Note: Legacy file shares are still a thing!
They serve a purpose. I’m sure of that, but I’m team cloud at this point and I’m with Office 365. I picked a team… Coincidentally enough, we (my job) decided to migrate to Office 365. All personal content goes to OneDrive for Business and group content goes to SharePoint Online. And so we begin…
Determine Your Goal!
Why are you migrating? It is very important that everyone is on the same page and understands why the migration is happening.
- Are you migrating to save money?
- Are you migrating to reduce your on-premise infrastructure?
- Are you migrating to embrace the changing landscape?
- Etc.
It can be a mixture of reasons but just make sure everyone understands these reasons…
Establish Your Plan!
Determining your goal is complete! Now, gather your party and establish your plan! We already know that we’re migrating, but how are we migrating? Incremental is ideal. Don’t migrate everyone at once and expect zero issues. We’re doing an incremental migration. It’s been decided… Now, who does what?!
- Who are issues escalated to?
- Who are your trainers?
- FYI, you need trainers!
- Who are your technicians?
- Who are your mages?
- Who is providing support?
- Who are your healers?
- Are machines being replaced?
- What is your timeline?
- What is your migration tool?
- Who is part of the pilot?
- FYI, you need a pilot!
Note: Discuss what content to migrate. Best practice, don’t migrate stale and legacy content. Clean house!
Schedule Your Tasks!
Alright, you’ve gathered your party and the migration has a developing plan. Great! This will be large project and thus should have a project manager. Ensure that the plan is broken into tasks and party members have their tasks assigned. We’re human after all and can be forgetful. Having an assigned task is a helpful reminder…
- Potential Task Management Solution(s)
- PPM Pro
- Planner
- Trello
- Asana
Test Your Solution!
Remember your pilot? Yes, that pilot. Walk through how this would be implemented and confirm that everyone completes their respective tasks. At this point, everyone involved should be adopting the cloud during this testing period. If you aren’t embracing the cloud, then you can’t expect your end-users to embrace it…
Note: Don’t test the solution just once. Don’t do that…
Train Your End-Users!
Phase #1: Introduce to the solution.
Remember your trainers? Now is their time to shine. Speak with your end-users and introduce them to Office 365. This will be a stark contrast to their traditional file shares.
Phase #2: Re-introduce them to the solution.
If you felt that training went well, then it probably didn’t. Keep the training information in front of them. Create training documents, overview videos, etc. Or leverage what Microsoft is already creating.
FYI, check out Microsoft’s learning pathways for training content directly from Microsoft!
Implement Your Solution!
Game time! Everything should be in order at this point. You’ve planned the process, created tasks for everything, and everyone is trained. Schedule your migration and disable their legacy file share access once the migration is complete. Don’t delete the content yet, just disable access. Once its been confirmed that everything successfully migrated, then you can remove the legacy content to reduce confusion.
Note: If end-users believe that they can still use their legacy file shares, then they will.
Retrain Your End-Users!
Refer to the previous step of training. Also, take this time to listen to their pain-points and headaches. Listen! Once you’ve listened, make the adjustments to your training.
Repeat the Process!
If you have a large organization, then continue this incremental migration for the next office or business unit. Take your lessons learned and apply them to the next migration.
Conclusion: Migrating to the cloud from legacy file shares is a huge undertaking. This isn’t a process to complete in a few weeks. Patience is required. An open mind is required. More patience is required!
Not everyone is going to grasp the concept initially. There will be plenty of mistakes in the beginning. Learn from these mistakes, humble yourself, and start again…
“Nothing is worse than being loud and wrong.”
– William J. Barber II
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