In many companies, Microsoft 365 provides a functional digital workplace that makes everyday work easier and increases productivity. When restructuring is imminent, only experts are usually able to implement it quickly and without errors. After all, many decisions can only be reversed after the transfer with great effort.
The choice of migration variant alone has a significant impact on the work of users. You can gradually carry out conversions over a weekend or with the extended parallel operation. All approaches offer advantages and disadvantages, which specialists can evaluate and implement individually for your case.
Preparing and planning Tenant to Tenant migration
Good preparation and planning is the first important step in migrating an environment to a target environment. To avoid mistakes, you should proceed in a structured manner:
1. Analyze the environment
First, experts analyze the source environment(s) to identify relevant quantity structures, existing configuration parameters, and the data volumes to be migrated. Only by analyzing the initial situation in the source tenants can necessary changes in the target environment become apparent. This applies, for example, to user accounts, policies, mailbox settings, permissions, and folder structures. The configurations of Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive also play a role here.
2. Define the target state
The final state of the target environment is the result of the migration project. To do this, define in detail in advance security settings, service-specific configuration parameters, synchronization architecture, and required additional tools. At this point, you should also know which user accounts you want to transfer.
3 Determine the configurations and migration steps
The next step is to plan the new environment in detail. Ideally, specialists will design the necessary configurations and define the individual migration steps. The migration schedule is also relevant at this stage. Good planning also considers not to restrict the users' work too much by the migration and determines the communication about it.
Before you start, you should give the experts involved the necessary authorizations so that they can begin the migration process in both tenants.
Carrying out the migration
Based on the planning, the data is transported from the source tenant to the target tenant. Depending on the amount of data and the number of users, migration batches must be defined. The migration occurs during ongoing operations and does not involve functional restrictions. The users continue to work in the familiar environment until the actual cutover. After the cutover, they are automatically transferred to the new tenant as far as possible. Nevertheless, information about the time and measures of the cutover is essential because, for example, depending on the configuration of the target tenant, logging in with a new user name may be necessary.