M365 services

Migrating Files to SharePoint

Planning to migrate files to Microsoft SharePoint Online?

Access our SharePoint expertise in one of two ways:

Deliver your project yourself with free ongoing expert advice

When you buy your Microsoft 365 Licences through Compete366, receive the added benefit of ongoing expert SharePoint advice – whenever you need, at no extra cost.

We help your in-house IT Team on your SharePoint journey – with everything from architecture through to deployment, migration, security, and look and feel advice.

Think of us as one of the team.

Book a free, no obligation call with one of our M365 consultants

Let us deliver your SharePoint project for you for a one-off project fee

Want to migrate your file content into Microsoft SharePoint, but don’t have capacity or the skill-set in-house?

For a one-off fee ourSharePoint experts can deliver the SharePoint migration project for you, end to end.

Leaving you free to do what you do best.

Book a free, no obligation call with one of our M365 consultants

SharePoint Migration Experts

At Compete366, we specialise in guiding businesses through the complex process of SharePoint migration. With years of experience and a deep understanding of both the technical and strategic aspects of SharePoint, our team of certified experts ensures a smooth transition that minimises downtime and maximises the benefits of SharePoint for your organisation

Why migrate to SharePoint Online?

Streamlined collaboration and productivity:

Migrating to SharePoint facilitates unparalleled collaboration and productivity within your team. It offers a central hub for document management, team sites, and intranets, enabling easy access and sharing of information.

Enhanced security and compliance:

SharePoint provides robust security features that protect sensitive information while complying with industry standards and regulations. Migrating to SharePoint means your data is safeguarded with state-of-the-art security measures.

Scalability and flexibility:

As your business grows, so do your needs. SharePoint’s scalable architecture allows you to expand your digital environment seamlessly, accommodating more users and integrating new functionalities without compromising performance.

Integration with Microsoft 365:

For businesses already using Microsoft 365, migrating to SharePoint offers deep integration with the suite’s applications, enhancing efficiency and streamlining workflows across platforms.

Your SharePoint migration partner

If you’re migrating large volumes of data from your file server or file shares to SharePoint, our experts will ensure a smooth, incident-free migration process.

If you have compliance requirements or reputational considerations such as data access across multiple clients, we’re the safe pair of hands you’ll need.

Our team of SharePoint technical consultants have successfully delivered over 40 file migration projects into SharePoint Online from source systems ranging from on-premise file servers to Google Workspace, Box and other Microsoft 365 tenants.

Microsoft has recognised our expertise through our Microsoft technical certifications and customer experience with the Solutions Partner Designation for Modern Work

SharePoint Migration consultancy – Why choose Compete366?

Our SharePoint consultancy services have been designed to ensure that your SharePoint online migration runs smoothly.

Personalised migration strategy

At Compete366, we don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions. We work closely with you to understand your specific needs and objectives, crafting a personalised SharePoint migration project plan that aligns with your business goals.

Comprehensive support throughout

From the initial planning stages to post-migration support, we’re with you every step of the way. Our experts handle the technical challenges, ensuring a seamless transition with minimal disruption to your daily operations.

Training and empowerment

Post-migration, we provide training and resources to empower your team to leverage SharePoint’s full potential. Our goal is to ensure you have the knowledge and skills to maximise the value of your new platform.

Read more about SharePoint migration on our blog

We regularly share our insights about Microsoft SharePoint solutions on our blog, which IT decision-makers will find useful:

Your seamless migration to SharePoint

At Compete366, we ensure a seamless and low-risk transition to SharePoint, designed to enhance your business operations without disrupting your day-to-day activities.

Our migration plan begins by establishing a new SharePoint environment alongside your current file share system. This approach involves copying—rather than moving—your data, ensuring the original system remains intact and unchanged. This dual-environment setup allows for thorough testing and user training while maintaining data integrity.

Migration tasks include:

● Evaluation of folder structure depth and identification of any invalid file types or issues related to file URL lengths, which may require renaming due to SharePoint’s 256-character limit for document URLs.

● Addressing challenges with special characters in file names, large file sizes, and other potential migration obstacles.

  • Configuration of the detailed site architecture, including site collections, subsites, document libraries, and site navigation, alongside the related security infrastructure. This step is crucial for optimising data distribution across SharePoint’s backend databases and services.
  • Implementation of SharePoint security, mirroring Active Directory security principles, to provide tailored access control. This involves creating Security Groups, assigning permission levels, adding users to these groups, and modifying default security settings on SharePoint entities.

 

While we can theoretically store an unlimited amount of data on SharePoint Online, it’s crucial to design your SharePoint site structure correctly so that we distribute the load across the backend databases and services. As part of the design phase, folders at source often need to be split into multiple document libraries at the destination.

SharePoint security works similarly to Azure Active Directory (now called Entra ID) security. It can be configured to provide fine-grained access control at various levels in the SharePoint hierarchy. At its simplest, it involves creation of Security Groups:

  • assigning permission levels like Full Control / Edit/ Contribute / Read-Only etc. to these Groups
  • adding users to these Security Groups
  • modifying default security on entities like Sites, Libraries, Folders and Files so that the Security Groups (and by extension the users who are part of these groups) have the desired amount of access on these entities.

