From the demo, we realized that AvePoint could definitely help us with our SharePoint migration.
In order to host its corporate intranet and allow staff to store documents, Tannis utilized Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The platform enabled approximately 70 of the company’s employees to collaborate on documents stored in departmental sites on SharePoint as opposed to sending files as email attachments and quickly filling up inboxes. With SharePoint’s document versioning capabilities, employees could also access older versions of documents when needed.
As the company’s servers began to age and maintenance grew to be too costly, Tannis administrators made plans to upgrade its servers to a virtualized platform in order to better scale for the business. In this process, Tannis also upgraded its Microsoft Office platforms to the latest versions and began to plan a migration to SharePoint 2010. “The platform upgrade appealed to the company as it offered better integration with 2010, more document management features, easier team collaboration, and the ability to integrate with Office contacts and shared calendars much better than previous versions,” said Brandon Bertrand, Administrative Technical Assistant at Tannis.
Tannis administrators evaluated the time that would be required to carry out the migration manually, which would involve individually copying all documents over to the new SharePoint 2010 environment as well as rebuilding departmental sites and implementing security settings for all users. They estimated that the project would take at least a month to complete, and would require two employees to be devoted to it full time during that period. “Our timeline for the project was not very long,” Bertrand said. “We didn’t want it to take longer than a month.”
During the migration planning process, Tannis received a call from AvePoint. The administrators were intrigued by the fact that the company worked closely with Microsoft as a Depth Managed Gold Certified Portals and Collaboration Partner and Gold Certified ISV Partner. A demo was subsequently scheduled. “From the demo, we realized that AvePoint could definitely help us with our SharePoint migration,” Bertrand said.
Tannis purchased and implemented DocAve Migrator. With DocAve, administrators can perform full fidelity content migration from previous versions of SharePoint at the site, subsite, or item level. After installation, Bertrand set up the company’s migration plan through DocAve’s simple administration console. Bertrand was able to engage AvePoint’s live, 24/7 technical support team for any questions he had. “Support was very quick to respond and knowledgeable about the product,” Bertrand said. “Working with them was a very pleasant experience.”
While DocAve offers flexible scheduling for migration jobs, Bertrand opted to carry out a live migration overnight from home through DocAve’s web-based user interface. “We wanted to have the least amount of impact on our end users, so I began the migration from home at 10pm,” Bertrand said. “By 3am, all 25 GB of our SharePoint data was migrated to SharePoint 2010.” Information critical to the business was kept intact during the transfer, and all folder structures, document properties, associated metadata permissions, and access controls were retained with full fidelity.
By completing its SharePoint 2010 migration in the span of one day, Tannis completed the project 97 percent faster than migrating using SharePoint’s native abilities would have allowed. Furthermore, the impact on end users was minimal as hoped. “End users only noticed the new look of SharePoint 2010, and there were absolutely no complaints about missing data on the new platform,” Bertrand said.
On SharePoint 2010, Bertrand used DocAve Content Manager to seamlessly manage and restructure content with minimal interruption to business processes. DocAve comprehensively moves, copies, and restructures SharePoint sites, content, and topology within or across SharePoint environments. “DocAve allows me to move content from one folder in SharePoint to another with drag-and-drop simplicity,” Bertrand said. “It only takes about five seconds to move a document.”
Thanks to its successful SharePoint 2010 migration, as Tannis makes plans to migrate more content to SharePoint and ultimately host content in the cloud through Microsoft Office 365 – SharePoint Online, DocAve will continue to be a valuable asset. “DocAve Migrator will help us move our employees’ public contacts off of Microsoft Exchange Server and into SharePoint,” Bertrand said. “Once we are ready to implement Office 365, DocAve Content Manager will allow us to move our data to the cloud.”
Tannis Food Distributors is a trusted supplier of major brands to the food industry in Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec
From the demo, we realized that AvePoint could definitely help us with our SharePoint migration.