Hello everyone. In this article, we will talk about the SharePoint Online solution we have offered to our customers when their employees that work outside of the office have recently encountered a problem when they connected to the File Server system via VPN.

 

First of all, SharePoint Online is a cloud-based service under Office 365. In order to access SharePoint Online, all you need is a device with an internet connection. Therefore, you can access it with your username and password on any device that can access the internet without the need for any VPN tool or integration.

 

HOW DO I MIGRATE DATA TO SHAREPOINT ONLINE?

We can easily migrate our data on the Local File Server to the SharePoint Online infrastructure by using the SharePoint Migration Tool. After installing the migration tool on the File Server, we log into the application on SharePoint Online with an authorized user.

As you can see below, we can get the folders/files in Local transferred by selecting File share on the screen that pops up. And we will continue with the File Share option.

Here, we will determine which folder will be migrated. In this example, since we will migrate the “Share” folder on the Local File Server and the files under it, we will select the Share folder.

After determining our folder, it is time to choose which service to move our data to under Office 365. As you can see here, we can transfer our data to SharePoint Online, as well as to Teams or OneDrive infrastructures by using a migration tool. In this example, we will choose SharePoint.

In the settings we have done so far, we have determined that we will transfer a folder in the Local File Server to SharePoint. Here, we will determine to which site we will transfer our data in the SharePoint infrastructure. In this example, we will use the EG-SPO site on SharePoint.

While our data is being transferred, we can determine our migration methods with the settings you will see in the image below. In this example, we will choose to migrate the version histories of the files we will transfer. When we press the Migrate button, the Share folder we have determined in the Local File Server will start to be transferred to the SharePoint Site we have chosen.

It will take time to transfer the files according to the size of our data. When the file transfer is complete, you will see the screen below. On this screen, you can access the report of the file migration process and analyze whether there is a problem. We see that our file migration has been successful. Now, let’s see together how to access the files we have transferred to SharePoint.

As you can see below, when I access my SharePoint Site through portal.office.com, the folder I transferred under Documents is available.

From this point on, just like the authorization logic you use on the Local File Server, you can make user or group-based authorizations on SharePoint with the help of “Manage Access”, enabling authorized people to access this folder.

So far, we have actually seen how easy it was to transfer our data. I think the question you will have in your mind will be this: How will our users access this data? Our users can easily access their files in the SharePoint online infrastructure if they access the portal.office.com address from any device. A second method is, as you can see on the screen below, when the users press the “Sync” button, they can map the relevant folder to their Windows 10 computers with the OneDrive agent.

After pressing the Sync button, they will receive a warning suggesting that if the OneDrive agent is not installed on their computer, they should install it, or if the OneDrive agent is installed, as in my example, they will receive a warning that says “Open with OneDrive”. We will select Open with OneDrive.

After completing the OneDrive agent processes, as you can see in the image below, we can use the SharePoint Site and the folders and files under it in a format mapped to my computer. After this point, the users can work under this map and each file that they will save in this location will be directly sync to SharePoint Online.

We sought, in this article with you, answers to the questions of how our data from Local File Server is transferred to the SharePoint infrastructure and how it affects the user experience. Hope to see you in our next article.

 

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