Migration to SharePoint Online : SharePoint 2010 & 2013

Migrate to SharePoint Online: SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 

Migration to SharePoint Online or Office365 plays a key role in the transformation and modernization of an organization. This has been proven to be right in recent times as many organizations empowered their teams and workforces with global access to enhance collaboration and boost productivity to tackle the current crisis.  

While it is true that the SharePoint server has been a great ally for collaboration and content management for more than a decade, meeting the ever-growing technical needs & demands to multiply business growth, upgrading to a SharePoint Online or Office 365, which has been to designed to modernize and digitally transform your organization and provide ubiquitous connectivity has become inevitable. 

Studies show that about 55% of SharePoint users around the world have already migrated to SharePoint Online and Office 365 and started reaping its numerous benefits.  

However, successful SharePoint Migrations require a detailed strategy and careful implementation- an area in which we excel. Our team of experts, with their immense experience in SharePoint Migrations, studied and developed a fool-proof approach that guarantees and delivers, with zero margins for error.

SharePoint 2010/2013 End of Life  

Microsoft will stop its extended life support for SharePoint 2010 by October 2020 and for SharePoint 2013 by April 2023. This means organizations that are still using the legacy versions of SharePoint should start looking for a solution, immediately. Since, migration to a new platform is certain, migrating SharePoint Online/Office 365 is not only the smart choice but also the right choice. Otherwise, Your organization will be left exposed and vulnerable. Here’s why-  

• When the extended life support ends, the promise of security becomes void as security updates/patches, bug fixes will no longer be delivered, leaving your entire organization unsafe. 

• Support for these versions will also end for good- resulting in an exponential increase in server downtime and expenses for the maintenance of outdated software and hardware.  
• By migrating to SharePoint Online or Office 365, get access to a modern & user-friendly UI as well as some of its best and extremely useful features that helps in increasing collaboration and productivity.  
• Before migrating, it is highly recommended to thoroughly examine the differences between the older and newer versions and make a detailed list of all the features that have become obsolete and all the features that are given a major upgrade or are just replaced in the latest version. Saketa provides SharePoint feature assessment that helps deliver fruitful migration.  
• It is also vital to have a Migration Strategy and a SharePoint Governance Plan in place, before beginning migration. We specialize in SharePoint Migrations and our Migrations specialists curated a simple yet advanced approach that guarantees a successful migration.  

Challenges of Migrating to SharePoint Online 

There are many things to consider and overcome while upgrading and SharePoint Migration is no exception. Depending on the sheer amount of data alone, a number of challenges can be encountered. And, when the rest of the considerations are brought into the fold, the possibilities for error-prone/unsuccessful migrations will be amplified. Both these scenarios the time, effort, and expenditure will be wasted and, will result in a reiteration of the entire migration process, increasing time, effort and, expenditure, again. Even after a successful migration, the probability of errors is very high.

Here’s how-  

• The speed of the migration will be affected if the internal servers are not configured properly/ if the internet speed is not meeting the required bandwidth, resulting in an increase of time for migration.  
• There will be a substantial loss of data respective to content types/columns, workflows and, web parts at the destination due to the lack of accounting of these factors at the source.  
• Deprecated templated and unresolved users will cause failed migrations if not paid attention to, at the source itself.  
• Hidden lists and libraries, preservation of item IDs, external lists and documents without proper versioning will also lead to unsuccessful migrations if not taken care of, right from the beginning.  
• Saketa SharePoint Migration Services is designed to break these barriers and overcome challenges faced during SharePoint Migrations. Our Migration Strategy, formulated by a team of SharePoint Migration masters will deliver a successful migration, within the anticipated amount of time and will also assist you by providing on-going support.  

The SharePoint Migration Approach  

A successful SharePoint Migration requires a thorough examination of resources & items to be migrated to formulate a plan, foresee threats & challenges, and confront them beforehand and, implement the plan to perfection. We have been doing that since a very long time and our years of expertise in handling SharePoint migrations and satisfying our clients by exceeding their requirements allowed us to become leaders in the field of SharePoint Migrations. Our ability to drive successful migrations is only possible because we follow a stringent approach, designed to carry out flawless migrations. 

