Metalogix Expert. Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises. March,

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1 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises March,

2 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises Copyright 2018 Meta l ogi x Interna ti ona l GmbH Al l ri ghts res erved. No pa rt or s ecti on of the contents of thi s ma teri a l ma y be reproduced or tra ns mi tted i n a ny form or by a ny mea ns wi thout the wri tten permi s s i on of Meta l ogi x Interna ti ona l GmbH. Meta l ogi x Expert i s a tra dema rk of Meta l ogi x Interna ti ona l GmbH. Wi ndows Sha repoi nt Servi ces i s ei ther a regi s tered tra dema rk or a tra dema rk of Mi cros oft Corpora ti on i n the Uni ted Sta tes a nd/or other countri es. Other product a nd compa ny na mes menti oned herei n ma y be the tra dema rks of thei r res pecti ve owners. Technical Support For i nforma ti on a bout Meta l ogi x Techni ca l s upport vi s i t l ogi x.com/s upport. Techni ca l s upport s peci a l i s ts ca n be rea ched by phone a t The l evel of techni ca l s upport provi ded depends upon the s upport pa cka ge tha t you ha ve purcha s ed. Conta ct us to di s cus s your s upport requi rements. info@metalogix.com

3 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises Contents Introduction... 4 Migrating to SharePoint Web Applications... 5 Content Databases... 5 Site Collections... 6 Sites and Subsites... 7 Large Files... 8 Checked Out Files... 9 Forgotten Sites... 9 Large List Views Deprecated List Templates InfoPath Custom Features Blocked File Extensions Alerts by User Alerts by Site Sandbox s Custom Web Parts Custom Master Pages and layouts Custom Site Definitions Personal / My Sites Custom Web Part Pages Unsupported Web Templates Pages with Custom Content Tags Subsite Features that Do Not Exist on Target Orphaned Items by User Sites With Publishing Features Files and Folders with Long URLs Large Lists Sites/Site Collections with Large Recycle Bins Language Packs Installed In Web Applications Managed Paths Rencore SPCAF Products That Can Help info@metalogix.com

4 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises Introduction Migrating to a new version of SharePoint is like moving to a new home. Before you make that move, there are critical issues to consider. Will the furniture, appliances, and decorative pieces from your previous home fit and work in your new home? What about the custom furniture in your current home that you may not be able to move? For example, it is difficult to move builtin closets that you had a contractor build for you. On a similar note, when was the last time you looked through all your drawers and found just how much useless junk you ve got hiding in there? Similarly, a SharePoint migration requires careful planning to identify the critical issues and mitigate the risks of the migration. Whether you re moving your environment to SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016, or SharePoint Online (SPO), it is essential to understand the limits of your new environment, and whether all your content meets these limits. It is also important to consider whether content that is outdated, no longer in use, or forgotten, is worth moving. It is also important to understand that SharePoint customizations such as custom web parts, custom features and solutions, and custom Master Pages and Page Layouts, do not work in newer versions of SharePoint. Some custom work will be required to move those customizations, especially when the destination is an SPO server, which supports SharePoint Apps and sandboxed solutions. Which is why an analysis of your current environment and careful migration planning can save you time and money, and aid in the optimization of your new SharePoint environment. About Expert Expert is a free tool that provides you with a detailed analysis of your current environment by farm, web application, or site collection. By analyzing your existing farms, web applications, and site collections, that are based on strict Microsoft limitations, Expert shows you customizations that are easy to migrate and those that don t easily migrate to either on-premise and online versions of SharePoint. With this analysis, you can preempt migration issues by cleaning up unnecessary customizations and content, and plan what you move over and how you move it. 4

