How a migration really goes

One team’s migration, from the Friday before to the audit after.

Every mailbox, site and account on the plan moved and passed its checks. On Monday the referrals team couldn’t work. This is why that happens on well-run migrations, and how we plan so it doesn’t. Every scene is illustrative.

The problem

Everything on the plan moved. On Monday the team couldn’t work.

It happens on well-run migrations. Every mailbox, site and account on the plan moves and passes its checks, and Friday’s email says it all went well.

On Monday a team opens the app they work from and it’s empty. What stopped them wasn’t on the plan: the flow that carried their work from one place to the next. A migration plan lists things, and a team’s work runs through the links between them.

Migration teamTo: Referrals team; HR; Procurement

Wave 3 complete

All mailboxes, sites and accounts in wave 3 have moved and passed their checks. All green.

There’s nothing you need to do. Have a good weekend.

Referrals teamChat

Monday

  1. Asha Kaur

    Is the referrals app blank for anyone else?

  2. Tom Reid

    Same. Nothing in it since Friday lunchtime.

  3. Grace Obi

    The email on Friday said it had all gone fine.

  4. Tom Reid

    The referrals are all in the inbox. They’re just not getting into the app.

  5. Grace Obi

    Work them from the inbox for now. I’ve logged a ticket. The service desk say it wasn’t part of the migration.

Friday’s email, and Monday morning. Illustrative.

The usual way

Everyone means to clear out before they move.

Then the date gets close, and everything goes in boxes. The removal firm is good at its job. It knows what a wardrobe is and how to get it down the stairs. It doesn’t know that the boxes in the loft could go to the tip, or that the fish tank has to travel in the car with you. It charges by the box, and helping you pack less isn’t its job.

A Microsoft 365 migration works the same way, including one that follows a merger, an acquisition or a divestiture. The migration tools are good at moving mailboxes, sites and files. Everything you move still costs something: licences, time, checks on the night. Deciding what to leave behind, and what needs carrying by hand, falls to the IT team or consultancy running the move.

They know the tenant well. How each team uses it is knowledge that sits with the teams: which app reads which list, which library is shared with an outside partner, which people can’t work without desktop Excel and so need the full Microsoft 365 apps licence.

Wave 3Box 212

Room
Referrals
Contents
Referrals archiveSharePoint site · 41 GB
Still used?
YesNoLeft blank
Needs special care?
YesNoLeft blank
Who relies on it?
Left blank
Packed and labelled, with the questions that matter left blank. Illustrative.

The inventory

So the plan becomes an inventory, kept in spreadsheets that multiply.

A discovery export becomes a workbook. The workbook gets split by workload, because that’s how the work is divided: users in one, mailboxes in another, SharePoint in a third. Copies go out for review and come back filtered, with extra columns. A month later there are several finals and nobody is sure which one matches the tenant.

Each sheet describes the tenant on the day it was exported, and the tenant keeps changing. The copies also hold everyone’s name, mailbox size and what they can open. They go round by email and end up in the Downloads folder of whichever contractor needed them last, outside the controls the migration is meant to respect.

Contractor’s laptop

An illustrative folder of migration spreadsheets, in Downloads, Riverside migration
NameModifiedBy
Tenant discovery export 02-03.xlsx2 Mar 09:12Export
Users_master.xlsx15 Mar 11:40JB
Users_master (1).xlsx15 Mar 14:03PL
Mailboxes - wave plan DRAFT.xlsx19 Mar 10:27SK
SharePoint sites v2.xlsx22 Mar 16:15PL
Power Platform inventory.xlsx25 Mar 10:02SK
Users_wave2_JB edits.xlsx28 Mar 08:58JB
Migration tracker v3.xlsx2 Apr 13:20SK
Migration tracker v3 - Copy.xlsx4 Apr 09:05JB
Migration tracker v3 - Copy - Final.xlsx11 Apr 16:42JB
Migration tracker v3 FINAL (use this one).xlsx11 Apr 16:51SK
Two finals, nine minutes apart, on a contractor’s laptop. Illustrative.

What the plan misses

No sheet listed the flow that joined the mailbox to the app.

The referrals team works as one process. A referral arrives in a shared mailbox, a flow copies it into a SharePoint list, and the Power App they open every morning reads that list.

The plan has the mailbox in wave 3 and the list and app in wave 5, each on its own sheet. The flow isn’t on any sheet. Wave 3 moves the mailbox, and the flow keeps watching an address that has gone. No row turns red.

