RSMUS.comNow more than ever, users and organizations are looking to web-based enterprise content management systems like SharePoint to handle the vast amount of paper and electronic files that they have accumulated.
This is a logical shift. Keeping documents and files—especially sensitive content, or files that are business-critical—in file cabinets or in network drives is not only inefficient, it’s risky. Sometimes prohibitively so, especially when the search technology exists to find things quickly. Who hasn’t tried navigating a labyrinth of folders and subfolders trying to find that one file they need and wondered (aloud) why it has to be this hard when Google or Amazon can find me whatever I want in seconds?
As organizations begin to understand the need to relocate their shared files into a content management system, the inevitable next question becomes, “what should we enter in SharePoint?”
Our experience tells us that not all files are created equal, and not all users need the same level of access to everything. Just copying and pasting entire shared folders (and that network of subfolders underneath it) isn’t solving the problem, it’s just relocating it.
What administrators need to understand is the methodology that makes a good content migration successful. Before getting started, there are questions that need to be discussed and answered:
- What types of files will be moved?
- Who will own the files during migration, and who will own them afterwards?
- Is there enough content that it will take days or weeks to migrate?
- Will we use metadata to eliminate the need for folders and subfolders?
Typically, as much or more time is spent grappling with these decisions than is actually spent migrating the content and that’s a good thing. The last thing an IT manager or CFO wants is to see after a migration is employees clicking around SharePoint pages just like they used to when the files were on the local shared drive
To find out more about this or other ways that RSM can assist you with your SharePoint needs, contact RSM’s technology consulting professionals at 800.274.3978 or email us.