5 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises Migrating to SharePoint 2013 This document contains information about features in your current environment that need special treatment when you are planning your migration to SharePoint 2013 On-premise. Web Applications Microsoft has implemented certain restrictions and settings options for the setup of your SharePoint environment. Web applications in on-premise SharePoint farms are the 2nd highest tier (after the Farm) where these restrictions come into play. It s vital that you are provided with an overview of these limitations. A detailed report of whether your environment fits these criteria, before you begin moving all that content over to the latest version of SharePoint, could save you a costly and essentially ineffective migration. Microsoft supports a maximum of 20 web applications per farm. Testing revealed that 20 web applications is the known limit that the product can support. As a result, Microsoft recommends that you restrict the number of web applications, and focus on creating additional host name site collections when differentiating between sites. If your SharePoint setup exceeds this supported amount, then you may run into trouble once you migrate your environment over to the latest version of SharePoint. Knowing whether you are coming close to a supported value can save you a significant amount of time and pain when migrating. Expert will help you analyze your current environment and report on the limits you are working within, coming too close to meeting, and those that you have surpassed. By knowing the status of all the limits within your SharePoint farms you can adjust accordingly and make your migration experience a flawless one. One solution to limiting the number of web applications is to use Host Headers to enable the use of a single web applications for multiple web sites. Content Databases Content Databases are the home of your site content. The home of your site content within SharePoint has certain supported limits. These limits are placed on the number of content databases you can have within a farm, as well as the size of each individual content databases. Microsoft has set a cap of 500 content databases per farm. When you get close to the 500 mark, end users can still enjoy a problem-free experience, opening sites or site collections, but the experience for administrators is a different story. When you re at the 500 content database mark, administrators will start having a hard time creating new site collections. Furthermore, having this many content databases can make migrating to a new environment a lengthy process, and you may be storing, and therefore moving, content that you no longer need. 5

6 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises There are limits placed on the size of each individual database as well. For general usage scenarios, no single database should exceed 200GB. This limit also applies if you re using Remote BLOB Storage. If a single database does exceed that amount then chances are you have content in there that you may not need, or perhaps your content would be easier to access if it was dispersed among various content databases. All of these factors are important and should be taken into consideration before migrating your content. If you have content that is unnecessary, making your content databases too large in size, or too many content databases within a farm, then your migration may be a slow one and your new environment will not be at optimal functionality. If you re struggling with the size of your content databases, then Content Matrix is the ideal solution. By using Content Matrix you can quickly and efficiently decrease the size of the content databases by moving a site collection out of a database that is almost at capacity to a new one or to one that has more space. This way any databases that are reaching the size restriction of 200GB can be minimized for optimal usage. StoragePoint can also aid you in prepping your environment for a migration. By using StoragePoint you can increase the performance of SharePoint by using external BLOB storage. This in turn will cut down a 200GB, or greater, database significantly. After this externalization is completed, your environment will now meet the limits set by Microsoft, allowing you to migrate your environment in a way that ensures optimal performance. Site Collections Site collections are pretty easy to understand they are collections of SharePoint sites that share common administration pages and site settings. Having site collections is convenient, since you can set them up to share content types, site columns, templates, and Web Parts, all within a single group of SharePoint sites. Having too many can have adverse effects on the success of your SharePoint deployment, and therefore any potential SharePoint migration you may be planning. For this reason Microsoft has limits set for the number of site collections you can have per farm, and the size that each site collection can be. Number of Site Collections Microsoft has a supported limit of 750,000 site collections per farm, 500,000 of these can be Personal Sites, and 250,000 can be sites with any other template. All 750,000 can reside on one web application, or can be distributed across multiple web applications. It is important, however, to note that this limit is affected by other factors in your environment. For instance, if a farm, for example, has a web application that contains 200 content databases, and each of these content databases contains 1,000 site collections, the total number of site collections in the web application will be 200,000. This number falls within the supported limits. However, if each of the 200 content databases on the web application contains 10,000 site collections, even though this number is within the supported limit for a content database, the total number of site collections within the farm 6

