New Free Pre-Migration Tool for SharePoint

The link between successful end-user adoption of SharePoint and the migration process is as invisible as office politics--and as potentially damaging to SharePoint's success.

It's common sense: If you say SharePoint migration will take X amount of time, but the reality is that there are delays, then users will start to associate "setbacks" as "failures" and your brand new SharePoint implementation will be off on the wrong foot, not matter how bright and shiny it is.

Migration Time, Migration Details

But it's not just about predicting migration time accurately, as you well know. It's getting the details right.

Like that little thing about checked-out documents. If users find that documents they checked out before migration (but neglected to check in) now have none of the changes they made and have to be redone post-migration, they're going to be a little ticked off at someone. And Something.

So yes, go ahead and run a report, pre-migration, on how many checked-out documents exist in SharePoint. And a report on size of databases. And one on how many sites you have and when they were last updated. And whatever other metrics you might not even yet have thought of.

A New Migration Tool

Or you could get a tool to do that.

SharePoint vendor Metalogix today announced one that's free. It's called Migration Expert.

We spoke to Steve Marsh, product marketing director at Metalogix, about the new free tool. Migration Expert looks at what you have in SharePoint, analyzes it, and returns reports on what it finds so you can better plan your migration.

It's not a thing you have to configure and somehow know where to point. As Marsh says, "You don't need to know what you're looking for."

The tool scans the SharePoint platform, including web applications, content databases, site collections, and sites against Microsoft-recommended thresholds. After the scan is complete, the tool delivers findings against 60 metrics, with links to a database that tells more or links to Microsoft TechNet.

If you have certain problems solvable by Metalogix products, it will, of course, point out those options, but, as Marsh says, "You don't have to use them. It works standalone and you can use the output as you see fit."

Marsh envisions IT departments sharing results with management, or consultants using it to better predict time periods with clients.  "It helps to de-risk and de-mystify," he says. "There are many best practices out there, but the gap was with tools to help people understand what they currently have and where the problems might occur."

Migration Expert is for SharePoint 2007 or 2010 migrations to SharePoint 2013 and O365. The supported source systems are, specifically, SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2010, SharePoint Foundation 2010, and Office 365-D (SharePoint 2010). You'll find it at the Metalogix Migration Expert page.