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This guide helps you prepare to migrate from file shares to OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint in Microsoft 365.
Most migrations fall into regular phases as follows. Proven success factors for migration include planning, assessing and remediating, preparing your target environment, migrating, and onboarding your users.
Migrating your file shares with Migration Manager lets you have a centralized way of connecting servers, creating tasks, and automatically load balancing your migration tasks. You are guided through the steps of migrating your file shares, from the setup of agents, the creation of tasks, and the migration to Microsoft 365.
Get started:
Migrate file shares to Microsoft 365 with Migration Manager
What content goes where
Understanding permissions vs sharing
What to expect before and after
Migration and network performance considerations
Change management and communications
Assess key areas
Remediate issues
Pre-provision Microsoft 365 and users
Review migration offerings
Microsoft FastTrack services
Migration service providers
Send regular emails to users
Provide training
Let users know how they are impacted
File shares
File shares include centralized file hosting on a network server or a network drive or shared files or disks on a local computer. Often referred to as a "Z drive" on networked computers, it's a shared drive somewhere on the network.
Migration planning
Before you start your migration, it's important that you plan your outcome by performing an assessment of your current source environment. What you discover will influence your overall strategy and timing, including:
The design of the target environment and the mapping between source and target systems.
The amount of content you migrate. Determine if content is redundant, out of date, or still relevant.
Build your user onboarding into your upfront planning. Communicate early and often with your users about the migration and how it will impact them. Don't wait until the very end to start preparing them for the change.
What's migrated
When preparing for your file share migration, it's important to know what's being migrated when you use the SharePoint Migration Tool and what's not.
Migrated
Not migrated
What content goes where
In your planning, include how this transition to Microsoft 365 will make for a more collaborative experience for your users.
Review how you use the content stored in your file shares today. Does the file belong to a single user, even though they might share it with others? If so, save it in your OneDrive. Your OneDrive is private by default, but you can share files with others, which is particularly useful if you aren't working as a team yet.
If you're working on a file or folder intended for team consumption and collaboration, move it to a
shared library
where team members have access by default. OneDrive gives you access to all your shared libraries in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, or Outlook. When you need a new shared library for team files, you can create one right from OneDrive, add members, and start working together.
Permissions vs sharing
How you have shared your files dictates how they appear in the
Shared with me
view in OneDrive.
Files and folders that you have opened from a shared location:
After migration, the final permission level is determined by a mapping of the most restrictive share or NTFS permission level.
A user's
Shared with me
folder in OneDrive won't be updated for source files shared with a group the user is a part of.
After migration, all advanced NTFS permissions are removed. For explicit deny permissions, this means the content is subject to parallel permissions or permission on the folder and parent level and may become accessible.
Assess and remediate your content
Before your migration starts, it's important to perform an analysis of your current environment. Only you know your data and how and who uses it.
The SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) provides the ability to scan your files and provide assessment reports. To find any issues with your file before migration, turn on the setting
Only perform scanning
.
If you have multiple sources that you want to assess, consider using the bulk process by creating a .json or .csv file.
Here are some of the more common issues that arise when preparing for migration:
File extensions
Find all files in the Folders and Files report whose path ends in one of the extensions defined here:
Types of files that cannot be added to a list or library
If the blocked file types are scripting files, they are blocked because scripting capabilities are turned off by default in OneDrive.
If you want to allow these file types, turn on scripting capabilities as described here:
Allow or prevent custom script
.
Make sure you understand why these files are blocked by default as described here:
Security considerations of allowing custom script
.
File and folder name characters
Find all items in the Folders and Files report whose name contains any of the characters detailed here:
Invalid file names and file types in OneDrive and SharePoint
Work with your migration vendor to substitute these characters in all file and folder names.
Note:
The # and % characters are supported but not enabled by default. Follow these steps to enable them:
New support for # and % in SharePoint and OneDrive
.
File and folder path length
Find all items in the
Folders and Files
report whose Path exceeds the file path length described here:
SharePoint limits
Work with your migration vendor to reorganize your file and folder structure such that it does not exceed this limit. Splitting large drives that serve several scenarios into multiple smaller, more focused drives may help here.
Prepare your OneDrive environment
Before you migrate your file share content, you must pre-provision your users in Microsoft 365. For guidance on pre-provisioning, see
Prepare to provision users through directory synchronization to Microsoft 365
Pre-provision OneDrive for users in your organization
Migrate
Migration process
The following is a typical migration process that follows Microsoft's best practices guidance.