7 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises would total 2,000,000. This number exceeds the limit for the number of site collections allowed per web application. A direct result of too many site collections is a decrease in farm performance, possibly affecting you before you even reach the supported limit of 750,000 site collections per farm. These are important factors to consider, since the current poor performance of your farm, due to too many site collections, will continue to affect you post-migration. This in turn defeats the purpose of migrating in order to improve the performance and usability of your SharePoint deployment. Site Collection Size Microsoft has also placed a limit on the individual size of site collections. Since they are housed within content databases, the maximum size of a site collection is limited to the maximum size of its content database. So based on the applicable usage scenario, your site collection can be as large as the content database size limit for that usage scenario, as set by Microsoft. In general, the limit is set to 100 GB per site collection, for both SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online environments. This is because certain site collection actions, such as backup and restore, cause large SQL Server operations to have performance issues, or to fail, if other site collections are active within the same database. Furthermore, site collection backup and restore are only supported for a maximum site collection size of 100 GB. Site collections larger than 100 GB are therefore at risk of taking a long time, or even failing, during backup and restore. Again, this factor affects the performance of your SharePoint environment and could undermine the purpose of migrating to a newer, more effective, version of SharePoint. Content Matrix can aid in the organization, or reorganization, of your site collections. By moving site collections around, you can ensure that no one content database exceeds the number of allotted site collections per database, or that any one farm exceeds the 750,000 site collection limit per farm. Once you know where your environment stands with regards to these limits, Content Matrix can help you ensure that you have met all requirements before you begin a migration. As a result, your new SharePoint environment will work at an optimal rate. Sites and Subsites SharePoint sites and sub-sites are a place for collaboration, communication, or content storage. They are a great tool that can be an ideal method of storing content as well as presenting it to your internal and external users. However, SharePoint users must be sure to thoroughly understand the limits that are presented with owning sites and sub-sites. Too many sites within a site collection, or too many sub-sites within a site, can affect the functionality of your overall SharePoint deployment. This negative impact can in turn be carried over with your migration. Microsoft a recommended limit of a maximum of 250,000 sites per site collection. This means that you can create a very large total number of web sites by nesting sub-sites within your sites. However, there is also a limit applied to the number of sub-sites that you can have per site view. The recommended limit is 2,000 7

8 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises sub-sites per site view if you surpass this number the web site will no longer perform properly. Both are factors to consider for the optimal functionality of your SharePoint deployment, as well as the health of your new environment post-migration. Even with these limits placed on the number of sites and sub-sites that your site collections can have, you can still organize your content in a way that suits you and works within the Microsoft limits. For instance you can create a shallow site hierarchy with 100 sites, each with 1,000 sub-sites, totaling 100,000 web sites. Or you can create a deep hierarchy with 100 sites; each with 10 sub-site levels, also containing a total of 100,000 web sites. Working within these limits is vital for optimal performance, and with various site and sub-site configurations, working within the limits is easy and even practical. With Content Matrix you can move and reorganize the current location of your web sites and sub-sites. By rearranging the placement of your sites and sub-sites you can adhere to published SharePoint 2013 limits thereby guaranteeing the successful deployment, migration, and performance of you SharePoint environment. Large Files The maximum single file size has recently been increased from 250MB to 2GB for Office 365, while onpremise versions of SharePoint have a 250MB threshold that can be increased by an administrator at the Web Application level up to 2GB. A file is considered a large file when it exceeds 250MB. The greater the amount of large files you have in your farm, the greater your farm performance is negatively affected. Even though this limit can be increased within SharePoint to a maximum of 2GB, it is important to consider that if a file exceeding 250MB is already a large file, then files at 2GB will take up even more space, decreasing farm performance further. It is important to know how many large files your SharePoint environment is holding. In knowing this you can ratify the situation, decreasing the number of large files and optimizing the functionality of your SharePoint farms. It is particularly important to consider this factor before implementing a mass migration, as there may be files you no longer need that are simply taking up space and slowing down the continuity of your SharePoint operations. This, is an issue that you will invariably end up carrying over to your newly migrated environment. Content Matrix can help you by allowing you to reorganize the location of your large files. If too many large files per farm are the problem, then Content Matrix helps by allowing you to move some of those large files to areas where there is still room remaining for them. This allows you to stay within the Microsoft limits, enhancing the performance of your farm and its subsequently migrated version. StoragePoint can also help in this scenario, by reducing the size of files with external BLOB storage. By externalizing the content of the large files, you still have access to them, without pushing the 8

