Webinar on the Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool:

Hi All,

Please join us for a webinar on August 11th ,2018 at 6:00 pm IST on ”Accelerate your journey to the cloud using the Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool ″

migration tool webinar

Agenda:

How the SharePoint Migration Tool works?
How to use the SharePoint Migration Tool?
Advanced Settings
How to format your CSV file for data content migration
Create a user mapping file for data content migration
Detailed demo on the SharePoint Migration tool
Comparison with other third party migration tools
Bulk migration & Incremental migration using the SharePoint Migration tool
Permission mapping .

Link to register for this session :_ https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/events/accelerate-your-journey-to-office-365-with-the-sharepoint-migration-tool-from-microsoft

Recording of our webinar on “Deep Dive into the new Features of SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business -Part 2”

Part 2

Webinar Recording :_ https://youtu.be/UjJuoZ_7gvQ

Link to the PPT Slides :_ https://www.slideshare.net/VigneshGanesanMCPMCI/part-2-deep-dive-into-the-new-features-of-sharepoint-online-and-onedrive-for-business

Please keep checking my blog site for more webinars and useful articles .

Good luck with the new features in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business !!!

Part 1: Everything you want to know about SharePoint 2016

SharePoint 2016 –The new kid in town. Well I hope you won’t mind when I say that SharePoint 2016 is the new kid in town considering the fact that it has been more than a year since Microsoft has released SharePoint Server 2016 and it has also announced the release of SharePoint Server 2019 a month back at Ignite Conference. However, there’s reason for me to still call SharePoint 2016 as the new kid in town because it still remains to be a cutting-edge platform for many SharePoint professionals out there and I’ve seen many organizations actively working on adapting SharePoint Server 2016 as the modern collaboration platform for their IT workspace.

So, in this article I’m going to help you with some good amount of information that should help you in planning the SharePoint Server 2016 Implementation in your organization. Alright, let’s get started ….

So, these are the topics I’ll be discussing in detail in this article …

Evolution of SharePoint
Software & Hardware requirements for Implementing SharePoint Server 2016.
Pre-requisites for SharePoint server 2016.
Supported browsers for SharePoint 2016.
Boundaries and Limits in SharePoint 2016.
Focus areas of SharePoint Server 2016
What’s new and what’s been deprecated in SharePoint Server 2016?
Migration approach to SharePoint 2016
Deployment guidelines & best practices for implementing SharePoint 2016
Feature Packs
MinRole in SharePoint 2016
Converged codebase in SharePoint 2016
Zero downtime patching in SharePoint 2016
Hybrid Features in SharePoint 2016
SQL Server Best Practices for SharePoint 2016

Evolution of SharePoint:

The above-mentioned image should give you a detailed overview about the evolution of SharePoint. I personally remember starting my career with SharePoint 2010 6 years back and at that point of time I’ve seen many experienced SharePoint folks really getting excited about the rich and cool UI of SharePoint 2010 and its rich capabilities. It has indeed come a long way since then and has grown very rapidly compared to its competitors and still remains to be the most preferred solution for Enterprise Content Management. As SharePoint grew, the range of problems businesses could solve with SharePoint grew wider, and changes in technology and business models brought customers new problems as well as new opportunities. Microsoft kept investing in SharePoint, creating a well-rounded collaboration platform that meets the needs of businesses and – most importantly – has the ability to grow and adapt when new challenges are presented. So, with that being said, let’s dive bit deeper and see what the latest version of SharePoint on-premises (i.e. SharePoint 2016) has for us and how it can help to enhance our business.

2. Software & Hardware requirements for Implementing SharePoint Server 2016:

Every time Microsoft introduces the next version of any product the software and hardware requirements for implementing that product keeps changing and that remains true for SharePoint 2016 as well. So, what should I have in terms of software and hardware for implementing SharePoint Server 2016? The details are as follows ….

Software Requirements for SharePoint 2016:

3. Pre-requisites for SharePoint 2016:

SharePoint 2016, the prerequisites are almost essentially the same as they were for SharePoint 2013, with one or two differences (e.g. .Net Framework 4.5.2). The following is a list of all the SharePoint 2016 Prerequisites components you need to download if you are doing an offline installation.

Note: If your machine is connected to the internet, the prerequisite installer module of the SharePoint 2016 media will automatically take care of downloading and installation of prerequisites, so you don’t need to manually download them all.

