I couldn’t have said it better! Here is a great presentation from the guys at Sharegate as to why migrations to SharePoint 2013 fail.
Embedding an Office 365 document in a webpage
One of the handy things that you can do with web based storage these days is embed a document from them into a web page. This can give the web page viewer almost full document functionality via a web page if you want.
SharePoint Online via Office 365 can also provide this same functionality. Simply upload an Office document to a SharePoint Document Library.
Select the ellipse (three dots) to the right of the name.
You should then see the preview window as shown. You’ll need to do this with current browser so you get all the features.
Just below the document preview you will see a small menu icon. Select this to display the menu shown above. In this menu you will see an option Embed Information, select this.
You will then a snippet of HTML code that you can copy and paste into a HTML page.
Now don’t forget that documents generally stored on SharePoint Online are secured so only certain people can access them. This means that unless you alter the security people will need to have a login to view the document.
You can of course alter the security of that file. In this case we’ll alter it so everyone (i.e. anonymous internet users) can have read only access.
If you return the file preview, just under the preview you will probably see a link that says Only shared with you. Select this to change the security on that file.
You’ll then be shown a dialog that displays the current file security. At the moment you can see that only I have access to that file. To change this select INVITE PEOPLE from the lower part of the screen.
You should now see a dialog that allows to select whom you wish to invite and what rights to the file they have.
For complete anonymous access to the file (i.e. anyone, anywhere on the Internet can view that file) enter Everyone into the Invite people field and change the access to Can view won the right. Also ensure that the Require sign-in option at the bottom of the page is unchecked.
Press the Share button when complete.
Immediately after doing this, you should see a message appear in the top right as shown above that tell you the document is now shared via a guest link.
If you return to the properties of the document again you will notice that the security options now say Shared with lots of people and Open to anyone via a guest link as shown above.
If you select the Open to anyone via a guest link you will be shown a dialog like that above that gives you a public link to that document. Thus, if you send that link to someone via email and they click on it they will be able to view the document.
If you select the link lots of people to view the securities you should now see something like shown above. Remember, EVERYONE means EVERYONE!
With all that done hopefully people can see the document embedded in your page as shown below.
If you can’t see the document or there is an error it is probably because I have forgotten about this post and deleted document but hopefully you understand how to embed it for yourself.
CIAOPS Virtual Technology Meeting–Agenda update
Our original speaker for the August meeting, Microsoft Technical Evangelist Jeff Alexander, has been gracious enough to change his travel arrangements to accommodate presenting on Wednesday the 7th of August 2013 as initially advertised. As you can appreciate, having access to Jeff is something that just can’t be passed up so I have slotted him back in for the event and pushed the Yammer presentation back.
Here is what Jeff is planning to speak on:
Title: Windows 8.1 Update!
Abstract: Windows 8 has been out for a few months now and we have received a ton of feedback. In this session on Windows 8.1; Jeff Alexander will talk and demo some of the new changes and how they benefit small business’s and larger enterprises. He’ll go through what’;s changed and show some of the cool new features including the update start screen, UI enhancements, desktop enhancements, the start button, new search and many more. We will also cover enterprise features such as assigned access, mobile device management and workplace join.
To attend the event simply visit the registration site at:
http://ciaops0813.eventbrite.com.au/
which after registration will present you with all the information you need to connect up to this webinar on Wednesday the 7th of August from 4pm Sydney time.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me directly on director@ciaops.com.
CIAOPS Virtual Technology Meeting update
Our meeting next Wednesday 7th of august at 4pm has had a change of agenda. Unfortunately, Jeff Alexander from Microsoft discovered a scheduling conflict and is unavailable. Have no fear, I think there are plenty of people who’ll be interested in the substitute topic:
All about Yammer
In this session you’ll receive an introduction to the Yammer product and learn how it will be integrated into Microsoft products such as SharePoint Online.
Presenter = Robert Crane, Office 365 MVP
I will also endeavour to record the session and make it available after the fact but if you attend the meeting you’ll be able to ask specific questions and interact with other attendees during the general discussion part of the meeting. If you haven’t already I urge you to register for the event at:
http://ciaops0813.eventbrite.com.au/
The event is free and I hope to see you there.
SkyDrive to be renamed
For everyone who found all this SkyDrive stuff confusing you’ll be interested to hear that Microsoft is going to re-brand the whole suite of products after losing a trademark dispute over the name. You’ll find more information about that here:
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-to-rebrand-skydrive-after-losing-trademark-skirmish-7000018804/
This would also indicate that SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013 will be renamed as well. No indications on what it will be called yet. My vote is for something like Azure drive. What do you reckon works?
