Author: Robert Everatt

Office 365 Customer Services

Robert Everatt / / Office 365

 

We have been receiving an error in our Office 365 site for about a month now, this error denies us from editing some of the public facing site and permissions. A ticket request was opened around the same time to deal with the problem and it’s only now that we have had any reply (and that was after I sent a few angry emails), in fact I was contacted by phone. Up to this point, customer service from Office 365 had been pretty terrible due to complete lack of contact, however, Josh from Microsoft seemed eager to help and get to the bottom of the problem. Unfortunately he was not able to help from his position but he took as much information as he could and has passed it onto the next stage, he has also promised to contact the department dealing with the request every day and inform me of any changes.

In conclusion, Microsoft customer services are pretty poor when it comes to getting round to your service request but when they do, they provide a good customer service experience.

RE

3rd Party Migration Help

Robert Everatt / / Office 365

Personally, I find it annoying that Microsoft don’t offer any SharePoint 2010 Server to SharePoint 2010 Online migration tools. The fact that we would have to pay a third party company to migrate our databases and other data over to Office 365 doesn’t make me feel great about the Migration process, especially after having to migrate from 2003 to 2010 manually, might as well get some other company to carry out the entire migration process for us.

There are, however, a number of Microsoft Partners that offer several different migration services, and not just migration but also consultation and other aid. This does make me feel a little better about not being given the power to migrate independently. These third party Microsoft partners would work with the team carrying out the SharePoint migration, helping them through the planning and preparation phase then offer their services to carry out the implementation. Despite this, I do get the feeling that they don’t just do it for you, I believe that anyone in the implementation team, working with them,  will learn from their aid and not just sit back and watch them do it all.

Here are some examples of these services:

CORE – http://office365.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-GB/PartnerDetails.aspx?PartnerId=4295471437

COMPAREX UK Ltd – http://office365.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-GB/PartnerDetails.aspx?PartnerId=4295469269

Azaleos – http://office365.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-GB/PartnerDetails.aspx?PartnerId=4295687153

GETRONICS Ltd – http://office365.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-GB/PartnerDetails.aspx?PartnerId=4297734539

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Migrate from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to SharePoint 2007 Server to SharePoint Server 2010 (that’s quite a mouth full)

Robert Everatt / / Migration, Office 365

We now have a migration check list!

I have recently found an extremely useful document on Microsoft’s TechNet page that details the transition from Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Server to SharePoint Server 2010. This document can also be used to aid our transition in to Microsoft Office 365.

The document can be found here:  http://lncn.eu/jx7

If we are to upgrade to Office 365 by first upgrading to SharePoint 2007 and then to SharePoint 2010, these are the steps we would take:

  • Prepare to upgrade to SharePoint 2007
    • Determine how to handle customizations
    • Develop new custom site definitions and create upgrade definition file
    • Run the Pre-upgrade scan tool to determine compatibility
  • Prepare to upgrade to SharePoint 2010
  • Perform Pre-upgrade steps (see http://lncn.eu/hjz)
    • Install all perquisites
    • Run and test a full backup in SQL Server
    • Deploy upgrade definition files and new site definitions
    • Upgrade custom Web Parts packages
  • Create the temporary Office SharePoint Server 2007 farm
    • Download the software for the temporary farm (a trial version of SharePoint 2007 can be used if we do not have a full version as a trial version will last 180 days)
    • Prepare the 2007 environment (see http://lncn.eu/fp26)
  • Create the temporary SharePoint Server 2010 farm
    • As SharePoint Server 2010 is not our final destination we will only be setting SharePoint 2010 up as a temporary virtual server much like SharePoint 2007
    • As our method isn’t covered by the document mentioned earlier we will not be creating a full SharePoint Server 2010 farm but a virtual temporary one instead
  • Perform first upgrade (full details see http://lncn.eu/jvx5)
    • Ensure that the pre-upgrade scan has been used, the upgrade will not work otherwise
    • Back up the content databases
    • Restore the backed-up copies to temporary farm
    • Add the databases to the Web applications to start the upgrade process
    • Profile information will also need to be imported (see http://lncn.eu/guw2)
  • Verify the first upgrade
    • Review the upgrade log file
    • Review the transferred sites to ensure they have transferred properly
  • Perform the second upgrade
    • Use the pre-upgrade checker this time
    • Carry out the same actions as before to upgrade to 2010
  • Verify the second upgrade
    • Same as before