4. Supported browsers for SharePoint 2016:

5. Boundaries and Limits in SharePoint 2016:

6. Hardware Requirements for SharePoint 2016:

7. Hardware Requirements for Min Role Architecture:

Note: I’ll be explaining in detail about the Min Role Architecture later in this article

8. Focus areas of SharePoint Server 2016:

Being a cloud-born on-premises platform, SharePoint 2016 focuses on the above-mentioned areas …

Improved User Experiences:
Cloud-Inspired Infrastructure
Compliance and Reporting

a) Improved User Experiences:

Making decisions faster and keeping in contact are the most critical responsibilities for increasing effectiveness in any organization. Users’ ability to access information while on the go is now a workplace necessity. SharePoint Server 2016 will provide improved mobile access to content, people and applications along with touch-based experiences across devices and screen sizes. It will make file storage and document collaboration more people-centric. And it will also enable improved user experiences and capabilities derived from innovations in Office 365, available either as part of your on-premises deployment or through a hybrid implementation of SharePoint Server 2016 and Office 365. As a result of this, users will be able to quickly discover contextually relevant information and data that is stored across both on-premises and cloud environments powered by Office Graph and Delve.

b) Cloud-Inspired Infrastructure:

SharePoint 2016 is the first on-premises server release representative of our experience running SharePoint at scale in Office 365, bringing Microsoft’s own internal investments to the customer’s datacenter that improve performance, reliability and scale as well as enabling true hybrid scenarios that can enrich the customer’s existing on-premises investments.

In addition, with an improved, simplified user experience and integration with products such as the next release of Windows Server, the next generation of SQL Server, and Exchange Server 2016, SharePoint Server 2016 will simplify end-user training and support for IT.

c) Compliance and Reporting:

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is non-negotiable, and overexposure to information can have legal and compliance implications. SharePoint Server 2016 will provide a broad array of features and capabilities designed to make certain that sensitive information remains protected with investments in DLP, new scenarios to enable data encryption, and compliance tools that span on-premises servers and Office 365 while providing a balance between enabling user self-service and ensuring content usage adheres to corporate and security policies .This ensure that the privilege you have doesn’t become intrusive to security and compliance .

9.What’s new in SharePoint Server 2016?

Microsoft never fails to excite its customers by releasing many new features in the new release of every product it develops and SharePoint 2016 is no bar for that. The below mentioned image gives a complete overview of all the new features that has been released in SharePoint 2016.

Note: When I say new features, they might be newly introduced with this release of SharePoint or might be the enhanced version of a feature/service application in the previous release.

As you can see in the image above, SharePoint 2016 comes with almost close to 28 new features.

10.What has been deprecated in SharePoint 2016?

Of course, Microsoft removes few features too which was available in the previous versions of SharePoint and the reason for this is because Microsoft keeps listening to its customers through many user voice channels and based on the feedback given by its customers it either deprecates certain features or tries to enhance a specific feature and releases it once again as a new feature in the next new release or through service packs /CU’s etc.

So, listed below are the features that has been deprecated in SharePoint 2016,

11.Migration Approach to SharePoint 2016:

The below mentioned image depicts the Migration approach to SharePoint 2016.

So, the good news is if you’re running SharePoint 2013 you can directly migrate to SharePoint 2016 and the bad news is you can’t directly migrate to SharePoint 2016 if you’re running SharePoint 2010 version in your environment. However, please note that using third party tools like Share Gate and Metalogix you can migrate from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2016 and even from any legacy version to SharePoint 2016.

Note: To upgrade from SharePoint Server 2013 to 2016, minimal build SharePoint Server 2013 SP1 + March 2013 PU, build number (15.0.4481.1005)

Steps to plan the migration:

Version to Version upgrade
All Site Collections must be in 15 modes
Database attach upgrade (content only)
Create new SharePoint 2016 farm and attach SharePoint 2013 databases to SharePoint 2016
SharePoint Server 2016 does not support SharePoint 2010 mode (i.e., compatibility level 14) site collections.
SharePoint Server 2016 supports an upgrade from SharePoint Server 2013 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) with March 2013 PU, version 15.0.4481.1005 or higher

The below mentioned image should depict the overall upgrade process:

12. Feature Packs in SharePoint 2016:

With SharePoint 2016 the big new is Microsoft won’t be releasing Service Packs anymore, Feature packs would be taking over Service packs from SharePoint 2016 onwards. However, the release cycle for Feature packs differs from Service packs and let’s talk in detail about that.

The below mentioned image should give you a complete overview of the patching cycle for SharePoint 2016.

