소개
Migration is always a thorny topic that comes up on a project at the beginning in terms of scoping a project, towards the end during rollout or adoption phases, or once the project is closed and users are left on their own. The activity of migrating or moving data into or between team sites, mysites, or from network drives and systems like Notes can be considerable.
There is however unfortunately no one answer to meet all types of scenarios and by enlarge I recommend businesses consider strongly the need to migrate in the first place from a bulk migration perspective. Consider if it is practical and possible leave where it is and or use it as an exercise in 'cleansing' your data before migrating or indeed moving it into SharePoint or possibly cheaper storage mediums. More on this topic in a future article.
For this article I want to provide some guidance to end users and their options. I frequently come across end users from both former or current clients asking me on how best to approach the moving content from one site to another or how to move a whole team site (sub sites included) from one location to another or even content from network drives during a migration or adoption phase. There are a whole range of scenarios and methods/tools here, but hopefully I will be able to provide you with some options to help educate and set you on the right path.
Firstly, to set your expectations right from the start… any migration into or around SharePoint is not easily achieved , especially using out of the box methods and requires quite a few manual steps. This is mainly because of how we typically store our team site content (in lots of what are called site collections – top level sites typically), which are in turn stored inside SQL databases. But also as a result of lack of support in general in the user interface within SharePoint to provide the necessary control and mechanisms to allow the copying or moving of content. This is probably why there are lots of 3rd party tools out there to help you.
In any case, make sure you plan carefully your site design and naming conventions to avoid such a need to move your content later!
A few pointers firstly on terminology before we continue:
Site Collection – Top most repository and security boundary for the storage and management of content. SharePoint can contain many hundreds or even thousands of these in a deployment. Top level team sites are often site collections.
Team site – A top level site that is created at the very beginning to store and or share content. Typically a site collection can contain many tens of thousands of team sites and or sub-team sites in one site collection each containing many hundreds of thousands of documents or greater if structure properly.
Sub-site – Are basically team sites that sit under the top level site in a site collection and have been created by users to store further content away from the top level site. They have more or less the same functionality, but are/can be considered 'children' of the top site and will likely but may not necessarily inherit permissions and can link between each other, etc
Content – Any Office documents, PDFs, images, discussion lists, calendars, contact lists, or text that you have stored in your site.
List – Calendars, contacts lists, document libraries, discussion boards are all examples of 'SharePoint lists' and can contain a mixture of content items.
Methods & Tools
The following are some real world end user driven methods and tools in which to consider for your content migration into and of team sites in the main, but also will work for mysites, and publishing content.
1. Creation of site 'templates'
For any team site that you have content in, there is an ability to save the entire site, its document libraries, meta data and content (up to a size of 1O megabyte only) as a re-usable template. This now becomes a portable site template to re-use on other sites. With this you can now create repeatable sites that contain the same structure and or content.
To do this, under the Site Setting you will find a feature called 'Save Site as Template'. This will allow you to save just the structure AND OR the content as well – Though because its limited to a maximum of 10 megabytes in size. It's not ideal and will depend on the size of your content as to its relevance or not as a tool for you to use.
Once you have saved the site as a template, (give it a familiar name) you can go under Site Settings to your 'Site template gallery'. Your newly saved site template will be there. Now, this can be downloaded to your desktop, (“site templatename. stp”) and basically uploaded in to your new site into the destination 'site template gallery'.
What happens now is that when you go to your new site and attempt to create a new site, the template will appear an 'Custom' tab option on the 'select a template page. Hence its important to call it something familiar on the previous steps! Once this is chosen, your new sub-site (and content if you ticked this option) will be there in the new site!
Pro's
- Quick and easy method to get small sub-sites migrate from one location to another
- Useful for creating different site templates for different audiences/needs
- Maintains branding/look and feel
- No admin or code deployment required
- End user friendly.
Con's
- Cannot be used for creating top level sites (unless uploaded to centrally 'master gallery'.
- Loses security permissions
- Loses item level security
- Limited to 10M in size
- Does not save sub-sites as part of the site, only that one site
2. Creation of list 'templates'
Basically for each list or library you have created on your site (this means any calendar, document library, contacts list, or other generic list) you can actually save each individual list including any additional columns you have created inside AND documents/content inside them, as a reusable 'list template'. As with 'Save as a site template' mentioned previously, this now becomes a portable list template to re-use on other sites.
To do this, under the list or document library settings, you will find a feature called 'Save as template'. This will allow you to save just the structure AND OR the content as well – Though again it's limited I to a maximum of 10 megabytes in size, so not ideal and will depend on the size of your content as to its relevance or not as a tool for you to use. At the very least you can get the list structure, then maybe use Option 3 below to bulk move your content.
Once you have saved the list/content as a template, (give it a familiar name) you can go under Site Settings to your 'List template gallery'. Your newly saved list template will be there. Now, this can be downloaded to your desktop, (“ listtemplatename. stp”) and basically uploaded in to your new site into the destination 'list template gallery'.
