Microsoft 365 Migration Checklist & Planning for MSPs

Migrations can range from straightforward to highly complex endeavors. While smaller organizations with simple structures may find the process manageable, larger enterprises often face significant challenges. For Managed Service Providers (MSPs) handling large clients, migrations are inherently more complex, necessitating a primary focus on accuracy and efficiency. 

Given the diverse needs of each business, meticulous planning and smart execution are crucial for every migration. Without the right tools, MSPs can quickly become overwhelmed by their customers' varying demands. As a service provider, it is imperative to develop an effective strategy to manage these projects as efficiently as possible. 

To assist in this task, we have compiled a comprehensive checklist for a successful migration. This guide will help you navigate each stage, from pre-migration planning to post-migration follow-up, ensuring a smooth and effective transition for your clients. 

Environment Discovery 

The success of a migration hinges significantly on meticulous pre-migration planning and its precise execution. With organizations prioritizing rapid workload migration, security, and cost-effectiveness, the importance of thorough pre-migration discovery cannot be overstated. 

Understanding the source data and the workloads to be migrated is crucial before embarking on your customers' migration planning. The complexity and nature of the source data will dictate the appropriate migration deployment method, ensuring a tailored and efficient migration process. 

If your migration involves consolidating, restructuring, or transferring data between tenants, such as moving data from one Microsoft Team to another, using SaaS migration tools can be highly beneficial. These tools facilitate seamless migrations without the need for additional infrastructure. They support migrations from various Microsoft 365 workspaces, including Exchange Online, on-premises Exchange Server, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Microsoft 365 Groups, and Microsoft Teams Chat, all without the need for extensive server maintenance. Remember to include Teams chats in your client's migration plan to ensure no valuable business-critical information is lost. 

It is best practice to include both server and SaaS-managed migration options in your toolkit. Different clients have varying needs, and offering both deployment methods ensures you can meet them all. Investing in a comprehensive migration tool, whether from a specific vendor or another, will cover all your bases. 

Next, you need to analyze the type of content your client has, identify ownership within the organization, understand its structure, and assess its importance. This analysis is crucial for several reasons: it allows you to significantly reduce migration time by eliminating redundant, obsolete, and trivial data (ROT), aids in creating a governance plan for data structuring, secures sensitive content, and helps prioritize segments that require more attention. 

By developing a comprehensive plan, you can save both yourself and the organizations you support a considerable amount of time in the long run. Start by identifying any customizations that may need to be rebuilt, ensuring they align with the new environment. Evaluate existing functionality to determine if it can be replaced with new features, streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency. Engage stakeholders who may need to be more involved in the project to ensure a smooth transition and better alignment with business goals. Assess data that can be transferred in its current structure and form, avoiding unnecessary restructuring. Additionally, review email boxes to determine which ones are essential for migration and which can be archived, reducing the volume of data to be migrated and simplifying the process. This thorough approach will lead to a more efficient and effective migration, benefiting both you and your clients. 

This approach will position your clients for long-term success and ensure a higher rate of adoption as their users start leveraging the new technologies. 

Some migration solutions offer free discovery tools that simplify the pre-migration process by automatically identifying essential, relevant, and sensitive content, as well as customizations and potential risks. These tools can eliminate much of the manual effort involved, allowing Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to more accurately scope and price projects for their clients based on the findings. 

This presents an excellent opportunity to discuss governance and security assessments with your clients. Educate them on the time and cost savings associated with a controlled, secure environment, while also establishing a new revenue stream for your business. 

Whether you conduct your discovery manually or utilize an automated tool, there are several key elements you should ensure to check. 

Source Environment Discovery Checklist

• • • Users & Groups, Email Boxes, Archive Email Boxes, Public Folders. 

• • • Personal Storage Locations, Shared Storage. 

• • • Google Drive, Box. 

• • • Channels (with conversations), Members, Content. 

• • • Channels (with conversations), Members, Tabs, Content. 

• • • Farm Overview 
    • Farm Topology 
    • Web Applications 
    • Content Databases 
    • Site Collections 
    • Sites 
    • MySites 
    • Lists and Libraries 
    • Pages, Items 
    • Web Parts 
    • Master Pages & Page Layouts 
    • Site and List Templates 
    • Custom Content Types 
    • Custom Columns 
    • Alerts 
    • Event Receivers 
    • InfoPath 
    • Managed Metadata Service 
    • Workflows 
    • Nintex Workflow 
    • Nintex Forms 
    • URL Length Warning. 

• • • SharePoint Online 
    • Teams 
    • Team Channels 
    • Teams’ Members 
    • Group Members 
    • Team or Group Sites 
    • Team or Group Mailboxes 
    • Team Connectors or App connections 
    • OneDrives 
    • Exchange Online components. 

Craft Your Migration Blueprint 

Once you have identified the types of content and structures that need to be moved, segment the gathered information accordingly. As you evaluate the details, concentrate on designing the new structure to align with your implementation plan and enhance the end-user experience. Business and technology decision-makers now recognize the value of content platforms not only for digitizing business processes but also for adhering to security, privacy, and lifecycle obligations. Ensure that your migration strategy incorporates these critical considerations. 