While we can theoretically store an unlimited amount of data on SharePoint Online, it’s crucial to design your SharePoint site structure correctly so that we distribute the load across the backend databases and services. As part of the design phase, folders at source often need to be split into multiple document libraries at the destination.

We use a specialist SharePoint migration tool (typically AvePoint Fly or ShareGate) and this will be installed on the migration PC / Server. We are AvePoint and Sharegate partners, and the cost of the tool is included in the project, ensuring an efficient and effective data transfer.

After we’ve tested the security matrix and the initial copy of the data, we ask you to test these for yourself to make sure that everything is configured the way you want it. We can train administrators and your users on how to work with SharePoint.

A meticulous comparison of document counts between the source and SharePoint environments highlights any discrepancies or leftover files. We then collaborate with you to address these exceptions, ensuring a comprehensive migration.

Once everything is in place, we ask you for a preferred date for switchover, usually across a weekend. Since the initial data migration and verification stages detailed above could take a few weeks, the source data may have undergone some changes during this period. The objective of the final migration is to sync these changes across to SharePoint just prior to the switchover.

 

Our commitment to your success extends beyond the migration. Our SharePoint experts remain available for a specified period post-migration to provide support and ensure a smooth transition.

By entrusting your SharePoint migration to Compete366, you benefit from our expert planning, execution, and support, guaranteeing a transition that enhances your business’s productivity and collaboration capabilities without interruption.

Our customer promise

If you sign up with Compete366, we guarantee that you’ll pay the same as when you subscribe directly with Microsoft for Azure or M365, but with the added benefit of free ongoing expert advice and guidance from our dedicated team of experienced technical consultants.

What our customers say

“We had one of the Compete366 engineers work with us on the project. He was exceptional and even assisted on some issues caused by the migration which were outside of the 365 domain. Running Office 365 and Sharepoint via an Azure domain gives us a high level of control including user access and data sharing without needing an in-house server to maintain.”

Ed Birks, Managing Director, Langstaff Ellis

The migration project to SharePoint went really well. Once everything was set up, Compete366 simply switched everything over during a weekend and on the Monday morning, our users came in to access all the files they needed on SharePoint.

Michael Austin, Founder, Blue Dot Consulting

Read our case studies

Discover how we’ve successfully helped small and medium-sized businesses across the UK to make the most of SharePoint for their business.

Book a free, no obligation call with one of our SharePoint Consultants

Contact us to set up SharePoint in your organisation

Access our SharePoint migration expertise in one of two ways:

We help you deliver

Let us help you deliver your SharePoint project and get free ongoing expert advice

– OR –

We deliver for you

We’ll take the strain and deliver your SharePoint project for you

Contact our Microsoft specialists

Phone or email us to find out more – or book a free, no-obligation call with our technical consultants using the contact form.

“It’s great to work with the Compete366 team, the team members are really knowledgeable, helpful and responsive. No question is too difficult for them. They have really helped us to manage our Azure costs and ensure we have the right environment. When we bring a new customer on-board we can scale up immediately via the Azure portal and quickly make environments available to our customers.”

“We also find that there’s never a heavy sales pitch from them – they are technically focused and recommend what’s right for us.”

Paul Coyne, Rusada

“We had great support from the Compete366 AVD expert, who was really helpful, and guided me through options to tackle issues that arose.”

“The great thing about our AVD set up is that we have a custom set up for each project which Compete366 showed me how to do. And with the scalability and flexibility of AVD – we can meet clients’ expectations and get project users up and running more quickly.”

Amir Dangol, Senior IT Manager, Integrity

“We were immediately impressed with the advice that the Compete366 specialists in Azure Architecture were able to provide. This was all new to us and we really needed some external expertise that we could use to get our questions answered. The beauty of working with Compete366 is that we transferred our Azure consumption to them, and at the same time received all of their advice and guidance free of charge.”

Tim Entwistle, Head of Software Development, Herrco

“Working with Compete366 has been like extending our own team – they are extremely and easy to work with. Right from the outset, it was clear what was on offer – everything was presented to us in a straightforward and uncomplicated way. They also provided just the right level of challenge to our developers and saved us time and money by suggesting better ways to implement our infrastructure.”

Oliver Mackereth, Project Director, Hanse

“Compete366 were able to help us leverage some useful contacts in Microsoft. We really value the expert advice and guidance that they have offered us in setting up a highly scalable infrastructure. We are also setting in place a regular monthly meeting which will allow us to further refine our architecture and ensure we keep on track as our requirements grow and change.”

Matt Brocklehurst, Technical Director - AWOL Adventure

“I have been delighted with the migration, where my team worked very hard, supported by expert advice from Compete366, and achieved everything in the timescale we had set out. Compete 366 made sure that we didn’t make any expensive mistakes, and guided us through the process”

Darrell Cann, Managing Director, APEX
Jon Milward
Director

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