The situation
Amstein + Walthert has a multilingual intranet based on SharePoint 2010 for the publication of news, events and information. This was realized with the use of publishing pages, metadata, specially made web parts and custom branding. Several workspaces with individual data storage were used for this collaboration. As part of a sourcing project, the platform should be built on a new foundation. The email service had already migrated to Office 365, which is why Office 365 used SharePoint Online as the target platform for the new intranet. Our task was to migrate all content and functions of the existing intranet 1:1 and to use only out-of-the-box functionalities from SharePoint Online. In addition to the intranet, the collaboration workspaces and authorizations as well as the employee database and their CVs should also be migrated.
The approach
In a first step, we verified the feasibility of migrating the SharePoint Publishing Pages to Office 365 Modern Sites and planned the rough procedure. Within a few days we developed a multilingual prototype, which gave the customer an idea of the new look & feel, the information and authorization architecture as well as the data organization. After the concept was approved, we implemented the homepage using the new WebParts. The homepage (hub site) connects all modern sites, which enables cross-site search for content and continuous navigation and branding. We migrated documents, articles and the metadata using ShareGate, while we migrated the thematic landing pages manually. The employee database search can now be done with Microsoft Delve and the collaboration workspaces containing all the data, the document history and permissions were migrated 1:1 to Modern Team Sites.
The result
With SharePoint Online Modern Sites from Office 365, Amstein + Walthert now has a future-proof intranet platform. Despite the requirement to migrate the intranet without changing the content, we managed to refresh the look and feel, and breathe new life into the intranet. The modern pages are mobile responsive and can therefore be used from anywhere and with all devices. The new access rights, structure and functions simplify the publication of news, documents and events. The social functions of the sites show the popularity of posts. People search with Delve was also mentioned as a significant improvement. For IT, the change to the Microsoft Cloud means a significant simplification of the processes on the intranet. Operating expenses decrease because Office 365 and SharePoint Online are automatically updated and the data is backed up.