In NovalysisNovalysis, the planning product we build, reads your tenant through Microsoft Graph and keeps it current. It unpacks each flow to find the mailbox it watches and the list it writes to, and builds waves around teams and departments, with the shared mailboxes, Teams and sites their people rely on.

Planned in spreadsheets

Wave 3 moves a mailbox.

  1. Shared mailbox referrals@ Wave 3 In the new tenant.
  2. Flow New referral → list No wave Breaks in wave 3 Still in the old tenant.
  3. SharePoint list Ref Intake 2019 Wave 5 Still in the old tenant.
  4. Power App Referrals triage Wave 5 Still in the old tenant.

Monday 08:47 Asha Kaur: Is the referrals app blank for anyone else?

Planned in Novalysis

Wave 3 moves the referrals team.

  1. Shared mailbox referrals@ Wave 3 In the new tenant.
  2. Flow New referral → list Wave 3 In the new tenant.
  3. SharePoint list Ref Intake 2019 Wave 3 In the new tenant.
  4. Power App Referrals triage Wave 3 In the new tenant.

Monday 08:47 The app has Friday afternoon’s referrals.

The referrals team’s wave 3, planned two ways. Illustrative.

Excel isn’t a database

The decisions end up in the Notes column.

Excel is good at lists, and a migration plan is mostly links. You can point one sheet at another with a lookup, but nothing checks that the link still holds once someone renames a list or saves a copy. Version history can show that a cell changed. It can’t show who agreed the change, or why.

So the decisions get typed wherever there’s room. “Do not migrate, per call with Finance.” “Renamed, see email.” They make sense on the day to the person who typed them.

In NovalysisEach Power App is linked to the SharePoint lists and files it reads, with how many people use it and who owns it. Scope decisions are recorded against the thing they’re about, with the reason and the person who made them.

In the migration tracker

Migration tracker v3 FINAL (use this one).xlsx

In the migration tracker: rows from Migration tracker v3 FINAL (use this one).xlsx
ObjectTypeWaveNotes
referrals@Shared mailbox3check flows?? AK
Ref Intake 2019SharePoint list5renamed, see email
Referrals triagePower App5owner left?
Finance-Share-OldSiteDO NOT MIGRATE per call w/ Finance
Board papersLibrary4?4 or 5? ask JB
  1. A dependency, written as a question.
  2. The new name is in an email somewhere.
  3. A decision with no name, date or reason anyone can check.

In Novalysis

Referrals team

Wave 3 · Fri 17 Apr · moving together

What the team relies on

  1. Shared mailbox referrals@ Used by all 6 Wave 3
  2. Flow New referral → list Watches referrals@, writes to the list Wave 3
  3. SharePoint list Ref Intake 2019 In the Referrals site Wave 3
  4. Power App Referrals triage Reads the list · used by 6 people · owner G. Obi Wave 3

Decisions

  1. Flow, Referrals site and app go with the mailbox in wave 3

    Referrals service lead · The app can’t miss a day of referrals.

  2. Referrals archive site left behind

    Referrals service lead · Read-only since 2019.

Read from your tenant · updated 06:10 today

What was spread across Mailboxes - wave plan DRAFT.xlsx, SharePoint sites v2.xlsx and Power Platform inventory.xlsx, plus the flow none of them listed.

The same facts, in the final migration tracker and in Novalysis. Illustrative.

Three weeks out

Checking a wave for problems takes an afternoon of filters.

Before each wave, someone has to find whatever could stop it, because anything missed turns up on the weekend of the move, when everyone who could fix it is busy. In the spreadsheets that means filtering the users sheet for the wave, matching the names against the shared mailbox sheet with a lookup, and checking each mailbox’s size in the admin centre, because the export is a month old.

Then the people affected need telling. Someone drafts the email, sends it round for approval, pastes it into Outlook and keeps a note of who got it. A week later it starts again for the next wave.

In NovalysisThe migration team asks the assistant. It looks up the wave, checks its people against your rules and the mailboxes they use, and says what it found in plain English. Asked to tell the people affected, it prepares the email from your template and shows you the plan to approve. Nothing is sent until someone approves it, and what was sent, and to whom, stays with the record.

Assistant

Wave 4 · Friday 24 April

  1. J. Hart

    Do any of the people in wave 4 have anything that would stop them migrating?

    • Looked up wave 4: 212 people
    • Checked them against your rules
    • Checked the mailboxes they use

  3. Assistant: One thing. Three people in wave 4 are members of invoices@, a shared mailbox holding 63 GB. Shared mailboxes in the new tenant aren’t licensed, which limits them to 50 GB, so this one can’t move as it is. Its owner is Dana Moss.