Office Mobile for Android now available
Not unexpectedly Microsoft has now released Office Mobile for Android much like the recent release for iOS. You’ll find all the details at:
http://blogs.office.com/b/office-news/archive/2013/07/31/office-365-subscribers-get-office-mobile-for-android-phones.aspx
Once again, like the iOS version, it is a phone rather than a tablet app and you’ll need an active Office 365 Business subscription to gain access to all the features.
As I have said many times in this blog, you do need to give Microsoft credit for the speed at which it is now bringing these apps to different platforms, especially mobile ones.
Project and Visio Pro for Office 365 available in Australia
One of the pieces of the Office 365 puzzle that is still missing in Australia is Project Online. That is basically hosted Project Server 2013 provided as a service from Office 365. I have plenty of people who are keen on gaining access to this.
However, Telstra (the exclusive provider of Office 365 here in Australia for less than 250 seats) has announced the availability of Project and Visio Pro for Office 365. This is basically a subscription to the current Microsoft Professional and Visio Professional for up to 5 devices per license. This is just the client software, much like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc for your desktop. You can certainly store Project and Visio data files on SharePoint Online but you don’t get the full power of Project until Project Online becomes available, and there is no word on when that may be available here.
It is important to understand that the new Project and Visio Pro plans are only available as part of the Enterprise SKUs (i.e. not available with Small Business (P) and Medium Business (M) plans). For more information about these plans visit:
http://www.telstra.com.au/business-enterprise/enterprise-solutions/cloud-services/collaboration-applications/microsoft-online-services/index.htm
Migrating from Companyweb to Office 365 SharePoint
Companyweb is a SharePoint site that comes with all versions of Small Business Server. Thus, it is available in versions, 2003, 2008 and 2010. It basically uses the free version of SharePoint (now known as Foundation) as opposed to the commercial version of SharePoint generally referred to as SharePoint Server.
Office 365 on the other hand is a hosted version of SharePoint Server Enterprise. It is still available for older tenants that are yet to be upgraded as SharePoint Server 2010 whereas all new tenants since February 2013 and those that have already been migrated, it will be SharePoint Server 2013. After November 2013 all Office 365 tenants should be upgraded to 2013 versions of software, including SharePoint. Therefore this article will make the assumption that the migration is to the latest version being SharePoint Server 2013.
There is currently no free migration wizard to move Companyweb to Office 365. The general guidance from Microsoft when it comes to migrating SharePoint is that you need to consider it like moving house. This means that during such a process you generally, throw some stuff away, add some new stuff and relocate other stuff. In short it is generally not a 1:1 transition. You basically take the opportunity to re-engineer and add more value.
This translates into the fact the any migration of SharePoint is a very manual process and there are a lot of things you need to look out for. However, in broad strokes, here are the major 3 approaches to my mind:
1. Exporting
2. Templating
3. Third Party tools
1. Exporting
Most of data within SharePoint can be accessed by desktop applications. For files, you can simply map Windows Explorer (i.e. file manager) to Companyweb document libraries, then map another Windows Explorer to Office 365 SharePoint document libraries and drag and drop the files between locations. To configure drive mapping take a look at this article:
To migrate other items such as calendar, contacts and lists you have a number of options:
a. You can connect up many SharePoint items via Outlook and again drag and drop between SharePoint sites within Outlook. For information about doing that see:
Connecting a SharePoint Calendar in Outlook
Remember that Outlook can generally be connected to SharePoint calendars, contacts and document libraries.
b. You can export items to applications like Excel and Access. This is a one way process from which you need to import these items back into the new SharePoint. For information about doing that see:
Exporting a SharePoint list to Excel
Create a list based on a spreadsheet
c. More ‘fiddly’ option could include using SharePoint Workspace 2010 and even Sky Drive Pro client app.
Summary – Exporting
Using export techniques generally allows you to move directly from any source SharePoint version to any destination version of SharePoint. Downsides include:
– Very manual process, especially for large sites.
– Bandwidth considerations when dragging and dropping files between sites.
– Security will need to be regenerated on new SharePoint site.
– Loss of meta data i.e. additional information about items in SharePoint i.e. custom columns added to item.
– Loss of version history and previous versions
– Loss of customizations created via custom editors like Frontpage.
– Web parts not migrated.
– Loss of workflows.