• We divide the whole plan into three phases- The Planning Phase, The Execution Phase and The Inspection Phase.  
• In the Planning Phase, we take a deeper look at your current data and list out all the expected field/areas where there possibility for error before beginning the migration process.  
• During the Execution Phase, we can go for the 4R strategy
• In the final phase, i.e., the Inspection Phase, we examine the source and the destination and perform cross-referencing to confirm whether the migration is successful.  

4R’s

Replicate 

We preserve your data by replicating it and storing it securely. 

Restructure 

We analyze your data and establish a strategy to migrate as well as archive, purge and utilize your data.  

Reorganize  

We provide you a smart and easy methodology to reorganize your content in a modern and suave way.  

Redesign  

We upgrade your site structure by redesigning and personalizing it to best suit the requirements of your organization.  

Why Saketa?  

At Saketa, we value the requirements of our clients and consider their requirements with the utmost significance. We work with the best of the best and carried out numerous migrations, which garnered our years of repeat business and a huge client base, who trust us to meet their expectations. Leverage of expertise to transform and modernize your organization.  

Therefore Migration to SharePoint Online is a great idea. Upgrade to SharePoint Online, without any further delay!   

Metalogix Alternative: Saketa SharePoint Migrator

Metalogix Alternative

SaketaSharePoint Migrator is a strong alternative to Metalogix Migration tool. Discover what makes it your best choice as a Metalogix migration alternative.

Metalogix Alternative: Saketa Migrator

Saketa SharePoint Migrator is a strong alternative to Metalogix Migration tool being a fast, advanced and efficient migration tool that focuses on executing hassle-free SharePoint Migration to Microsoft 365 & Microsoft Teams. Discover what makes it your best choice.

Why should you choose Saketa SharePoint Migration Tool?

Saketa SharePoint Migration Tool is among the most advanced SharePoint and Microsoft Teams migration tool. Acknowledged by many of users as the best migration tool in the market, Saketa migrator is known for its speed, performance, ease of use and cost-effectiveness.

Migrate tons of data with “Low Price” tag

With no data/volume limits and no hidden costs, Migrate TB’s of data from any source to SharePoint & Microsoft 365 at turbo speed

One-time install, Manage migrations and keep SharePoint Secured

Saketa migrator says a big “No” to the installation process complications. No need of Server and client-side installs. Just One-click download with speedy install and update process. Get started on your migration journey quickly and with regular SharePoint Security audits.

Advanced Migration Insights

Saketa Migrator lets you visualize your migration process end to end. With built-in SharePoint Inventory reporting, Pre and Post Migration reports and Error and Mitigation reports, Saketa keeps you informed during every step of the Migration

User-Friendly interface

Saketa migrator provides a simplified interface with a wide range of features to manage all your SharePoint/Microsoft Teams migrations at a single place. It’s easy to use for both new and advanced users, making the migration process hassle-free.

What does Saketa SharePoint Migrator do better?

Saketa is feature packed with advanced capabilities that enhance your SharePoint Migration experience in the best ways possible.

Microsoft Teams migration: More than just moving across tenants

Modernizing your workspace to Microsoft Teams from classic SharePoint sites, Slack, Cloud shares (Box, DropBox and Google Drive) or network file shares is a guided tour with Saketa.

• Migrate from SharePoint to Microsoft Teams, including SharePoint Sites, Document libraries, permissions, and much more.
• Migrate from Teams to Teams, including associated SharePoint sites, content, channels, files, conversations, permissions, and settings.
• Teams Best Practices and Governance ensures the best utilization of Microsoft Teams to help achieve great professional feats.

Sharegate Alternative

Sharegate Alternative: Saketa 

Saketa SharePoint Migrator is an efficient Sharegate alternative. Understand everything that matters and how it is the Best Sharegate Alternative

Saketa is the best SharePoint migration tool and the advanced alternative for ShareGate. Understand everything that matters - advanced features, the automation built-in, insights and analytics to deliver a hassle-free migration to Microsoft 365.

Why should you choose Saketa SharePoint Migration Tool?

Saketa SharePoint Migrator is the #1 migration tool for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. Migrate, upgrade, transform, modernize or just reorganize. Have the perfectly confident start with Saketa superpowers.

