses
– Support agreements
• Support staff
– Servers
– Clients
– Network infrastructure
– Storage infrastructure
– Security
• Data centers
– Racks
– Power
– Network connectivity
– Physical security
• Network infrastructure
– Firewalls
– Load balancers
– Switches
– Internet Connectivity
• Backup infrastructure
– Servers
– Storage
• Server hardware
– Support agreements for hardware

Offerings
• Home Premium
• University
• Small Business & Small Premium
– Offers access to hosted Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync services only. If you choose this plan, you must
provide Office client software to your users separately.
• Midsize Business
– Targets 1-10 business users in an organization.
– Access to Office applications on up to five devices per user.
• Enterprise
– businesses with 10-250 employees.
– Hosted Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync services
• ProPlus
– New way to license the Office client desktop suite. Pay a per user/per month fee to install the software on up to five devices per
user.
– Does not include backend services in the cloud. It can be used to augment one of the other options.
• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/business/compare-all-office-365-for-business-plans-FX104051403.aspx

Audience
Questions

Mistake #1
Not fully
understanding
the current
environment

Pre Migration Analysis is Absolutely Critical
• Most crucial step is to analyze your requirements before making any decisions.
• These requirements will drive your decisions through the entire migration project.
• Identify stakeholders – list should touch all levels of employees
– Get to know them & understand their individual daily challenges
– Happy stakeholders = successful project
• Map out milestones and get stakeholder agreement
• Plan for schedule slippage
• Connect with your star players, political powerhouses and stakeholders to determine
what is most important to them
• Take full inventory of your SharePoint system and any systems which have a bearing
on the migration

Inventory Short List (NOT exhaustive !)
• Server-side data connections
• Document versions
• Alerts
• Incoming email on document libraries
• Web parts
• Farm solutions
• Web customizations
• Content types
• Custom site and list definitions
• Workflows
• Network considerations
• Custom search scopes
• Content sources
• Custom field types
• Custom crawler impact rules/crawl schedules
• iFilters that exist on the source that need to be on the
destination
• InfoPath forms
• Authentication in current farm
• Custom navigation
• Incoming content feeds or automation
• Multiple language packs

Migration approaches
Phase Action Milestone/Notes
Identify Stakeholders
List stakeholders of project (funders, approvers,
business users with a say, executives)
Include in documentation
Map milestones Create milestones of phases Include in project plan
Requirements collection
Interview users, administrators, executives of the
system. Collect requirements from each. Take
inventory of the system and document the
current uses.
Review and acceptance of requirements set
Design Phase
Produce documentation of the intended
destination system. Make sure the features of the
system map to the requirements from the
previous milestone.
Review of the design with stakeholders
Migration planning/training phase
Construct a migration plan that includes
technical activities, timelines, implementation
steps and communication plans with users and
executives. Train your users on the new system
and conduct outreach.
Migration plan review with stakeholders and
users
Test phase
Set up some users on the destination system
with test data. Document the usage results and
collect feedback. Test the migration with data
from the source system.
Migration test review with stakeholders
Migration phase Migrate the system Migration completion review
User orientation, project completion
Continue to educate your users on the new
system and conduct final outreach.
Project completion review

Mistake #2
Going through
the process in a
silo

Going through the process in a silo
• SMB company we worked with recently
• Migrating a group within a company to O365
• Didn’t work with legal in the planning phase
• During the 11th hour the legal guys got wind of what was happening and they
shut the entire project down!
• Told them that they were not migrating to Office 365 due to the risk of their
data being stored in the cloud.
– “The Cloud” is a very nebulous thing. Usually negative (security)
• Lesson learned: Bring all the right players to the table upfront as it’s a
business decision that everyone has to sign off on.

Users
HR Finance Marketing Sales IT Legal

Mistake #3
Underestimating
the
customization
differences

Underestimating the Customization Differences
• Office 365 places signifiant restrictions on the type of custom code that can
be implemented.
• Microsoft has a SMALL number of certified solutions that can assist
– but if your on-premises SharePoint deployment contains a large number of
custom or third-party solutions, you may be in for a wild ride
• Many approved solutions are included in the Microsoft SharePoint App Store
BUT they need to be fully evaluated before being used
• Many organizations use third-party utilities to manage Exchange Server.
– If they're designed to be installed directly on an Exchange Server, you won't be
able to use them with Office 365
• Many 3rd party tools do not have a equivalent product in O365.

Mistake #3
Thinking it’s
simply a 1-2
person job

Thinking It’s Simply a 1-2 Person Job
• Migrations are more difficult than most anticipate and are understaffed
• This results in a small number of people trying to cover to much ground in
the time allotted
• Critical steps are missed as a result
– especially in the planning phase
• It should be seen as a coordinated interaction among all users and
stakeholders and not just a “task” that needs to be completed by a target
date

Mistake #4
Lack of a
thorough
communication
strategy

Lack of a Thorough Communication Strategy
• Telling users what is going to happen and when is NOT enough
• They need to be involved from the beginning, and throughout the duration
of the project – they are ultimately the ones who will judge !
• Get the users to tell you what they like/don’t like, and what they want to get
from your Office 365 environment
• Key Questions to Ask ALL users:
• How do you use SharePoint?
• How is SharePoint required for your day
• What do you like and dislike about SharePoint?
• What do you think SharePoint could do better?
• What have you always wanted to do with SharePoint, but were afraid to ask?
• If SharePoint had a meltdown tomorrow, could you still do your job?

