Planning Your Migration to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

November, 2006

With the public launch of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) just around the corner, many organizations are considering a move to the new platform. But questions abound surrounding the move. The more companies have invested into their SharePoint 2003 environment, the greater the number of questions that need to be considered. As with any migration to a new system, companies considering a transition will need to feel comfortable in guaranteeing the following with respect to their portal migration:

• No loss of functionality and content
• Negligible amount of down time for end users
• Easy transition for both users and administrators to the new environment

Some questions surround a key decision as to whether to migrate all at once, or in a phased approach. Should legacy sites be migrated at all? Do we have the infrastructure to support two environments? Will there be an interim period when both environments are up and running?

Other questions surround taxonomy planning. With additional tools in the toolbox - such as content types, site columns, and several new pre-built web parts - does the old taxonomy still make sense? Are there ways we can leverage the new taxonomy tools to our advantage?

IT Managers are also facing questions regarding current functionality. Will custom web parts still work? What about third-party web parts that we've installed? And what about our design customizations? What functionality is worth keeping, and what is obsolete? What will need to be re-written, and what will continue to operate as originally written?

Finally, the end-user experience needs to be considered. What amount of training will be necessary? How do we get users accustomed to the new environment?

But with the proper amount of planning, and by taking the right approach, migrating to MOSS 2007 doesn't have to be difficult, and can present some great opportunities.

Begin by conducting an inventory of your current portal environment. A thorough inventory is probably the most critical differentiator between a successful migration and a failed move. The inventory should capture many things, including:

• Current infrastructure. Is the environment running in a small, medium, or large server farm? How many web servers? How many SQL Servers
• Level of usage. How many top-level sites do we have? How many sites in each site collection? Who is the site owner or subject matter expert? Are sites still in use? Are they actively updated or only periodically? Is the information still current and relevant, or is it obsolete? How frequently is the site accessed?
• What, if any, search customizations have been made?
• Does the portal contain any design customizations? Were these customizations made for branding or usability reasons?
• Have any third-party web parts or utilities been purchased or installed? If so, where and how are these products being used? Are they still necessary, or can they be replaced by functionality now offered in MOSS 2007? If they are still needed, will they continue to work with 2007? Is an upgrade available, and does it require a separate license agreement?
• Have any custom web parts or utilities been written internally? Are these still necessary, or can they be replaced by functionality now offered in MOSS 2007? If they are still needed, will the source code still work in MOSS 2007? How substantial or minimal of an effort will be needed to upgrade the web parts?

Next, begin planning the new taxonomy, which starts with an examination of the old taxonomy. What is the old taxonomy of the portal? How many portal areas? What is the old taxonomy of the sites? Are most sites built off of a small number of site templates? If so, is the site template taxonomy worth a new look? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the old portal and site taxonomies?

From there, begin to design your new portal environment. Is it time for a re-branding effort? Does the new portal deserve a new look and feel? How can the new navigational features - breadcrumbs, dynamic menus, and enhanced quick launch bars – best be leveraged for a better end-user experience? What’s the best way to make it easier for information workers to find and use knowledge? A good practice will be to establish a set of procedures for site-by-site migration. Identify the steps that need to happen for each site that needs to be migrated so that the migration will run as smoothly as possible.

Assuming customizations and custom development activities need to take place – all of which should be identified by the portal inventory – now is the time to start building those out. Any web parts that need to be rewritten should be completed now. This will help ensure that no functionality is lost once all of the data and content are moved over.

Next, start to think about quality assurance. This is a good opportunity to conduct some practice migrations. The entire portal need not be moved over, but a diverse enough set of individual sites, to ensure that the web parts and other pieces of functionality identified in the portal inventory work properly. This also will provide an opportunity for some of the heavy SharePoint users to preview their new sites and identify any issues with the way the new sites look.

At this point, companies should begin training. The user interface in MOSS 2007 is substantially different from SharePoint 2003. Not only does it contain many new types of functionality, but there are many changes in the administrative interface as well. Working closely with site administrators and end users to provide sufficient training will not only help ensure rapid user adoption, but it will also help minimize the amount of support calls that the IT help desk has to face after the migration.

The next step is to start planning for the migration. How will content get migrated from the old sites to the new ones? Is there a small enough amount of content that it can be migrated manually, or will a migration automation tool be required? How flexible does such a migration tool need to be? Also, what content needs to be migrated? Should previous versions of documents be preserved, or just the most current ones? Does the content in the new site need to maintain the Created and Last Modified Dates (and usernames) of that in the old site? And for the migration itself, proper scheduling is imperative. What is a tolerable amount of downtime for any individual sites, or for the portal as a whole? How should the site migrations be scheduled so as to minimize the amount of disruption to the site users?

Once all of the planning and preparation is out of the way, the actual migration can take place. Assuming a thorough inventory and the proper amounts of planning and coordination, the three primary goals of the migration will be met. Migration should take place as a phased approach. For every site migrated, the step-by-step site migration procedures established earlier should be followed thoroughly like a task list. Before the migration of each site, confirm with the respective site owners that their site is ready to be moved. Also, determine who will be responsible for informing the other site users that the site has been moved.

Throughout the entire migration planning and execution process, companies should be keeping an eye open for opportunities to enhance the portal experience. The migration itself may or may not add new capabilities, but should at least provide immediate opportunities for improvement once the migration is completed. Keep a running list of next steps – add-ons to the portal once the migration effort is completed. Remembering the four promises of portals, be sure to identify places where users can leverage workflow capabilities, manage business performance, enable team collaboration, and find and use knowledge. MOSS 2007 certainly provides a lot of opportunities in this regard:

• The built-in workflow tools – such as Approval Routing, Signature Collection, etc. – will provide instant opportunities to add basic but valuable enhancements to how users collaborate.
• The addition of SharePoint Designer (formerly FrontPage), allows administrators to design and build more complex workflow capabilities around document libraries and lists.
• New content aggregation web parts provide mechanisms to collect information from across multiple sites and display them in one location, making it easier than ever for users to find and use knowledge.
• The Gantt Chart feature – a new capability added to Task Lists – provides previously unavailable project management capability right in your portal environment.
• Excel Services, the Key Performance Indicator list, the Report Center site template, and several other new tools can all work in concert to more easily and rapidly build both interactive and graphical presentations of business intelligence that allow executives and managers to manage business performance and make critical decisions.
• Deep integration with the new Office 2007 desktop applications including Outlook, Word, etc. in a way that will make SharePoint an integral tool of the Information Worker.

Migrating an existing SharePoint 2003 portal to the new Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 platform can seem like a daunting process. But with the right planning, preparation and execution, an organization can get this migration done with manageable cost and effort and be prepared to take full advantage of the robust and exciting promises that this new portal technology offers.

*Information concerning features of the new SharePoint 2007 discussed above is based on our best understanding of what will be included in the product release. It is possible that some of the features discussed herein might not be part of the released product