When you go to your new site and attempt to create a new list or library, the template will appear an option in which to create from – hence as before, call it something familiar. Once this is done, your new structure (and or content if you ticked this option) will be there in the new site!
Basically repeat this process for all your other libraries or lists until you have copied your content across to your new site.
Pro's
- Quick and easy way to move/copy list based content and structure including meta data
- No admin or code deployment required
- End user friendly
Con’s
- Resource intensive
- Loses security permissions
- Lose item level security
- Limited to 10M in size
3. Explorer view 'quick and dirty - copy, cut and paste'
This method only works for document libraries or picture libraries. Basically if you open up your picture or document library using 'explorer view', (Choose Actions, Open in Windows Explorer) then do the same in your destination library, you end up with two explorer windows. Make sure you can see these side by side. You can manually select all your documents, copy/paste from one location to another or drag and drop in the same manner.
This is particularly useful for moving data from network drives (but is very very slow!) or other areas that support a protocol called Webdav.
Note: Any meta data won't be copied and you lose time stamp and other original owner details. DO NOT move or copy the 'Forms' folder! This is a systems folder needed by SharePoint.
Pro's
- Quick and easy way to move/copy content between libraries
- No admin or code deployment required
- End user friendly
Con's
- Resource intensive
- Slow moving lots of content
- Need to setup security permissions again on destination library
- Ignores any metadata you have setup!
4. Export to Excel
As you might expect, this is only useful for lists (not document libraries).
On any given list you have the option to 'export to excel' or 'export and link to excel'. This can be used to provide an export into excel, then save/re-import back into another list.
Note: This can be quite painful as your origin/destination lists need to have the EXACT columns and metadata setup. Otherwise it will through up lots, (read huge!) amounts of data integrity errors that you will need to work through. Not recommended for the faint hearted, but does work, with limitations.
Pro's
- Quick and easy way to move/copy content between lists
- Good for limited offline working
- Good for large lists (Better use Access for lists with thousands of entries)
- No admin or code deployment required
- End user friendly
Con's
- Limited to one list at a time
- Not very robust
- Potentially resource intensive when uploading new data
- Need to setup security permissions again on destination library
5. Third party tools and server side tools
There are a mass of third party tools out there and too many to mention specifically on here. Ultimately many do however require a level of access (read server level permissions or server side code updates) you might not be allowed to have, so be aware of this 'show stopper' before you go out and buy something from Bamboo, Quest, Metalogix, Kwizcom or some other freeware on the internet! And before you go ahead and install a 3rd party product, read this article I wrote a while back.
For large migrations of data, the above methods 1-4 are simply not scalable and hence such products will be needed to make migration that much easier to manage.
하지만 설치하게 인식하지만 그렇게 쉬운, 일부 제품 수 있습니다 싸구려 사운드 플랫폼 및 데이터 소중한 손상될 수있는 혼란에. 내가 공격 당할 프로젝트를 가지고 와서 걸쳐 많은 제 3 자 웹 부품 (무료 인한 청구)를 가지고 더 많은 문제를주의해야합니다 그렇게. 메타 데이터 분야 대상과 원산지 등 안 존중, 문제 및 성능 유지 파일 시간을 / 저자 견고성 전체 스탬프 세부 정보와 일반 단지 개선이 가장 필요한 영역 안에있는 것으로 판명이 지역 내 주요.
저기)에있는 외에 몇 가지 서버측 도구 (라인 기본적으로 명령 도구를) 사용할 수있는 어떤 사본 사이트 사이의 내용을 / 이동 모음 (자주 저장하고 다른 데이터베이스가있는 모음은 사이트 내에서 필요하다면. 이들은 있지만 시스템의 사용자에 의해서만 사용하는 관리자 그러나, 다른 사이트에서 하나의 움직일 수있을 경우상의해야 /이 필요합니다 그 금액을 특히 대규모 콘텐츠.
결론
수동 경우에 자주 빠르고 / 쉽게이 상대적으로 매우 작은 컨텐츠를 자사의 사이트를 다시 방법을 만들어 데이터를 또는 사이트 위의 이동이 필요하지 않고 사용하는 것보다 실제로 이동이
마이 그 레이션에 대한 개인의 가치 코드를 시도 위의 측면 서버 또는 배포할 제품을 파티 옵션 3 구입하지 않고는 이해를 얻을 수의 당신이 할 수 있습니다. 비록 위의 제한없이 증명 또는 예제 아니라 '총알 그렇게 실험을하고 당신을 위해 노력 작동 하나에 정착하기 전에 당신이.
거기에 도움을 할 파티하는 많은 제 3의 도구를 할 수 밖에. 그러나 구매는 어떤 소프트웨어의 목적에 맞는하지로드 그것에 우리의 첫 시연하지 않고 환경을 생산. 난 공간이 쓰는거야 어떤 주제에 대한 더 빨리 마이 그 레이션의 일반적인 시계, 그래서!
감사합니다
앤드류 Walmsley