9 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises Microsoft limit on size. This furthers the usability of your SharePoint environment, and aids in the migration of content that is already within the pre-set limits. Checked Out Files SharePoint truly is an ideal way in which to collaborate with co-workers. From shared calendars, to collaboration on documents and projects, to approval workflows, it provides users with a workspace in which they can efficiently perform their work tasks. One of these convenient features is the ability to check out files, allowing end users to alter them without interruption from their fellow employees. With checked out files comes a caveat if the file has not been checked back in, then SharePoint may not have an up-to-date version of that document. This prevents other end users from seeing the latest version, as the document must be checked back in for the latest changes to be uploaded. This is a factor that would affect the overall success of a migration. It s important to know how many files you have checked out, and which files they are in particular, prior to a migration. By ensuring that all files have been checked back in, you ensure that your SharePoint environment has an updated version of all documents. This then allows for a migration of only the latest content. Forgotten Sites Sites within SharePoint are an easy way to divide up and organize content. However, with this convenience sometimes comes overuse. Sites and sub-sites become created for minute organizational purposes and are often then forgotten. An environment with over 10,000 sites, for instance, may have sites and sub-sites that haven t been looked at, used, or modified in a significant period of time. If your environment has sites or sub-sites that were created 3 years ago for the purpose of a specific team project, and this was the ideal solution at the time, but now that the project has been completed, and the site has not been used since, it no longer has that same relevance. Having too many unused sites, therefore, only takes up valuable space, clutters search results with irrelevant content, and slows down your migration. The best practice for this is to look at the Site Owner for any forgotten sites, and contact them to check whether those sites still contain relevant content. If not, you can leave it in the current environment. 9

10 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises Large List Views Lists that have multiple views and a large number of columns tend to have poor performance as they surpass 2000 items, and towards the Microsoft List View Threshold of 5000 items. The more metadata/columns these lists have, the more they will impact performance. Although Microsoft does not provide separate List View Threshold guidance for SPO, it is still important to know if you re reaching this limit so that you can split large lists with List Views into multiple lists or use Search Based Lists instead. The more metadata/columns these lists have, the more they will impact performance. It is important to know if you re reaching this limit so that you can split large lists with List Views into multiple lists, narrow down the list filters to return fewer results, or use Search Based Lists instead. Creating a Search Based list involves creating a custom search results page that looks like a list, but is in fact a search results page. A difference results page would be needed for each list view. Splitting lists using native SharePoint capabilities requires multiple steps: 1. Save the existing list as a template 2. Create new lists based on this template 3. Export content from existing list to Excel 4. Copying items and pasting individual items, field by field into the Quick Edit view of each new list. This is an extremely time consuming process. Splitting lists using Content Matrix, involves multiple quick Copy/Paste operations. In each case, you would: 1. Copy the original list 2. Paste it on the target 3. Rename the new list which will include a subset of the original Use the filter tab to filter only a subset of the list items into the new list, and run the migration job. An example of splitting a large list that has financial content with a field called Fiscal Year, is that follow the above steps and filter only items with a Fiscal Year value of the last 3 years into the new list. Then repeat the process for the previous 3 fiscal years, and so on. Deprecated List Templates As a site owner, you can use existing list templates and create custom list templates for your site. Lists can be migrated to another site as long as the target site has a valid list template. 10

11 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises Some list templates that are discontinued by Microsoft including custom lists that are being used in your current site, may not be available in the target SharePoint site or site collections, which will prevent automated migration. Before you migrate list to other sites, you may want to verify that the list templates in the target site are present and valid. This report displays the count of deprecated list templates for each site or sub-site in your site collection. For each invalid site template reported, you must choose another list template in the target site that closely resembles the deprecated list template. The report list columns are as follows: Column Description Site URL The URL of the source site that was analyzed List Title The title of the list in the source site Description The description of the list if present List Template Name The template that was used to create the list List Template Id The unique identifier of the list Author The user name of the person who created the list Created Date The creation date of the list Last Modified Date The date the list was last modified Unique Permission Whether or not the list contains unique security permissions. Values are Yes or No. InfoPath InfoPath Forms Services is a server technology that makes it possible for people to fill out forms in a Web browser. InfoPath Forms are browser-enabled form templates which can be filled out in a web browser without requiring additional add-ons or downloads. It is important for the user to be aware about the InfoPath forms associated with different libraries on a site level. Though the standalone application has been discontinued, InfoPath Forms Services are included in the on-premise release of SharePoint Server 2016, as well as being fully supported in Office