Amazing inventory analytics

• Complete content inventory analysis and insights
• Error and warning alerts before the actual move
• Post-migration checks

Reliable Scheduling Options

• Schedule the start and sequence of migrations
• Recurring or one time; full backup or incremental
• Get email alerts upon completion

Blazing fast M365 Migration

• High-speed migrations to Office 365 via Azure storage
• No bandwidth throttling or impact to users
• 10x performance boost  

Incremental Migrations by CAML query

Selective or delta migrations is not a daunting task with built-in filters and advanced CAML querying options.

Advanced Teams Migration

• Teams migration from tenant to tenant
• Modernize your workspace from Sharepoint sites and cloud shares to Teams
• Simple wizard to guide you through the process

Get started with your migration journey with Saketa SharePoint Migrator 

Create, Communicate & Collaborate with SharePoint Intranet Solution

A SharePoint Intranet solution enhances your Digital Workplace experience by delivering great employee engagement, collaboration and productivity. 

SharePoint Intranet Solution

The digital workplace has been an ever-evolving solution that caters to the exponentially increasing remote workforce to empower them for various business processes. As an organization grows and expands across geographical regions, it’s become more evident to have an employee intranet software to achieve standard communication, collaboration, and immense document management flexibility.  

An efficient intranet platform with a proper technological investment, brings in a perfect blend of knowledge management, content, collaboration, communication and social interaction for a broader organizational connectivity. Employee intranet platforms thus turn out to be among the most rapidly adopted tools for the digital workplace modernization in every industry. 

This in turn empowers the remote workforce to unlock their full potential and stay on top of their game.  

Business Value Delivered by An Intranet

An Employee intranet platform is a connecting link between the employees in an organization. It establishes interconnectivity to support engagement and interaction. It also reflects the employee interests as well as that of the company as a whole. This gives a boost to the work culture.    

A business that opts for an employee intranet solution surely gets to witness higher employee morale which exponentially improves internal collaboration and communication. This helps with overall productivity. If invested wisely, an employee intranet solution can deliver great business value to your organization. 

Why Opt for a SharePoint Intranet solution?

If you are a decision maker and you are trying to analyze if going for an intranet is a good choice, let us help you out.

• Your employees get to extensively share their knowledge among their Teammates and other departments as well, to ensure the continuity of peer-to-peer learning.  

• The simplified communication offered by company intranet platforms ensure that the employees do not miss their one-to-one in-office conversations and instead have its virtual alternative through Enterprise Intranet Solutions. 
• An intranet gives a glimpse to the organizational culture and work process as a whole. With every information out there on a single portal, the organizational transparency increases greatly as the whole company can engage in a broader discussion through it. 
• Being connected, accessible and well-informed naturally boosts morale and productivity of the employees by imbibing a sense of importance and belongingness among them 
• Having a platform containing all the relevant information, document libraries and employee directory saves a lot of time and ensures that the employees get their work done quickly 

Must Haves for the Success of Your Intranet

An Employee Intranet solution aims at giving the maximum coverage to allow the proper communication and collaboration of the employees. Maintaining these can help you have amazing digital workplace experience.

Corporate Homepage  

The employee intranet journey starts with a corporate homepage. The homepage contains a summary of all the elements that can be explored throughout the employee intranet solution and contain quick access to each of those sections. It is basically the first element that catches the attention of the users and goes on to establish a long-term engagement with them.  

Unified Content, Communication & Collaboration 

The purpose of the Employee intranet solution is fruitful only when it is widely used by all the employees willingly and in fact, they wish to come back to it again and again not just because they are compelled to due to work purpose, but because they find it engaging and intriguing.  The content in a corporate social intranet should be engaging enough to arouse that interest and collaboration should be smooth enough to ensure ease that leads to great communication naturally.  

Collaboration with a Team/Function/Unit 

An Employee Intranet Software or Solution is supposed to be the gateway to accessing the different aspects of the organization by people with different needs, be it handling the important information, peer to peer conversations, or official communication.  Therefore, an intranet platform provides quick and seamless access to tools and applications required to connect the members of a Team or even promote inter-Team communication. The ease and simplification of communication and collaboration ensure synchronization among the team members, evicting all kinds of communication gaps. 

Integrate with Business apps  

The aim of establishing a Digital workplace is always to ease the employees with the communication and collaboration part so that they can concentrate on the real work they are assigned to. So, every employee’s expectation from a company intranet thus remains to unify all their work at a single space. Therefore, won’t it be fun if all the important business apps could be integrated into it? Yes, they can be. 