  4. J. Hart

    Use our oversized mailbox template to email Dana and the three members on Monday morning.

    • Found your template: Oversized shared mailbox
    • Prepared an email for 4 people

  6. Assistant:

    Schedule an email

    Waiting for you

    You are about to schedule “invoices@ is too large to move” to 4 people for 09:00 on Monday 6 April, and submit it for approval.

    People it reaches today
    4: Dana Moss, who owns the mailbox, and its 3 members
    When you approve this card
    The email goes to your comms approvers. Nothing is sent until they approve it.
Two questions, and the email they lead to, waiting for approval. Illustrative.

Moving day

The service desk answers the same four questions all morning.

Most staff skim the general emails, then pick up the phone when the change reaches them. When do I move? Will I lose my calendar? What’s my new address? Where has the shared mailbox gone? None of it is hard to answer. It all arrives on the same morning.

The emails go out by hand: the same message to each wave in turn, from a list of who’s in which wave, sent again whenever a wave’s date moves. Anyone who misses one is pointed to an intranet page they’ve never opened.

In NovalysisComms teams set up a campaign once, with each message timed from the wave’s date, and it runs for every wave. Each person gets a page about their own move, in your own branded app in Teams: the date, their new address, what moves with them, what to do first and every email they’ve been sent, so missing one doesn’t mean a phone call. You choose what each wave can see, and when. An assistant answers questions from your FAQs and the person’s own move, and leaves the service desk the ones that need a person.

Riverside move

Your move, Asha

Friday 17 April

In 7 days

Your new email address[email protected]

What’s moving with you

  • Your mailbox · 6.2 GB
  • Your OneDrive · 3.4 GB
  • Shared mailbox: referrals@
  • Team: Referrals

Before then

  • Check you can sign in (done)
  • Tidy your mailbox
  • Clear out your OneDrive

Emails we’ve sent you

  1. One week to go: tidy your mailboxNew
  2. Two weeks to go: what’s moving with you
  3. Your move to the new Microsoft 365 tenant

Ask a question

Will I lose my calendar?

No. Your calendar moves with your mailbox on Friday 17 April. Meetings you’ve already accepted will be there on Monday morning.

Service desk: 020 7946 0321, 8am to 6pm

Asha’s move page, in your branded app in Microsoft Teams. Illustrative.

Two months later

In June, the auditors asked for last year’s accruals.

The migration had finished in April, and the consultancy that ran it moved on to another client in May. In the new tenant the auditors could find neither the accruals nor the Finance site they had worked from the year before.

The site had been renamed on the way across. The accruals had been left behind on purpose, on an old site kept read-only. The reasons were in Notes cells, in one copy of the migration tracker, in the consultancy’s SharePoint, and nobody still on the project could say who had agreed them.

In NovalysisEach site’s page in Novalysis shows when it was taken out of scope or renamed, who did it and the reason they gave, and the wave’s sign-off shows who approved what was left behind. Consultancies move on, ours included. The record stays in your Azure subscription for as long as you keep Novalysis.

SharePoint site

Finance-Share-OldNot migrated

Scope history

  1. Taken out of scope

    Closed years stay on the old site, read-only, until the audit is signed off on 30 June. This year’s work moves to the Finance hub.

    J. Hart, migration lead · from the review queue

  2. In scope for wave 4

    Automatically, from discovery

Wave 4 sign-off

  1. Approved, with this site listed as left behind and the reason above

    Head of Finance Operations

SharePoint site

Finance hubMigrated in wave 4

Name history

  1. Renamed from FIN-Team-Site-2016

    Naming standard: no years in site names.

    J. Hart, migration lead

Kept in your Azure subscription

A site left behind and a site renamed, each with its reason and who decided it. Illustrative.

Quest, ShareGate, BitTitan and CodeTwo do the moving.

They do it well, and most organisations we talk to already have one. We don’t compete with them. Our work comes before the move: what to leave behind, what needs special care, and the order that lets people keep working. Novalysis flags the mailboxes, sites and Teams nobody has used in months, and the desktop Office licences going unused, so whatever you leave behind or scale down is a decision someone made and recorded.

  1. Decide in Novalysis what moves, what stays and when
  2. Sign off each wave and export it in your tool’s import format
  3. Move it with Quest, ShareGate, BitTitan or CodeTwo

Everyone can work on the Monday after the move.

That’s the whole aim. Bring us the migration you’re planning and we’ll show you what it would affect, team by team.

Get in touch [email protected]