12 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises This report displays the count of unique InfoPath Form templates. The report list columns are as follows: Column Description Form Name Name of the InfoPath form template Form URL Location of the InfoPath form template Associated List Title List or library containing the InfoPath form template Site URL URL of the site where the InfoPath form template is present Custom Features You can create a SharePoint solution package to bundle multiple standard and custom features, site definitions, assemblies, and other files into a single package, which stores the files in a format needed by SharePoint to deploy the files to the server. If the SharePoint solution package and its dependencies are not deployed on the target environment, the custom features may not be available to the user who migrates to the upgraded environment. The SharePoint administrator should be aware of such features that are activated on their sites or site collections. s The Custom features report indicates the number of custom features that are activated on your current farm or site collection, so that you can plan to migrate your content. As part of the planning process, you can configure the feature manifest so that the target SharePoint server activates certain baseline features before your custom feature is deployed and activated. The report detail displays a list of site URLs and scope where the feature is deployed. The number of rows in the list may not be the same as the feature count that is displayed because the feature count displays the number of unique features in the current environment, and the list displays every instance of the feature in the environment. The report list columns are as follows: Column Description Site URL The URL of the source site that was analyzed Feature GUID Globally unique identifier of the feature Scope SharePoint area where the feature is deployed. SharePoint features can be scoped to Site Collection and Web Site level. 12

13 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises Blocked File Extensions There are certain types of files that you cannot upload to a SharePoint list or a library. By default, SharePoint blocks these file types. For example, if.asp is on the list of blocked file extensions, a file called "newpage.asp" is blocked. Variations of a file extension are also blocked if the extension is present in the filename. The list of files that is blocked for SharePoint 2016 on-premise is different than previous onpremise versions of SharePoint. There are no blocked files in SharePoint Online and Office 365. Before migration, you should be aware of the blocked extension files present in the source site, collection or farm, so that you can plan your migration accordingly. This report indicates the count of unique Blocked File Extensions. The report detail lists every instance of a file with a Blocked File Extensions and the number of rows may differ from the count of unique Blocked File Extensions. The report list columns are as follows: Column Description File Name Name of the blocked file File URL Location of the file List Title List or library containing the blocked file File Size Size of the blocked file Site URL URL of the site where the file is present Alerts by User Alerts are notifications of changes to content on a site that SharePoint users receive as messages or text messages to their mobile phone, depending on how your site is configured. Alerts are great way to keep track of additions or changes to content that users make on your SharePoint objects. Site owners may want to subscribe multiple users to an alert to make sure they get important updates, as well as encourage them to contribute to a discussion board, blog, or wiki. When you plan your migration, it is very helpful to know how many alerts are configured and which users are assigned to them before migrating the alerts to the target SharePoint environment. After migration, users can keep receiving alerts which results in a seamless transition to the new environment. 13

14 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises This report displays the number of source sites that have one or more alerts. The report detail lists every alert configured for each site. The report columns are as follows: Column Description Site URL The URL of the source site that was analyzed Alert Username User ID of the person who has subscribed to the alert Alert Name Title of the alert as displayed in the user interface. Alert Type The type of object to which the alert applies, which can be a list or document library, a list item or document, or a custom object. Associated Object URL URL of the object that is linked to this alert Alerts by Site Alerts are notifications of changes to content on a site that SharePoint users receive as messages or text messages to their mobile phone, depending on how your site is configured. For a particular site or site collection, alerts are great way to keep track of additions or changes to content that users make on your SharePoint objects for your site or site collection. When you plan your migration, it is very helpful to know how many alerts are configured and which users are assigned to them before migrating the alerts to the target SharePoint environment. After migration, users can keep receiving alerts which results in a seamless transition to the new environment. This report displays the number of source sites that have one or more alerts. The report detail lists every alert configured for each site. The report columns are as follows: Column Description Site URL The URL of the source site that was analyzed Alert Username User ID of the person who has subscribed to the alert Alert Name Title of the alert as displayed in the user interface. 14

15 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises Alert Type The type of object to which the alert applies, which can be a list or document library, a list item or document, or a custom object. Associated Object URL URL of the object that is linked to this alert Sandbox s A sandboxed solution is a packaged set of SharePoint functionality that runs in a secure, monitored process with a limited access to resources within the site collection in which they are deployed. Migration planning must take into consideration the sandboxed solutions deployed across site collections in a farm, so that administrators can analyze the constituent features, and manage these solutions in the target environment. This report displays the number of sandboxed solutions and lists information about each sandboxed solution. The columns in the list are as follows: Column Description Site URL The URL of the source site that was analyzed Name Name of the sandboxed solution Status Whether or not the sandboxed solution is active. Values are Activated or Deactivated. Custom Web Parts Custom Web Parts are time-consuming to migrate whether you use Out-of-the-Box (OTB) or 3rd party migration tools. These tools use the current version of the SharePoint API of your source farm, and since SharePoint APIs are not backward compatible, the custom web parts may not work after migration unless the custom web parts are rewritten to use the latest version of the SharePoint API. It is very important to analyze these web parts to understand their usage, importance and whether they need to be migrated. There is only one scenario in which 3rd party migration tools support migration of content in these custom web parts. This is when you have an identical custom web part that has been built for the latest version of SharePoint installed in your new SharePoint environment, and that web part s API supports information being written to it by a migration tool. 15

