Tim Coalson is a Senior Consultant in the Delivery Practice at ThreeWill. Tim has been developing solutions on the SharePoint platform for over 15 years and has been a developer/consultant for over 30 years. Tim’s current focus is on helping organizations thrive in their communication, collaboration and automation by delivering our Intelligent Intranet, Teams Enablement and Power Platform service offerings.
At ThreeWill, we understand that content migration can be a daunting task for our clients. When replacing an old solution with a new and improved one, deciding what to do with all the existing content is a significant challenge. While some content remains highly valuable, the majority may not be as relevant anymore. Most clients don’t have the time to go through each piece of content individually, sifting through the haystacks looking for that one needle. We’re not fans of that either so we’ve developed a process to help them make these decisions efficiently. In this post, we’ll share with you how we help our clients make these decisions efficiently.
Step 1: Build an Inventory of Content in a SharePoint List
Like Sun Tzu said, the first step towards victory is to know what you’re dealing with. We create an inventory of all existing content and compile it into a SharePoint list. This inventory includes unique identifiers for each piece of content and additional metadata such as the author, last opened date, and last modified date. This metadata helps us make informed decisions about the content’s relevance.
In the SharePoint list, we also include columns for the recommended action and explanation, the person or team assigned to make the decision, the final decision, comments, and fields to track who made the decision and when.
Why?
It’s important that we’re able to say that every piece of content was accounted for. We also need something to act as the definitive “source of truth” for the decisions made, the status of the migration for the piece of content, and other details.
Finally, we also prefer the use of SharePoint lists because of the built-in version history, list views, and ease of automation.
Step 2: Determine Default Decisions and Decision Makers
Next, we establish rules to create a default decision for whether to migrate a piece of content. If the content meets the criteria, we default to keeping it; if it doesn’t, we default to not keeping it. We would recommend deleting any content that hasn’t been viewed in the past 12 months, for example.
Additionally, we systematically identify the person or team responsible for making the final decision. This ensures accountability and clarity throughout the process, while also ensuring that your migration can continue on schedule.
Why?
After decades of conducting migrations, we’ve learned that the riskiest part of a project comes from getting content owners to make these decisions, particularly if the question is posed as “Should we migrate this content?”. Most users will defer the decision until they feel they have adequate time to review, even if that means migrating it first and deciding later.
Instead, we’ve found that asking “Do you agree with our decision?” results in far greater engagement, especially when attached to a deadline.
Step 3: Create an Interface for Decision Makers
It’s vitally important that our decision makers can easily identify the content we’ve asked them to review. To ensure that, we then create an interface that allows users to view the items assigned to them, track the items they haven’t yet decided on, and review the decisions they’ve already made. This interface simplifies the decision-making process and provides a clear overview of progress.
Why?
A user-friendly interface is crucial for engagement and efficiency. If decision makers can easily see what they need to do and have a straightforward way to make those decisions, the process moves much faster. It reduces confusion, minimizes the risk of errors, and ensures that everyone is on the same page regarding the status and progress of the migration.
Step 4: Provide Access and Set a Deadline for Decisions
Once the system is in place, we grant users access to the app and set a deadline for making decisions. We also warn them that inaction will result in the recommended action being taken automatically. This encourages timely responses and ensures the migration process stays on track.
Why?
Deadlines create urgency and ensure that the decision-making process doesn’t drag on indefinitely. By clearly communicating that inaction will result in a default action, we motivate users to make their decisions promptly. This keeps the migration on schedule and prevents bottlenecks.
A Practical Example
Here’s an example of how we present the decision-making process to users.
We frequently find ourselves helping organizations improve their collaboration through better use of Microsoft Teams. To help users find the right team, we always recommend naming conventions to help differentiate different types of teams. If the client has been using Microsoft Teams for a while, they’ll have a long list of teams that don’t meet our new naming conventions. We need the help of the team’s owner(s) to help decide what to do.
After pulling the inventory from the Microsoft Teams Admin Center and importing it into a SharePoint list, we determined that any team that had not been accessed in 6 months would be deleted. Everything else would be renamed based on the selected template.
Because we wanted to be able to provide instructions and additional details, we opted to create a simple Power App to act as our user interface, shown below.
Each user is presented with a list of items they own. This app lets them vote to either keep or delete each item. If they choose to keep an item, they must indicate relevant metadata that helps apply the appropriate handling or categorization
Conclusion
There you have it. This is how ThreeWill helps clients make migration decisions efficiently. While we use it for migrations, this approach to decision-making is something you can apply to your own needs. By building a comprehensive inventory, determining default decisions, creating an intuitive interface, and setting clear deadlines, you can ensure that your migration process is efficient and effective. This method not only saves time but also enhances engagement and accountability, allowing you to transition to new solutions with confidence and ease. Whether you’re dealing with documents, teams, or any other type of content, these steps can help you streamline the process and make well-informed decisions.
CONTACT THREEWILL TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MIGRATING TO MICROSOFT 365
