Migrating File Shares to Microsoft SharePoint Made Easy

Professionals engaged in custom SharePoint development in India & abroad need to take care of a number of aspects. One of the most crucial of these is the migration of file shares to SharePoint that is not that easy and requires slight precaution. While setting up a new SharePoint site, migration of documents from file shares to SharePoint is essentially required at the first place. You just can’t blindly drag & drop all files & folders from one place to another. All files can’t be moved at the same time. Let’s know the right process to migrate files to SharePoint. Though it may seem easier, the real process may prove to be slightly more complicated.

Manage Proper Document Inventory - Just like before moving in a new house, one does leave the unnecessary stuff, same logic applies in case of moving files & documents to SharePoint. Prepare a document inventory after having a look at all your folders & sub-folders. Identify the documents that you want to migrate and leave remaining. Also, make sure that you don’t migrate the files that are not meant to be stored on SharePoint. These files include Software Code, various program/application files, executable and extra large files.

Assign Categories to All Files : Having decided on what to move to SharePoint, you need to categorize all selected documents carefully. All documents may be mixed together on one shared drive/folder; however, the case would be different when you move the same to SharePoint. Go for organizing files related to projects, policies and procedures, customer documents etc., based on their function. This is required because these files belong to different sites in SharePoint. Two major reasons why different categories of documents must be uploaded to different SharePoint sites are function & security.

Assign Metadata Properties : For each category, you also need to assign Metadata properties. Its necessary as SharePoint allows you easily manage documents via Metadata. So, you need to use Metadata rather than folders. Its better to have a better understanding of the documents you need to migrate before you actually go into the migration process.