16 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises To deal with Custom Web Parts, recommends the following: 1. Identify whether the custom web part is really being used by using SharePoint analytics, a survey, or ControlPoint, or similar solution. 2. For those custom web parts that are not being used, notify the site users and owners that you will not be migrating the web part in question due to its lack of use. This is often an opportunity to understand why it was used in the first place, and whether there is a business problem that you could solve for that group during or after the migration in a more effective manner. 3. Check to see if any of the new functionality in the latest version of SharePoint could achieve the same goal as the custom web part. If so, you are likely better off using this, since this web part, site definition, or other SharePoint construct will not be considered a customization for your next migration or move, and will therefore be moveable both in an OTB upgrade, and using a 3rd party migration tool such as Content Matrix. 4. If your custom web part is from a 3rd party vendor, and there is no OTB equivalent, reach out to that vendor you purchased it from to see if they have a version of that web part that works on the latest version of SharePoint, and whether they have a migration strategy for content in that web part. 5. If the custom web part was built in house, and is important for business operations, rewrite the web part for the latest version of SharePoint OnPremises or as an App for Office 365. If the web part interacts with the content around it in the same way that the current web part does, it is possible to migrate it in many cases using 3rd party migration tools such as Content Matrix. 6. Consider using this opportunity to rewrite the custom web part as a SharePoint App so that it is supported not only in SharePoint onpremises, but also in Office 365/SharePoint Online, should you ever decide to migrate to Office 365 or a hybrid of on-premise and Office 365. This is only possible if the web part can be re-written to use only Client Side Object Model (CSOM) API, or REST code, which is significantly more limited than the SharePoint Server Object Model that most web parts were written with. For more information, see the MSDN s article: Apps for SharePoint overview. Custom Master Pages and layouts Custom Master Pages, and their associated page layouts, cannot simply be migrated over from SharePoint 2007 or 2010 to SharePoint While the formatting of Master Pages is similar between these versions, it is not the same, and Master Pages written for one version do not work in any of the other versions. It is vital to know how many custom master pages you have and what they are, before migration, so that you know which of these you either have to discard, or rebuild to work Office 365. Once these pages have been rebuilt, you can easily migrate the content directly from the old version of the page to the new version using both the OTB Upgrade and 3rd party migration tools such as Content Matrix. Our experience in working with thousands of organizations and systems integrators who have successfully migrated to new versions of SharePoint, has taught us that the development and implementation of Master Pages and Page Layouts is an area that is often misunderstood by IT managers. 16

17 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises recommends working with SharePoint UI implementation experts to implement new versions of Master Pages and Page Layouts, and not assigning this task to SharePoint developers, who specialize in a completely different skill set (Visual Studio development vs. HTML and XML) and tool sets (Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer respectively). In addition, recommends working with graphic designers to create the look and feel of the Master Pages (usually using Adobe Photoshop or similar tools), and have the content generated by those tools given to the SharePoint UI implementation experts. Most SharePoint UI experts are not graphic designers, and won t necessarily create good designs even if they know how to implement designs created by others. Similarly, most graphic designers know how to design beautiful web pages, but are not familiar with UI implementation in SharePoint. Custom Site Definitions Custom Site Definitions were either created by your SharePoint Admin to solve a specific business problem, or installed through a 3rd party solution. Custom Site Definitions are most frequently variations in the layout of existing site definitions, with additional Out-of-The-Box (OTB) web parts added by default to a location on the site. In these cases, the best option for migrating sites using site definitions that are also being used by your users is to create an equivalent site definition for Office 365 and installing it in your target farm prior to migrating. In cases where Custom Site Definitions contain custom Master Pages and Page Layouts, and/or Custom Web Parts, these cannot be migrated to Office 365. Since the newest versions of SharePoint usually include new Site Definitions, it may be worth investigating if any of the new Site Definitions meet your needs, and migrating sites to sites based on those new definitions. This is only possible with 3rd party migration products. Personal / My Sites This report notifies you of the number of employee specific sites your environment contains. It is important to know this number for two reasons: 1. For Office 365, Microsoft s limit is based on the number of users you have in your organization subscribed to Office In many organizations, MySites have not been used by the majority of employees. In light of that, it s not necessary to migrate the sites that have not been used. MySite adoption requires a significant internal marketing push on the advantages of being able to find experts within your organization, and in the case of OneDrive for Business, the benefits of enabling cross company collaboration for specific documents that are approved for sharing. recommends using the migration as a time to not only improve on your SharePoint implementation, but also as an opportunity to do a large internal marketing launch or re-launch of your SharePoint site, with executive buy in and support. Our experience has been that this can have as much impact on adoption as some of the more technical aspects of SharePoint implementation. Leveraging the new MySites OneDrive for Business, 17