So, this is what the image says, Microsoft shipped SharePoint 2016 from March 2016 onwards and as per their normal patching cycle every month they would be releasing a Public update (i.e. Cumulative update) and what happens in this process is, in a specific month’s CU Microsoft would roll out all the new features/fixes etc. and that would be called as a Feature Pack. So, unlike the previous version of SharePoint where Microsoft releases all the new features/services in the form of Service Packs such as SP1 & SP2, for SharePoint 2016 it would be Feature Packs. However, the catch here is that, Microsoft won’t be releasing a specific package once in a year as Service packs instead all the new updates/features would be rolled out in a specific month’s CU and that will be called as a Feature Pack

As of now, Microsoft has released two Feature packs (i.e. Feature Pack 1 & Feature Pack 2). So, before we jump in and talk a look at what’s available in these Feature Packs, let’s try to understand what a Feature Pack is all about.

So, what’s a Feature Pack in SharePoint 2016?

Unlike previous versions of SharePoint, release-to-manufacture (RTM) did not define the end of innovation, but the beginning. As Microsoft continued to develop SharePoint Server 2016, they’ve paid close attention to customer feedback, trends in content management, team collaboration, user experiences across devices, and how the cloud can be blended into existing on-premises scenarios in new and compelling ways. Feature Packs allow us to accelerate delivery of cloud-first features to our Software Assurance customers of SharePoint Server 2016 outside of the traditional 2- to 3-year release cadence.

So, to make this simpler to understand, Feature Pack is an innovative step taken by Microsoft to add new features to SharePoint Product line which were not really announced as part of the initial Product release. Earlier a new feature made its way to SharePoint only as part of Product Launch which happened in three years interval. SharePoint Team will now be taking feedbacks and new features will be deployed as feature packs to SharePoint Server at regular intervals. This will keep SharePoint Server updated with new Cloud features introduced in SharePoint Online

Alright, so this covers Part 1 of “Everything you want to know about SharePoint 2016 “. Will see you all soon in part 2 of this article. Stay tuned!!!

Happy SharePointing!!!…Thanks for reading this post and good luck with your SharePoint 2016 implementation

Get to know the new Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool:

For many years SharePoint Migration has been a very challenging task for all the SharePoint professionals as it really requires a lot planning, assessment and careful implementation to ensure that the data remains secure and it doesn’t gets missed during the migration.

While the migration between SharePoint on-premises environment is really straight forward where you need to follow the content database detach/attach or content database copy/restore method, that was not the case while migrating the data from on-premises to Office 365 (i.e. SharePoint Online). You had to depend on many third-party tools such as AvePoint, Sharegate and Metalogix etc. to do this and these tools were indeed very costly to afford. Microsoft recently introduced the Migration API that takes advantage of Azure Blob storage which was quite convincing to use but required a lot of manual effort and even using that you couldn’t perform a migration at the site collection level. So, with all these challenges/uncertainties revolving around SharePoint on-premises to SharePoint online migration, Microsoft has announced the release of its own native Migration tool on Ignite last week. This tool is in beta version for now and is available for the public to download and explore from this link below.

Download link: _ https://hrcppestorageprod.blob.core.windows.net/migrationtool/default.htm

The best part about this tool is, it’s free and you don’t need to be a global admin or a SharePoint admin in Office 365 to use this. All you need is a write access to the destination SharePoint Online site collection and you can use this tool to migrate your data.

Alright, now let’s dive bit deeper and see how to make use of this tool and what are the features we get with this tool that can help to streamline the migration process.

How to use the Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool?

1.To begin with, please use the link below to download and install the Microsoft SharePoint migration tool as shown in the image below.

Download link: _ https://hrcppestorageprod.blob.core.windows.net/migrationtool/default.htm

2.Once done click on “Install “on the next screen as shown in the image below.

3. This should start to download and install the tool as shown in the image below.

4. After downloading and installing the tool, you would get the below screen. Please go ahead and click on next.

5. You would be prompted for your Office 365 credentials, please go ahead and sign-in with your Office 365 username and password.

6. Once done entering your credentials, please click on sign-in as shown in the image below.

7. After you have successfully signed-in to the tool, you would be seeing three options asking where is your source data as shown in the image below.

8. In this example, I wanted to migrate the data from a “File Share” to a “SharePoint Online site” and hence I’m choosing File Share as the source as shown in the image below and it asks me to choose the folder.

9. Once done choosing the file share path, please go ahead and click on next as shown in the image below.

10. So, once you’re done choosing the source path you would be prompted to choose the destination SharePoint site as shown in the image below. Please specify the site URL and also the document library to where you need to move your content.

