Mistakes to avoid in sharepoint or office 365

As firms quickly move to the cloud, mistakes when migrating to and adopting Office 365 are common. To unlock the real benefits of the cloud, whilst achieving a seamless migration, it’s vital that you both plan your deployment and understand the ins and out of Office 365 and SharePoint Program.

Make sure you avoid these common Office 365/ SharePoint deployment mistakes:

MISUNDERSTANDING OFFICE 365 PRODUCTS

As Office 365 is a broad suite of products, there is a great deal of scope for misunderstanding and assumptions. In particular SharePoint Online is an easily misunderstood product, which is strong in some areas, but potentially weak in others. If used as a file-server replacement on its own, often there’s resistance from users as it introduces additional steps for saving documents, which in the worst case scenario can result in user.

RELYING ON OFFICE 365’S ARCHIVING TOOLS

Some latest versions of Office 365 offer archiving tools, like In-Place Archiving and Litigation Hold. Although these tools can come in very handy when retrieving data for audit, they are not aimed at providing recovery of personal data.

Also, activating In-Place Archiving and Litigation Hold will require delving into complex configurations of Microsoft.

TRUSTING THE RECYCLE BIN FOR RECOVERY

When users delete files or emails, they get into Recycle Bin. Although the files can later be retrieved, it is quite difficult to find that particular file in Office 365’s Recycle Bin. This is because there are no search options for Recycle Bin, so users have to manually search through each file. This might take a lot of time and effort.

What’s more, there is a limited retention period in Office 365. Once that retention period is over, you might lose the file forever.

FAILING TO ANNOUNCE MIGRATION INFORMATION

Most Office 365 migrations take between one and three days to complete. If the migration is to occur on working days, staff may be left confused and unable to work, as some files and emails will be inaccessible during this time.

FAILING TO DO A THOROUGH CONTENT AUDIT

If your company moved from one office to another, would you expect everything from your old building to be lifted and dropped in your new office with no re-organization? Of course not. You wouldn’t move a load of ancient paper documents you never use any more and store them in your shiny new archives – what a waste of time, space and energy! In the same way, migrating to Office 365 should involve an audit of your content. Decide what you need to keep and what you can afford to leave behind.

CHOOSING THE WRONG MIGRATION TOOL

There are many SharePoint and Office 365 migration tools out there, many of which do the same thing. So, how can you decide which one will help you most? When evaluating different platforms, ask:

• Who’s going to use the tool?
• Is the UI easy to navigate and attractive?
• Does it give you the power to selectively choose which kinds of content to migrate?

NEGLECTING USER TRAINING

Moving to Office 365 will no doubt mean employees will need to change the way they work, whether it be through a new file saving convention, new communication processes etc. Without proper information, this can be confusing for users, and can potentially create opposition to adoption and proper usage.

Rahul Tripathi has been writing custom content for over 3 years. He provides writing, coaching, and editing services. Mca graduated from the University of Delhi with bachelor’s degree in English Literature.