Mistake #5
Thinking there
are only 5 key
mistakes.
There are MANY
more….!

Another
Mistake
Lack of Post
Migration
Strategy – It’s
more than a
migration

It’s More Than a Migration
• Migrations are usually seen as a point in time project
– In reality they are much more
• The migration is just the beginning of a much bigger initative
• The “post migration” strategy is just as important
• For example:
– What kid of governance is needed in the new environment?
– What current issues do we want to eliminate?
– How will customizations be handled?
– This is both a technical and process related issue.
– How does the changes in O365 effect the kind of resources I need going forward?
– It’s not about notes developers anymore
– What are the key long term goals of the system post migration?

Another
Mistake
The right tool
will make the
migration EASY

There is no Easy Button With Migration
• Tools are not the end all
• They are very important but planning is just as important in most situations
• If a tool ADDS to the complexity, you have the wrong tool
• Proper planning, discussion, and communication are needed beyond the use
of a single tool
• Sometimes the selection and use of a tool is the easiest part of the process
• Tools + Expertise + Project Design and Planning + Stakeholder and User Buy
In + Effective Communication = Greater likelihood of success

Migration Process Mayhem
• Customer is migrating as a result of a company split
• They need to identify data for each company (by site)
• Then migrate this information to a new environment external to the current
one
• In the meantime they need to keep the new farm updated with changes
happening in the source system
• Migration + Synchronization
• The tool is important but it doesn't make this project easier
• It can however make it much harder! NOT GOOD.

Another
Mistake
Only planning
for SharePoint -
Plan for ALL of
the Office 365
products

Plan for ALL of the products in Office 365 – they are a team
• This presentation focuses on SharePoint
• In Office 365 it’s much more than SharePoint though
• Other key areas such as Exchange, Lync, Yammer, and One Drive provide other
valuable areas of improvement
• Since Microsoft is managing all of these products from a single platform, you should
do the same – It’s a key difference going forward. (Platform vs. products)
– Understand how each of them could be used in your environment
– Even if you are not ready to execute on all workloads,
– understand what they are
• Migration planning should encompass migration to Office 365 platform
– Although there will be separate plans for each component, there are always
considerations (such as co-existence) to ensure the products work together
seamlessly

Another Mistake
Not taking the
opportunity to
redesign your
Information
Architecture

Not taking the opportunity to redesign your Information
Architecture
• Take the opportunity to restructure your information architecture,
– Often this is uncovered during the requirement collection phase
– This is far more difficult to achieve in an already live environment
• In some cases your information architecture may no longer meet your business needs.
– This is a great time and opportunity to address these issues
– Optimize Search as a result
– Leave old / unused / unnecessary data
• Good time to check all 3rd party solutions
– Assess the continued usefulness, value and difficulty in migration of 3rd party
solutions
• Moving a broken environment is not going to fix it !
• An opportunity to reorganize topology to meet current and future needs

Another
Mistake
Not
incorporating
rigorous
network testing

Not Incorporating Rigorous Network Testing
• Some of this goes back to not doing things in a silo
• I call this the SAAS effect
• Here is how it works:
– Jim, Brian, and Barbra make a decision to move their stuff to O365.
– They are not in IT but they don’t give a crap, they have a job to do
– They procure a site and take on a small project to migrate
– But they don’t include IT and some of the IT measures are not taken into account
– It’s the cloud man, it just works right?
• Firewalls, load balancers, Proxies, DNS, autodiscover, AD remediation, client
side issues, etc.
• All of this stuff needs to be fully tested as a part of a migration project. No
matter what. You need to know what to expect.

Migrating
Without a
Training Plan

Migrating Without a Training Program
• Do you provide formal training?
• Do you provide web training?
• Do you just provide a single A4 on the desk of the migrated user with links to
more structured information?
• Do you leverage “Champions” in each department or floors?
• Do you budget for floor walkers?
• How do you start to capture learnings during pre-pilot, pilot, and production
migration?
• How do you augment your help desk and what is the right number of
resources that will be required?

Another
Mistake – From
the Field!!
Assuming
items will be
indexed in a
timely fashion

Assuming Items Will be Indexed in a Timely Fashion
• Very important for sites that depend heavily on search
• Or search based solutions
• This can be devastating to the perceived success of the migration
• Example: We migrated and when I search I get crap. I hate the
migration…..and I HATE ALL OF YOU….
• I am leaving the company….(ok that’s obnoxious…)
• You get the point
• Be aware of “index latency” due to potential indexing difference between the
on-prem solution and O365

Additional Resources
dan.barker@software.dell.com
White paper - Best Practices for Migrating to SharePoint Office 365
Webcast - Five ways to ensure a successful transition to Office 365
White Paper - SharePoint, Office 365 or Hybrid: Which is Right for You?

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