SharePoint Migration Test Plan To Choose the Right Tool

Is your organization planning for a SharePoint Online migration? When exploring Sharepoint Online migration tools available in the market, it is important to test the tools you shortlist before finalizing one to go with. Run a Proof Of Concept (POC) of the migration tool to explore its technical capabilities and check if it can meet your business goals.

Read on to know what factors to consider in a SharePoint Online migration test plan.

User-Friendly Interface

Before deep diving into exploring the capabilities of the SharePoint Online migration tool, it is important to check its overall user interface and ensure that it is user-friendly. A user-friendly interface makes it simple for your team to work their way around the tool.

Prepare Demo User Accounts to Test

One of the most important prerequisites to get started with either a regular test migration or a POC ( proof of concept) is to prepare a pilot batch that can include a couple of demo user accounts to test migrate. Your team can either create a couple of new demo user accounts separately or use existing user accounts that are no longer important, e.g., user accounts of ex-employees.

Keep the Test Workload Lightweight

Another important factor to consider is to ensure that you keep files and folders to test migrate at the minimum. With this approach, your team can make the entire test migration/ POC lightweight enough to be completed in a short period of time. Also, validating the minimal test migrations is significantly simpler than validating the results of complex test migrations.

Real-time Migration Reports

When preparing a SharePoint Online migration test plan, check whether the tool can generate detailed migration reports. It is only through proper reports that it becomes possible for your team to validate the entire test migration/ POC and make informed decisions on finalizing the migration tool.

Scalability

A critical factor to consider in a Sharepoint Online migration test plan is to check whether the migration tool can be scaled up depending on the migration requirements. The better the scalability of the migration tool, the easier it becomes for your team to plan the scope of work for the migration project.

Compatibility

The migration tool must be compatible not just with SharePoint Online and even OneDrive but also with the source cloud that your business is currently dependent on. Complete compatibility with the clouds translates into proper access to the APIs of both the source and destination clouds. And with proper access to the source and destination cloud APIs, your organization can preserve the integrity of the files and folders to be migrated.

Other Factors to Check in a SharePoint Online Migration Tool

Listed below are some of the other crucial factors that your team must consider in the SharePoint Online migration tool to be tested.

Incremental Migration

A straightforward migration transfers data from the source to the destination environment. However, some of the latest data changes might occur during or after the initial migration.

In order to reflect the most recent data changes, test whether your shortlisted SharePoint migration tool is capable of performing an incremental migration.

Complex Migration Scenarios

During the SharePoint Online migration test plan, your team must ensure that the migration tool has the capability to accommodate complex migration scenarios. For example, the tool must overcome the limitations of migrating to SharePoint Online, including:

• Unsupported special characters in SharePoint file/folder names
• Unrecognized file/folder names
• Long file paths

Test the tool during a POC migration to find how it resolves these issues for a seamless data transfer.

Retry Mechanism

During cloud-to-cloud data migration, there is a high risk of migration roadblocks like API throttling errors. It occurs when exceeding time-based API usage limits. When testing a SharePoint Online migration tool, your internal IT team must check how it overcomes this issue.

Verify if it has a retry mechanism after a specific wait time to resume the migration without disruptions. This capability ensures the migration is resilient and can overcome the complexities that you encounter.

Optimum Security

You cannot have data security as an afterthought during critical business migrations. None of the cutting-edge technologies score when the migration tool compromises security.

Go for a migration tool that applies high-end security protocols and complies with all the industry standard data security regulations. Test sample data in a POC migration to confirm its claims regarding the safety measures.

CloudFuze X-Change, a leading data migration tool, is a perfect match that meets all the above-discussed factors to perform seamless SharePoint Online migrations.

Learn how it can work to your organization’s advantage through a POC migration and get set for a secure, fast, and reliable data transfer to SharePoint Online.

Contact our migration experts to schedule a test migration.