Identify any regulatory or privacy requirements to ensure data is secured and archived appropriately. Determine the most effective data structure for end users, allowing you to reorganize libraries and folders or eliminate obsolete sites. Recognize which workflows will interact with the data, enabling you to schedule their migration accurately and avoid business disruption. 

With all this information at your disposal, assist your client in adequately preparing their data. Automate as many processes as possible, and remember that third-party tools can help meet your client’s requirements and enhance your managed services offerings. 

Optimize Your Client’s Destination Environment 

The next crucial step is to optimize your client’s destination environment, which is vital for ensuring successful user adoption. Ensuring that end users have a positive experience with data structures, workflows, and other features will significantly impact their productivity. 

Most organizations now prefer to establish new structures in their destination environments to accommodate the agile workplace. If your client aims to support these modern work models, it is essential to create systems that sustain the way information workers utilize data in their daily tasks. 

Gain a thorough understanding of your client's business culture, including their preferred collaboration methods, knowledge-sharing practices, and the security measures necessary to protect their collaborative efforts. 

Administering a new Microsoft 365 environment is inherently complex. However, by proactively establishing data structures and policies, configuring user settings and license requirements, defining backup plans, and planning for long-term governance, you can significantly ease the transition. 

Remember, there are essential tools available that can enhance Microsoft 365 management over the long term. Introducing these tools to your clients can ensure effective administration and sustained productivity. 

Engage with Your Client 

Resistance is inevitable with any change. Effective change management, particularly through proper communication, is key to mitigating this resistance and ensuring smoother adoption. 

Engaging with your clients’ stakeholders about the migration parameters can be challenging but is crucial. Having advocates to help justify the changes in data and structure is beneficial, especially when these changes impact business users' productivity. 

The success of adoption largely depends on how you introduce new processes to your clients' users. If necessary, provide proactive assistance in addressing end-user business cases and offer contextual training to help users adapt to the new environment. Orchestry's Microsoft Adoption and Change Management solutions can be instrumental in this process, offering comprehensive onboarding and training resources to streamline adoption. 

Remember, the closer your end environment mirrors the source in terms of data structures, settings, and customizations, the less resistance you will encounter from end users. Orchestry can help ensure these capabilities are met, reducing the need for extensive user adoption efforts and making the transition smoother and more efficient. 

Communicate clearly with your clients about which content will be migrated, explaining the reasons for these changes and the value they bring. Ensure that you inform your clients' users before starting the migration, providing details on the planned downtime, the estimated timeline, and the expected end date for the migration. This transparency will help manage expectations and reduce any potential disruptions. 

Execute Your Migration Plan 

• Pilot Migration 

During the pilot migration, validate that all content has been successfully moved, including mailboxes, chats, public folders, sites, lists, folders, items, versions, metadata, users, and permissions. Identify any unsupported elements. 

• Full Migration 

For the full migration, compare item counts to ensure all content has been transferred. Using pre-scan capabilities on both source and destination environments can aid in this comparison. Run tests to ensure customizations still function post-migration. Do not hesitate to wipe the destination or test multiple mapping options to ensure data is properly transformed. Conduct User Acceptance Testing (UAT) with end users to verify the migration's success. 

• Incremental Migration 

Finally, set the source environment to read-only before performing the final incremental migration. If you have chosen the high-speed method, be aware that any changes made to the destination since the first migration may be overwritten.  

Post Migration Checks 

After the migration, it is crucial to ensure that your client's destination environment is functioning correctly and that data integrity is preserved. Be prepared to implement the end-user training sessions planned during the pre-migration phase. Make accessing the new environment straightforward for users, and provide clear redirection if they attempt to access the old environment. 

Assist with post-migration operational management by offering Microsoft 365 administration tools that were introduced during the destination environment preparation. These tools will help maintain efficiency and support seamless user adoption in the new environment. 

Orchestry simplifies and secures Microsoft 365 management through a suite of tools for governance, workspace provisioning, intelligent reporting, and guest user management. It offers pre-built templates, automated archiving, and self-service provisioning to enhance user experience and productivity. Orchestry helps organizations optimize their M365 environments, reducing costs and risks while increasing adoption and efficiency. The platform also provides insights and recommendations to ensure a healthy and productive M365 tenant. 

Effective Migration Hinges on Thorough Planning 

Knowledge is the foundation of effective planning. Understanding what your customers need to migrate and what can enhance their business productivity is crucial for a successful migration. Remember, thorough discovery is essential. 

By meticulously testing and planning your migration project, and clearly defining your implementation strategy, you can ensure a smooth migration process. This approach minimizes downtime and guarantees data integrity during the transfer. 

Moreover, maintain open communication with the businesses you assist to ensure they are prepared to embrace the new features in their destination platform. Enhance their team’s value and position your MSP organization as a thought leader by enabling greater business productivity and efficient management. Offer third-party tools like Orchestry that help secure, govern, and manage users and data in their new environment.