Once this is complete, the system will be ready to migrate into Office 365. Unfortunately I could not find any documentation for migrating to Office 365 amongst Microsoft’s documentation. I asked on the community website, one guy said that Microsoft have a list of partners that offer Migration services, these are people that will guide the user through the planning and migration to Microsoft Office 365.

Alternatively a third party application could be purchased such as AvePoint, Quest or MetaVis. These applications have the ability to migrate data from SharePoint Server 2010 to SharePoint Online, retaining all the customization and security settings. If the user were to migrate manually they may lose all content and security settings.

This document has been extremely helpful; it may have taken some time to find all this information without. Anyone considering upgrading their SharePoint server, I strongly recommend giving it a thorough read.

RE

Planning an upgrade from SharePoint 2003 to 2007

Robert Everatt / / Migration, Office 365

From research, it has become clear that the most common way to upgrade from SharePoint Server 2003 to Microsoft Office 365 (SharePoint Online), is to first upgrade to MOSS 2007. However there are some third party tools available to facilitate the migration, this will be discussed in another post.

Good planning in advance seems to be the key thing when upgrading a large portal and there are a handful of analyses that should be conducted which are detailed below..

Type of Analysis Measure Description
Logical Implementation Number and Type of existing sites Understanding this will enable the orgaisation to determine usage and whether or not the sites are used etc.
Logical Implementation Audiences for existing sites Understanding the audiences will help to determine the configuration to support the security and access structure.
Logical Implementation Site access methods and requirements Understanding methods of access, both current and future desired state enables requirements to be met with MOSS.
Logical Implementation Site feature usage and requirements A list of utilized features should collated to ensure that the current site templates are appropriate and satisfy requirements.
Physical Implementation Size of existing sites content database organisation Once numbers and types of sites has been established, a primary input to the planning of migration and organistion for MOSS will be how the physical structure of SPS exists.
Physical Implementation Size and placement of existing server farm infrastructure Both the physical layout of the servers within the farm as well as the physical implementation of sites within the virtual servers inside SPS Virtual Servers to newly design MOSS Web Applications.

In a further blog post we will be looking at the next steps required when migrating.

Sharepoint Migration 2003 to 2010 online

Robert Everatt / / Migration, Office 365, SharePoint 2003

Many people have said that to upgrade to Microsoft office 365 from Sharepoint 2003, you would have to first, upgrade from 2003 to 2007, then 2007 to 2010 and finally 2010 to 2010 online. To me, this seamed like an extremely long winded and annoying way of accomplishing this.

After some searching I found that there were several tools to help with the migration process, the most notable being MetaVis migrator, a program that claims it can migrate all content & data from Sharepoint 2003 to Microsoft Office 365. I was a little sceptical of this knowing that there would probably be many compatibility issues from doing a straight transfer. MetaVis did however offer a free trial, a transfer of 1gb worth of data for free, I decided to give this a try using a section of the office 365 site and the universities preview portal.

Connection to both sites using the MetaVis client was easy and from there I could browse the structure of both sites, I was able to views lists, documents and even links, this seemed quite promising. After browsing through both the sites using the client, I transferred a very small portion of the preview portal over to 365. This took around 4 hours to complete but after it had, I located the new site on the 365 browser to check that it had done it successfully.  Unfortunately it appeared that the transfer was incomplete, despite it saying no errors, there was not content in any of the sites and only SOME of the data had transferred, some site pages didn’t even get transferred. This put me off a little, however I do have an opportunity to speak with a technician at MetaVis to discuss the client and how best we could use it for the university, if it does work as it is suppose to.

Until I have learnt more about MetaVis I still believe that the transfer to SP07 then to SP10 is the best/safest option.

RE