2. Templating
The idea with templating is that SharePoint allows you to create a template of the either the structure of a site or an item (i.e. a list) or a template of the structure including the data. The down side is that you can only apply templates to the same version of SharePoint. Thus, you can’t template a site in Companyweb 2003 and import it into SharePoint 2013. The source and destination template need to come from the same version of SharePoint.
Here is some information on creating templates:
Copy or move a library using a library template
If you really want to use the template method you are going to have to upgrade your version of Companyweb to be at least SharePoint 2013. This would mean creating a virtual machine for each version of SharePoint and doing a database migration to each version.
Thus, if you are coming from Companyweb 2003 you are going to have to do a database migration to Windows SharePoint Services 2007, then another database migration to SharePoint Foundation 2010, finally another database migration to SharePoint Foundation 2013. Only then could you consider templating and importing to SharePoint Online.
As you can appreciate this is a very involved process and requires 3 independent SharePoint machines, 3 database migrations at least. If you want to go down this path have a look at the previous series of posts I did on migrating on premise Companyweb.
You will of course have to one more after what I wrote about in these posts (Foundation 2010 to Foundation 2013) but the database migration process is identical.
Summary – Templating
Templating allows you to migrate more complete blocks of information that simply exporting. You can also generally maintain history and metadata. At worst it allows to keep the SharePoint site structure but the overheads are steep, because the downsides include:
– Significant requirement in hardware to run up swing migration servers.
– Limits on how large templates can be.
– Large sites take time to copy, attach and upgrade.
– Security will need to be regenerated on new SharePoint site.
– More chance of issues developing while migrating. For example, if there are incompatibilities or database corruptions this process can become complex.
3. Third Party tools
There are not many third party tools available that offer a fully automated process of migrating SharePoint. Some of these almost have minimum SharePoint version requirements, so check before shelling out money. The main downside of these tools are that they are expensive. They are aimed at Enterprises rather than small businesses.
Once such tool is ShareGate but as you can see it is not particularly cheap for a one off migration:
Also be aware that those prices are annual prices. So to do a full site migration you are currently looking at $2,000. That is roughly about 20 hours of time if you want a comparison (and that doesn’t include the time spent to work out how ShareGate functions).
I have used ShareGate and have had conversations with them about their pricing, especially for SMB, but alas it appears like most third party tools with SharePoint Enterprises are the focus.
Another option is Metavistech at:
http://www.metavistech.com/category/tools-office-365
No pricing on their site but expect to pay at least ShareGate money. This tool appears to be more encompassing than ShareGate but I have not any experience with the product.
Another option is Quest Migration Suite for SharePoint at:
http://www.quest.com/migration-suite-for-sharepoint/
Another option is AvePoint:
http://www.avepoint.com/sharepoint-products/
Office 365 MVP Benoit Hamet did a series of posts on migration to SharePoint Online 2010 using AvePoint for migration which you can find here:
Summary – Third Party tools
These tools are going to make migration much easier. They are going to take just about all of the content and potential even handle securities. However, the down side is cost. None of these plans are cheap, they are thousands of dollars because they are enterprise focused. Downsides are:
– Expensive.
– Need to spend time understanding how tools operate.
– May still need to re-generate securities on new site.
Appendix – Third Party tools
In the mix of third party tools I will throw in Skykick. This a service that will migrate all your on-premise information (mail, data, etc) directly to Office 365. Again, I have no experience with this company and I have received no replies to email conversations I attempted.
They would seem to be a good option provided you simply want the information across into Office 365 as is. I have no idea about how it would appear in SharePoint, how securities would be managed and what happens if there were items that could not be migrated.
It is certainly an option worth considering if you are planning on moving all the data in one hit and just want SharePoint to ‘work’ in Office 365. Personally, I have my doubts until I have actually seen the process operate, in that case I leave it up to other to leave a comment on this post or contact me directly (director@ciaops.com) with their experiences.
Summary
That in broad strokes is what I see as you options. All require work, some require more time, some require more money but all need a fair amount of planning and understanding of the migration process.
The best option for people unfamiliar with SharePoint is probably simply to export the data, however be aware of the limitations that brings.
If you have any questions or need assistance with SharePoint migrations to Office 365 I suggest you contact me directly (director@ciaops.com) and I’ll do what I can to assist. Hopefully, I can build this post out into more information tools and procedures to smooth the way for people. Of course, everything about Companyweb to Office 365 migrations I learn goes into my Guide (www.wssops.com) which I think is pretty good value for everything it contains, especially for SMB.