Important
Make sure that the account used to migrate content has permissions on the destination OneDrive.
Select a small set of users for a pilot migration. The goal of the pilot is to validate the process, including performance, user communication, and to get a sample of user feedback.
Perform the pilot migration. This should use an incremental migration method, in which migration happens in the background with no user impact, followed by a cut-over event in which network file shares and local file shares are disabled and they are directed to use the SharePoint or OneDrive environment. This method is preferred as it reduces user impact.
Understand the data from the pilot migration to determine the remainder of your migration schedule and make any changes. For example, you might update your user communication template to address a question you received from a pilot user.
Perform the remainder of the migration. This should also follow an incremental migration method, just like the pilot. Microsoft recommends a single cut-over event for all users to switch to using their OneDrive accounts and SharePoint sites. This helps eliminate users from updating duplicate copies of content.
Migration offerings
Currently, there are a variety of migration offerings available to you. Which one is right for you?
Offering
Pricing
Process
Infrastructure
Scheduling
Expertise
Schedule flexibility
Flexible, you set the pace
No need to configure complex infrastructure
Less time required involved in scheduling process and restrictions
Customer controls the pace based on their needs
Might have to hire in expertise if you don't have it in place already
Customer controls the schedule flexibility; off hours and blackout hours are defined by them
FastTrack driven
Included in your
Microsoft 365 subscription
Highly structured process and schedule
Must set up infrastructure including external access rights, VPNs, test environment, admin environment, establish framework of contacts
Scheduling templates and questionnaires provided as part of the organization process
Schedule is driven in partnership with the FastTrack team
Expertise provided by FastTrack
Must hold to a set schedule
Partner driven
Price dependent on complexity
Customized to your need
Customized to your need
Customized to your need
Customized to your need
Expertise provided
Customized to your need
Self service
The benefit for self-service migration is that you have full control over your process and timing, and you determine the pace of migration. Using
Migration Manager
, you will be able to leverage your own IT resources rather than having to invest in outside expertise.
Microsoft FastTrack
FastTrack is a Microsoft service included in your subscription cost providing you with a set of best practices, tools, resources, and experts committed to making your experience with the Microsoft cloud a great one. OneDrive onboarding guidance, migration benefits, and adoption guidance are included in the benefit offering.
Onboarding guidance includes: help to discover what's possible, creating a plan for success, and onboarding new users and capabilities at a flexible pace. The
Data Migration
benefit covers guidance on migrating content from file share, Box, or Google Drive source environments.
This guidance covers enablement of both OneDrive and the source environment. FastTrack will also perform specific data migration activities on behalf of the customer for those with 500 or more licenses. For more details, see
FastTrack Center Benefit Overview
. Interested in getting started? Visit
FastTrack.microsoft.com
, review resources, and submit a Request for Assistance.
Migration service providers
You may decide that your organization has specific business needs that require you to use third-party services or apps to help you execute your migration. Explore the professional services and applications available from partners in the Microsoft Partner Center. There you can find experts to help you in your enterprise content migration to Microsoft 365. For more info, see
Microsoft Partner Center
.
User Onboarding
Develop a plan to prepare your users for the upcoming change. Consideration factors to include in your plan:
Evangelize the move
. Underscore the benefits, the collaborative capabilities, and the reasons for making the move.
End user training
. Provide training to your users on the features in OneDrive.
Train your helpdesk
. Before the cut-over event, train your helpdesk in key features and common user questions.
Prepare for any possible downtime
. Plan for possible downtime during the migration.
Develop a plan for sending communications to your user base, providing clear statements of timing, and expectations and impact to the individual, including:
The migration timeline and how it will impact them. Include any user calls to action.
Assure them that if they already have content in OneDrive, their content is safe and won't be overwritten.
Let them know whether individuals can opt out of the migration process.
Microsoft 365 end user adoption guide
: Outlining methodology and resources for implementing proven adoption success factors
Posters, email templates
: Customizable templates to generate internal awareness and excitement
OneDrive
and
team library
: Video training
OneDrive
and
team library
: Quick start training guides; get up and running quickly with the basic info you need to be productive right away
SharePoint video training
Work together with OneDrive
Learn more about OneDrive