How to make Microsoft 365 tenant to tenant migration a success

1. Making sure that both tenants are organized and up to date as part of your pre-migration planning.

First thing you can do to ensure a successful merger or acquisition is something you should already be doing regularly i.e., making sure your Microsoft 365 environment(s) are organized and updated.

Microsoft 365 introduces new collaboration concepts such as Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups that allow end-users to build the tools, they need without going through IT. You need to control the proper use of tools to avoid extra groups and teams collaborating for the same work which can be done with few users and also to keep your company’s data safe over the long term.

2. Create a detailed inventory of the items you have

There are always some important decisions need to make as an IT administrator before you start the migration.

• Which client will be the source environment and which will be the target?
• What is the scope of the migration project?

To be able to answer these questions, you need to have a clear idea of ​​what each tenant is currently doing.

Office 365 Migration Tenant to Tenant is a great opportunity to stock all your existing content and get your newly merged Microsoft 365 tenant on track. When you identify existing content, you may find duplicate content, content that is no longer or is no longer valid, or content that can be archived and deleted. Due to this, it’s important to have a detailed inventory when planning any successful migration

3. Pre-identify and fix potential issues for successful migration between tenants

Another equally important plan for a smooth tenant-to-tenant transition and keeping the impact on end-user productivity as low as possible and also identifying and resolving potential issues before they begin.

Below is a list of some things you can check for to make sure everything goes smoothly when migrating:

• File sizes
• Permissions
• Unsupported list templates
• URLs (file paths) and file names
• Workflow state and history
• Unsupported site templates
• Checked out files
• File extensions
• Folders which exceed more than 5000 items
• InfoPath
• Branding
• Custom solutions

Identifying and fixing potential problems now can have great long-term results. It reduces downtime and potential impact on users, reduces risk while maintaining a target environment that is much easier to manage and secure.

4. Include everything your team needs in the migration process

While you want to be wise about the scope of your migration project to minimize downtime, you also need to leave nothing left for your users to get the job done. Also, since this is a Microsoft 365 tenant-to-tenant migration (not an on-premises to cloud migration), you may need SharePoint Online Tenant to Tenant Migration.

For example, Microsoft Teams has become a central part of the Microsoft 365 user experience, thanks to its constant new features, user-friendly interface, and seamless integration with other Microsoft tools. According to our data, 60% of Microsoft 365 groups have Microsoft Teams. Migrating Microsoft Teams is challenging since most team data isn’t stored in Teams. It is stored in different locations such as the SharePoint team site, Exchange team mailbox, etc.

Currently, hosting solutions providers like Apps4Rent take full responsibility for assuring uptime and also offers services like Azure Desktop as a Service which makes them an exemplary partner to choose for the service.