User Feedback & Improvements 

There should be tools that allow every employee to give suggestions either for the overall company’s interest or to a co-employee irrespective of anyone‘s designation. Usually, people refrain from suggesting to people who are senior to them or even to their colleagues to maintain their personal bonds at the cost of their professional improvements. An added feature of Anonymity can help a lot in this regard. 

 

We at Saketa believe in modernization and fulfilling every need of our clients to deliver the best digital workplace experience. Our years of dedication have earned us a spectacular client base in quite a short span of time and we are glad to be a catalyzing part of their digital transformation journey.  

Mapping Digital Workplace Insights

Going all-digital has become the need of the hour for most enterprises and organizations today. While there might not be any specific criteria and measurements to determine the extent of digital transformation that the organization might have gone through or the extent expected to be what it is expected by the stakeholders, there definitely needs to be a way to determine if they are following the right route.  

map those digital workplace insights 

While the higher executives and the investors need a clear picture of what inputs they are giving and the expected outputs out of them, there needs to be a way to map those digital workplace insights to know if the results regarding the business growth resonate with their vision of implementing these digital transformations. 

There might not be any definitive measuring scale to see how digital they have become but that does not in any way stop their investment, either monetarily or by investing in the workforce to define new opportunities. 

Investments might be in the form that can be easily figured out or maybe in the form of indirect efforts such as IT modernization, business processes automation, setting up digital workplace, Business Intelligence, or analysis of the current trends followed by the businesses and consumers worldwide.  

It doesn’t matter if a business shows it or not, but it’s a universal truth that each one of them is in the market to earn, grow, and multiply. Therefore, it’s quite expected from the investors to hope for the best use of their money while getting onboarded. If the investment will be able to drive up customer and shareholder value in the market and survive all the existing as well as the new competitors that might be born with a digital edge, then the purpose of the business is served.

Business Value of Modernization 

Regardless of the investment type and scenarios, if a company decides to invest in it’s IT modernization, the only thing expected in return is a good result! An investment, even if worthless to many of your competitors, if it brings you to value, you can easily term it as an upward rising curve in your business growth graph.

But how do we understand if it really is creating value? Measurement of course. Resorting to opt for Measurement itself is the first step for a successful business growth mapping. We can convert the digital workplace insights to a more understandable form to reflect the business value. The data gives in a lot of do’s and don’ts to follow indirectly. 

Ever since the organizations started going digital, it is quite surprising that in spite of having such a powerful resource to map up every instance of our business processes, very few of these organizations are utilizing the workplace insights to their growth and advantage. 

It’s quite interesting how many organizations are collecting data and reporting on them with very little insights while they can be used to much more advantage to determine what the business should and shouldn’t follow. Companies have leveraged historical reporting for many years than many still do an equivalent with new data they collect today. How do we drive digital workplace insights from the data? Find a way for a better understanding of how that data drives as well as the actions of its customers and employees. 

KNOW MORE ABOUT SAKETA INTRANET

Get to know Windows Azure Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)

Azure Multi-Factor Authentication refers to a Characteristic of an authentication system or an authenticator that requires more than one authentication factors for successful authentication. Multi-factor authentication can be performed using a single authentication that provides more than one factor or by a combination of authenticators that provide different factors.

What is Azure Multi-Factor Authentication?

Having two different factors isn’t multi-factor authentication, that’s just having two different instances of the same factor. You need different factors and the more factors that are used the stronger the implementation is considered to be.

A debit card is a perfect example of multi-factor authentication.

Something you have – Card itself

Something you know – Pin Code

One factor alone isn’t enough to complete the transaction, so you are using the two different factors to prove that you are the owner of the bank account. That model has been built into the IT industry with organizations issuing multi-factor credentials to the users. Which could something static like software certificates that used in the combination of a static password or something more dynamic like hardware token that generates the one-time password that changes every 30 seconds?

RSA Secure ID is a well-known example, the user enters the passcode from the device into the browser and the passcode is validated on the server in order to verify they are in the possession of the token. Similarly, the new Microsoft authenticator App can perform the same function by providing the passcode to the user’s mobile device which is a part of the Azure MFA suite of tools.