Note: Please make sure that you have site collection admin access to the target site because only then it would retrieve the document libraries in the drop-down

11. Once done adding both the source and destination, please go ahead and click on add and the tool will add this to the list of tasks as shown in the image below.

12. So as shown in the image below, you can see the list of tasks added for migration and if required you can add few more tasks as well.

Note: The tasks that you add here can be of different types (meaning, you can add a task for migrating contents from a file share to a SharePoint Online site and the second one can be to migrate data from a SharePoint on-premises site to a SharePoint Online site and the third one can be a bulk migration task using a CSV file)

You can also use the pause button if required to pause the migration process as shown in the image below.

14. Once you click on the “Migrate” button you can notice that the migration process has started as shown in the image below.

15. Finally, once the migration is completed you can check the completion status as shown in the image below. In addition to that you can also click on the “Open report” button to get the migration reports.

16. Once you click on the “Open report” button the windows explorer will open the below mentioned folder structure from where you can access the migration reports.

17. This is how the contents in the report would look like.

Finally, you can check the document library in the destination SharePoint Online site to confirm whether the files have been migrated successfully .In my case please see the image below which confirms that the files have been migrated successfully.

19. So in the above example I showed you how to perform a migration using this tool from a file share to a SharePoint online site. Similarly, you can do the same for migrating the files from a SharePoint on-premises site to a SharePoint online site. However, before doing so please check and ensure that you have site collection access on both the source and destination. Finally, you can plan bulk migration tasks using the CSV file option. I’ll discuss in detail about that in a different article very soon .

What happens behind the scenes while using the Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool?

Well, just in case if you’re interested to know what happens behind the screen while using the tool the steps below should give you an overview about that.

On a high level this is what happens,

You enter your Office 365 credentials to authenticate yourself.
Then you get prompted to enter the source (i.e. File Share or SharePoint on-premises site URL or the CSV file for bulk migration) and the destination SharePoint Online site where you want to migrate the files.
Once you’re done specifying the details and click on the migrate button , the tools takes care of scanning , packaging , uploading and importing the files and all these tasks are performed in parallel across all the files submitted for migration .

Let’s dig bit further and see what happens at each stage …

On the Authentication stage:

After opening the tool, the first thing we must do is authenticate to the destination SPO site (i.e. the tenant where you will be migrating your files) by providing your username and password .By doing so the tool associates the migration jobs with your account. This allows you to resume your migration from another computer if needed by logging in with the same credentials. This account should be a site collection administrator of the destination where you want to migrate the files.

On the Scanning stage:

Once you click on the “Migrate” button, a scan is performed on every file. Please note that a scan is always performed; even if you elect to not migrate your files (see Advanced Settings). The scan verifies that there is access to the data source and write access to the SharePoint Online destination. It also scans the file for known potential issues and risks.

On the packaging stage:

On the packaging stage, a content package is created that contains a manifest consisting of 8 XMLs.

On the uploading stage:

On the uploading stage, the content package is uploaded to Azure with the manifest. Before a migration job can be accepted from a SPO provided Azure container, the data is encrypted at rest using the AES CBC 256 standard. The files are encrypted along with the manifest files.

On the importing stage:

On the importing stage, the key is provided to SPO SAS. Only Azure and SPO are interacting to fetch and migrate the content into the destination. This process is a timer job based, but does not prevent other jobs from being queued up. During the import, a report is created in the working folder and live updates are made. After the migration job is completed, the log is stored in the Azure container and a final report is created. A log is stored in each Manifest Container.

Recommendations for using the Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool:

For best performance:

CPU	64-bit Quad core processor or better
RAM	16 GB
Local Storage	SSD : 150 GB free space
Network card	1 Gps
Operating System	Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows 10 client .NET Framework 4.6.2

For slow performance:

CPU	64-bit 1.4 GHz 2-core processor or better
RAM	8 GB
Local Storage	Hard disk: 150 GB free space
Network card	High speed internet connection
Operating System	Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 updated or better .NET Framework 4.6.2

Impact on the file permissions when it’s migrated:

The user permission would be retained to the cloud provided that the user accounts are synced to Azure AD using AAD Connect tool and the users have SharePoint Online licenses assigned to them.

The below mentioned table should give you an overview about how the user permissions are mapped when a user is synced to Azure AD and when he/she is not synced:

User sync status

File Share

SharePoint on-prem files

User mapped between on-premises and SPO (using AAD Connect tool or a user mapping file provided)

There are only two types of permissions that will be migrated; Read and Write.

If a file has Write permission for user1, then the file will be set to Contribute for user1 in SPO. If a file has Read permission for user1, then the file will be set to Read for user1 in SPO.