18 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises allows companies to stop the use of unsanctioned private cloud repositories to share company sensitive content. Custom Web Part Pages Custom web part pages are pages with a custom layout of web parts that was not available Out of the Box. These custom layouts were typically created either in Visual Studio, or using SharePoint Designer, and do not migrate well to new versions of SharePoint. As a result, you must recreate them in your new SharePoint environment, prior to migrating. If the web parts on these pages are OTB web parts, then once the page has been recreated, the migration will work smoothly. Unsupported Web Templates Some site definitions such as the Meeting Workspace and Document Workspace, have effectively been discontinued by Microsoft and are no longer available in newer versions of SharePoint, or on Office 365. As a result, if you are using any of these site definitions in sites on your current farm, you will have to choose an alternative site definition that has as much of the layout that the deprecated site definition had as possible on a target site in order to migrate. These sites can be migrated, but may have to be modified from within SharePoint after the migration to return them to the same layout and functionality as the original Site Definition. For a full list of discontinued features, see office.microsoft.com. Pages with Custom Content Tags Custom HTML tags, such as <script>, <style> or <ms-style> tags, are typically added inside Web Parts that are located within SharePoint pages. These custom content tags may have different requirements in your current environment than the environment to which you are migrating, and can therefore, interfere with the functionality of the page s CSS after migration. As a result it is important to know how many pages have custom content tags, and what they are, before migration, giving you the opportunity to modify the Web Parts accordingly, ensuring the flawless functionality of your newly migrated SharePoint 2013 onpremise or Online Office 365 environment. Subsite Features that Do Not Exist on Target There are certain sub-site features which have been discontinued by Microsoft, and are not available on SharePoint 2013, and/or Office 365. Features such as UpgradeOnlyFile and WorkflowAppOnlyPolicyManager, which are available in your current environment, may not be available on the target environment which you will be migrating your content to, thereby interfering with your migration. As a result, it is imperative to know which, if any, of Microsoft s discontinued sub-site features are activated on your current farm, so that you can plan accordingly prior to migrating your content. 18

19 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises Orphaned Items by User Orphaned items are items which were created or modified by a user that no longer exists in your Active Directory. These items do not migrate well to new versions of SharePoint, and it is therefore important for users to be aware of orphaned items prior to a migration. Sites With Publishing Features It is important to identify all Sites and Site Collections that use the publishing feature before performing a migration. The primary reason is that site collections do not have the publishing feature available, so if users choose to promote a site, which uses the publishing feature, to a site collection during migration, then the feature will not work on the target Farm. If users try to amend the issue by automatically turning on publishing for site collections in SharePoint 2013 and/or Office 365, then all of the site s navigations automatically convert to be MMD based. This is a change that most Site Collection owners are not typically prepared for, only further confusing and delaying the migration process. It is therefore vital that users know how many sites and site collections use the publishing feature, prior to beginning a migration. Files and Folders with Long URLs SharePoint On-premise and Office 365 impose some limits on the length of URLs. If files and folders exceed this URL limit, then it can cause problems during migration. It is therefore important to know how many Files and Folders exceed the URL limit, so that users can address the issue prior to migration. Large Lists The recommended limit in SharePoint for single list views is set to 5,000 items. This threshold can be increased in SharePoint, but it will cost users the performance of their environment furthermore, this limit is a hard limit for Office 365 environments. Therefore, for both a SharePoint 2013, and Office 365 migration, it is vital to know the size of your lists, as lists with 5000 or more items will hinder the progress of your migration. Knowing the size of your lists in advance of said migration, will therefore aid users by notifying them of the lists that need to be split prior to migration. Sites/Site Collections with Large Recycle Bins Sites and Site collections with a large amount of content inside their recycling bin can hinder the migration process. As a result, it is important to know how many, and which, sites and site collections have too much content within their bins so that they can be cleaned up prior to migration. Language Packs Installed In Web Applications This report will notify users of the number of web applications that contain site collections and/or sites created using non-default language packs. This means that if SharePoint was installed with one language, and then a site or site collection was created using a different language pack, this site will be considered as 19