Concept of Azure Multi-Factor Authentication

Username and password authentication probably aren’t going away any soon but adding another factor of authentication in a combination of username and password is a way to further assurance of the user identity.

Relevant Authentication factors

Memorized secret passwords or passcodes besides using an Azure MFA as the second factor of authentication after using the primary username and password, you see the Azure MFA can also leverage the static pin code assigned to an individual user while using the Azure MFA server on-premises

Out of band device is another authenticator type, it’s a physical device that uniquely addressable and can communicate securely over a distinct communication channel. So, in the case of Azure MFA that device is the mobile phone and the secondary network is the phone network or the internet when using the Microsoft authenticator APP.

Single Factor OTP device OTP stands for one-time passcode it’s a hardware token or software-based token generator installed on a device like mobile phone and generates one-time passcodes, it doesn’t require second channel to receive the passcode. The passcode is generated with a seed value and device clock. The password changes in regular intervals when you input the password to the system you are trying to access the password is verified on the server-side because the same seed value that’s been issue to your token is used to verify on the server.

Risk of Authentication Factors

No, factors or method of authentication is without its risk and threats.

In Something you know category could be compromised in variety of ways, the attacker might get the password using phishing or social engineering attacks or even through malware installed in computer like keyboard logger.

When it comes to Something you have factor, the device could get stolen or the hardware authenticator could get tampered with or software authenticator could get copied with user’s computer. In the case of authentication using phone calls and text messages over the public telephone network these could be intercepted or redirected.

And even in Something you are factor is acceptable to threats, the attacker could copy the user’s fingerprints and create a replica.

But the point is nothing is without its threat. So, the point of multi-factor authentication is to make successful attack to difficult, if an attacker needs to guess memorize secret and hardware authenticator then they much likely to hold to the both and out of band is used to proof of possession of a registered device become even more difficult. The attacker might get the password through a web application when the second factor of authentication send to your phone, they won’t have possession of your device to perform the second factor.

Understanding Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

So, now you know the passwords aren’t enough anymore, for better understanding what Multi-Factor Authentication is and how you can verify user’s identity. Azure MFA is service from Microsoft to add MFA to your cloud based and on-premises application.

Azure MFA can verify a user’s identity in a variety of methods:

• Phone call
  • The user responds by hitting #
  • The caller ID number can be chosen
  • Optional Pin code (Azure MFA server)
• Text Message
  • One way
  • Two way
  • Optional Pin code (Azure MFA server)

• Microsoft Authenticator App
  • Push verification
  • Optional Pin code (Azure MFA server)

• OATH Token

In terms of deployments, Azure MFA works like this, a user registers the device with the account, for strictly cloud-based scenarios that account is stored in Azure active directory in the user portal to register phone number is provided in the cloud. It is just a few clicks to add MFA to Azure AD accounts and everything is provide including the portals to mangae Azure MFA along with reporting on authentications. Once the phone is being registered with the user’s identity and whenever a user logs-in to an application is protected with Azure MFA they get an authentication request to their phone, that authentication request is sent by the Azure MFA service in the cloud.

Depending on the method of authentication, the user might receive the passcode and enter that into the Azure AD login page, or they might respond to the verification request using their phone and the verification flows back through the service. as shown in the right side of the below image.

On-premises deployments, the user’s identity can be kept in the Enterprise Active Directory or any LDAP store and you can download the Azure MFA server to install on a physical/virtual server in your environment. Also, this infrastructure could all be running on your VM’s in Azure as well, you can manually add user’s to Azure MFA server or synchronize identities from AD or LDAP and if you aren’t already storing your phone numbers in your directory that information can be added to identities in MFA server. They can seek in a user portal you can install on a webserver to allow users to manage the information themselves, or you can set up some users as administrators of the portal so they can manage groups of other users. Users can change the authentication mode. For EX: from the phone call mode to use the Microsoft Authentication app using the portal.

Key Takeaways

Azure MFA integrates with Azure Active directory, any workload or SaaS application that is using Azure AD, can use Azure MFA authentication with no extra configuration or deployments.

Windows Azure Multi-Factor Authentication is easy to set up, manage, and use – enabling companies to meet their security and compliance requirements while providing a simple sign-in experience for their users. As you can see, this service is universal and provides multiple options to explore. Moreover, you can integrate it directly with your applications – there is an API provided for that.