Note: At this time, the special permissions, such as Deny, will not be saved.

All the unique permissions on a file will be migrated to SPO. Inherited permissions will not be migrated.

No user mapping (not-synced, no user mapping file)

Files will be assigned the default permission of the location to which it has been migrated in SPO.

Behavior of the tool when you choose SharePoint on-premises and File Share:

SharePoint on-premises: If you select the SharePoint on-premises option, you will be asked to enter the name of the SharePoint Server site where your files are located and prompted for your credentials for that site. You will indicate what document library you wish to migrate.

Note: As of now the tool only supports SharePoint 2013

File Share: If you select the File share option, you will be asked to enter the location of the file share, the URL of the SharePoint Online site and document library where they will be moved.

Advanced settings in the Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool:

Use the advanced settings option in the tool you can perform the below mentioned tasks as well.

In order to make use of the “Advanced settings” option on the SharePoint Migration Tool, please make use of the gear icon on the window where you see the “Migrate” button after specifying the source and destination as shown in the image below.

Setting	Description
Only perform scanning	If you wish to scan the files as a pre-assessment to migration, turn Only perform scanning on.
Enable incremental migration	By setting enable incremental migration to On, it lets you rerun the migration jobs at a later date, migrating only the changes or additions since the previous run. Important: If you wish to be able to submit this job again for incremental migration, this setting must be set to On before the initial migration job is submitted.
Migrate file version history	If set to No, only the most recent version of the file will be migrated. If set to Yes, you can choose whether to keep all versions, or limit it to a specific number.
Do not migrate hidden files	If set to On, hidden system files will not be migrated.
Do not migrate files created before	If you choose to limit what files are migration based on creation date, set your values in this section. This may be to limit the number of files migrated or to adhere to overall company governance policy regarding file retention.
Do not migrate files modified before	If you choose to limit what files are migration based on modified date, set your values in this section. This may be to limit the number of files migrated or to adhere to overall company governance policy regarding file retention.
Do not migrate files with these extensions	To prevent certain file types from migrating, list each extension, separating it with a vertical bar. For example, mp4\|avi\|mkv. Do not include the leading “.” before the extension name
Do not migrate files and folders with invalid characters	By default, the setting is set to Off. This is the recommended setting. The tool will attempt to move all the files without filtering on characters. If any file can’t be accepted into SPO, a failure message will be generated for that file. If set to On, the tool will skip any potential special characters. While this can improve performance when the source potentially contains a high number of files containing invalid characters, it also has drawbacks. To prevent malicious activities, source packages that generate more than 100 errors to the destination server will be blocked. As a result, all valid files in that package would also be blocked.
Active Azure Directory lookup	By default, this is set to On. If no User mapping file is provided by the user, then Active Azure Directory is used as the default for user mapping.
Preserve user permissions	By default, this is set to On. If set to Off, no permissions will be preserved.
User mapping file	By default, Azure AD lookup is used to map users when submitting migration jobs. If you wish to use your own mapping file, select the file to be used by clicking Choose file. If you choose to use a custom user mapping file and you want to preserve user permissions, turn off Active Azure Directory lookup. By doing so if a user isn’t found in the mapping file, the tool won’t look in up in AAD.
SharePoint Migration Tool work folder	By default, a temp folder will be created. If you wish to specify a specific working folder, enter the name here.
Use custom Azure storage	If you wish to use your own Azure storage, set this value to On. If you choose to turn on, additional fields will display to enter your account and key, and settings to select if you want to enable or disable encryption, and whether temporary files are deleted when migration is complete.

Conclusion:

The Microsoft SharePoint Migration tool in indeed a powerful and free to use tool. As of now the product is in beta version and Microsoft is continuously working on enhancing the tool by adding many cool features which you normally get to see on any third party migration tool such as Sharegate , Metalogix or AvePoint . You can even plan a migration of terabytes of data by using this tool so that your users can start taking advantage of the cool features in cloud. Last but not least, given the features and simplicity of this tool, this is definitely a must have tool for every SharePoint Admin out there.

You can also read this article on the Hubfly blog site too by going through the link below and very soon I’ll be making a demo video on the Microsoft SharePoint migration tool which would be avaialble on the Hubfly blogsite .

Please subscribe to the Hubfly blogsite for many cool articles on SharePoint & Office 365 .

Here’s the link : http://www.hubfly.com/blog/migration/microsoft-sharepoint-migration-tool-step-by-step-walkthrough/

Good luck with the Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool….Happy SharePointing!!!