You’re migrating your company’s data from one cloud platform to another. There is a ton of items to keep in mind. Mygreat.cloud aims to facilitate and automate those tasks for you. However, in order to cleanly cutover from one provider to another you need to make sure you have the following checklist covered.
We compiled this list and will release articles covering each of the topics separately. Over time there will be documentation linked and individual scenarios covered. Consider this article an intro and overview to switch platforms in your business environment.
Has the data traveled over cleanly and without any loss?
Mygreat.cloud provides reports for every object you migrated. If so required those reports may contain checksum proof of data integrity (proving files have not been altered during transfer).
Often a time, files may exhibit issues due to incompatible names, sizes or types. Those situations need to be addressed individually, even if you allow mygreat.cloud to automatically fix the object paths according to a cloud's naming convention, as we cannot address all situations.
The implemented AI based assistant will suggest solutions for you that you can use. Should the intermediate reports contain acceptable proposed solutions, just accept them and import using the platform.
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Is your user base valid on the target system?
Mygreat.cloud allows you to migrate the user base including user groups. We strongly recommend however to integrate your systems with an IDP (Google, ADFS, Azure AD, Okta, PingIdentity etc.). This way you can facilitate user provisioning and authentication as you essentially delegate user management and authorisation to a third party that can cover many services in one go.
Once your users and groups have been correctly introduced to the target system, don’t forget to test their access. This you can achieve either by having some test users, or some trustworthy employees who you can check their access with.
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Is the new permission structure sound?
Just making sure that end users are in place and can log in does not yet cover if they have the right access granted. You may have sensitive data or data that is only meant for a specific department.
Maybe there are files and folders that should be access in read only mode by most employees?
Understanding and making use of the new permission structure is a great challenge, but needs to be covered if you want to make your end users' life better. Use group based permissions, make use of permission inheritance, delegate permission management to data owners.
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Have you configured end user software and devices?
Many cloud platforms come with fantastic end user clients that can be configured via scripts or manually. Depending on the amount of users, and the potential growth of your company, manually setting up end users' machines can be a challenge prone to user error.
We highly recommend using mass deployment tools for this purpose (AD Group Policy, Intune, SCCM). If well planned, your end users may experience the smoothest possible transition, as the drive labels, letters and mounting points can be pre-scripted. In a perfect world, any internally linked data (within Excel spreadsheets and other tools) can just work, without any additional effort.
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Third party software configuration
Were you using Outlook plugins? Or maybe some special integration between other services and your cloud collaboration platform? Many architectural, advertising or financial companies use specific programs and processes that affect and manipulate data in your repositories. You as the IT admin need to be aware of all.
Those need to be all switched. Plan ahead, test and prepare your solution with test users or trusted employees. Perform POCs (Proof of Concepts). Consult with team and department leaders. Maybe they have introduced some workflow or software that you don’t know of yet, or have not thought about when deciding to switch to another cloud platform. Make sure everything works before cutting over.
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Are your end users prepared?
Do you trust your end users to self train? Maybe yes, maybe not. Regardless, cloud storage providers have different sets of features that can be leveraged. You may want to introduce shared links now for sharing data with customers instead of attaching files to emails. Or maybe folders have been restructured during the migration in order to introduce better data hygiene. Sometimes an email or online course will suffice, other times a full blown training is required.
Mygreat.cloud can prepare training sessions for you and with you. We will analyse your use case and come up with the perfect curriculum. We speak english, german and polish and are available in all time zones.
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Is there additional metadata that is required?
We had migrated companies that made use of custom metadata. Medical documents may have a plethora of additional information attached, like country, medical area, compounds, related documents etc. Financial documents may have owners, reviewers, multiple revision dates etc.
Mygreat.cloud allows for custom metadata migration to allow for custom workflows and automation that were there before. Reach out to us, if you feel you need further advice on that.
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Final configuration?
Clouds often allow you to specify defaults and configure many aspects of the system. It is highly advisable to take the time and go through each and every admin configuration item. You will most likely be surprised how highly customisable certain cloud collaboration platforms are.
You can specify default settings for shared links, or prohibit certain ways of data sharing. Often there is a way to create specific user roles that grant not only access to data, but also to features. That way you may have team members responsible for data recovery from the trash e.g.
How much volume should each account have for private use? How many previous versions should the system allow for? What should be the default trash retention policy? Those and many more items can be set to make the most of your new data platform.
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Feel free to investigate the linked articles to go on a deep dive for every topic, or let us do the heavy lifting and schedule a scoping and analysis call with us free of charge.