20 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises one with a non-default language pack. It is vital for users to know whether their sites and/or site collections have been created using a non-default language pack, as this can negatively impact migrations. Finally, it is also important for users to know what language packs have been installed on their original SharePoint environment, pre-migration, so that they can install the relevant language packs on their target environments before migration begins. Managed Paths You can specify the paths in the URL namespace of a web application to use for site collections. Managed Paths can be 'Explicit' or 'Wildcard'. Whenever SharePoint receives an 'URL', the site collection is determined by looking at the list of managed paths for a given Web Application. This means SharePoint has to look at every managed path so higher number of managed paths may cause performance problem. Also, in case of Office 365, only two managed paths 'teams' and 'sites' are available. So it is important for the user to be aware about the Managed Paths associated with different web applications. This would help the SharePoint User to address the issue prior to migration. Rencore SPCAF Custom developed solutions are a common and often critical component in every SharePoint environment. Identifying these customizations and identifying their level of complexity is important for any migration, especially those to SharePoint Online. Powered by Rencore, this information is readily available during the analysis process. Products That Can Help ControlPoint ControlPoint is a powerful SharePoint administration tool that allows you to securely manage permissions across multiple farms, automate and enforce governance across cloud and hybrid scenarios, and simplify administration. It also includes a significantly more robust pre-migration reporting capability than Expert, including the ability to ignore Microsoft thresholds and use custom sizes or numbers for any of the above mentioned thresholds, the ability to find custom web parts, where those are located, custom workflows, custom Master Pages, and many other items that could slow down a migration. Content Matrix Content Matrix is the ideal tool for cleaning up your SharePoint environment premigration based on findings in Expert and ControlPoint. By allowing you to move around sites, files, and other content found within your SharePoint farms, Content Matrix can help you adjust your environment so that it meets the Microsoft limits. As a result, you can enhance your current environment to an optimal functionality, and then migrate it over to your new SharePoint solution at its highest performance capability, or enhance the environment during the migration. Content Matrix is the ideal tool for the migration itself, particularly since there is no Out of the Box solution for migrating SharePoint to Office 365. A SharePoint migration is a complex and daunting process. With Content Matrix, you get the power, speed and flexibility you need to carry out your SharePoint upgrade 20

21 Expert Migrating to SharePoint 2013 On-Premises with confidence. You can also instantly take advantage of new SharePoint 2013 / Office 365 functionality by directly migrating from any previous version of SharePoint. Please note that migrations to Office 365 are significantly slower than migrations across a LAN, or even across a WAN for a number of reasons including factors such as: The Internet as a WAN being significantly slower than a private WAN. 3rd Party Commercial Distributed Denial Of Service Attack protection software. User based throttling. Virus checking. StoragePoint Microsoft recommends that SharePoint Content Databases should not exceed 200 GB for active content. However, your content files that are stored as Binary-Large-Objects (BLOBs) in the database, such as presentations, PDFs and images, 3D CAD files, and high-definition videos quickly weigh down SharePoint content databases. Bloated databases slow down search performance as well as file upload and download speeds. StoragePoint is the ideal solution for shrinking databases and reducing large files. StoragePoint shrinks databases up to 95% by moving BLOBs outside of SQL Server using SharePoint's Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) and External BLOB Storage (EBS) interfaces. It is a simple solution that enhances the performance of your environment while decreasing it in size. This reduction is a preferred first step to cleaning up your environment before migrating all that content. With a swift clean pre-migration with StoragePoint, you can ensure that the performance of your newly migrated environment s performance is optimized. 21