Migrating File store to SP2010 ECM considerations

Migration Considerations

During the planning process of a migration, decisions should be made early as to whether content is migrated directly into SharePoint 2010 "as - is" or whether this opportunity should be explored to make any changes to the information architecture, archiving, or look and feel and address the pain points. Since, making changes to any of these areas can complicate the migration process, some organizations choose to focus simply on migrating the content to SharePoint 2010, and then enhancing the other aspects of content are pushed to the later phases of the project. Simplifying the migration can help to reduce the coefficient of risk by substantially reducing the number of variables & at the same time reorganizing the content and make minor changes to the look and feel of may go a long way in driving adoption.

Other organizations choose to take the opportunity of the migration to organize their content in a better way at the same time as it is moved into SharePoint 2010. This may involve updating the information architecture, revamping security, implementing archiving, storage optimization and retention policies, or consolidating and reorganizing the content.

 

If the migration is a Sharepoint to sharepoint migration, adoption is less of an issue later, since the users are already used to a certain way of accessing files which is not drastically changeing after the upgrade process.

However, if this is a File server to SharePoint migration we need to be careful since the access and process of using the file has changed somewhat and there is a learning curve required by the end user to successfully use the document management features to be most productive.

From my experience, here's a list of supporting points to use  the document management :

• Document Library :
  
  Document Library is a List template used to create a repository of documents to be accessed by the users. This is one of the parts of a site which has other tools available for collaboration. A document library  is a specialized list with functionality tailored to managing
  documents.
• Document Workspace:
  This should be used when there is a team that wants to collaborate on a few documents  say < 5,000 or so. This serves the purpose without the overhead of maintenance and storage. A workspace is a specialized type of site with functionality tailored around either a single document (a document workspace) or a scheduled meeting (a meeting workspace).

• Document Center:
  This is a site template dedicated to manage a large volume of active & changing documents. Any time a document can be declared as a record by either moving it to a Record Center or declaring the document as a record in same document library using the in-place feature.The Document Center site template supports creating knowledge base archives. Typically, knowledge bases contain single versions of documents, and a site can scale to 10 million files. In a typical scenario, such as a technical support center for a large organization, 10,000 users might access the content, primarily to read it. A subset of 3,000 to 4,000 users might upload new content to the site

• Record Center :
  This is a site template specifically dedicated for managing large volume of records (documents that are not modified),Tens of millions of records in a single Records Center, Hundreds of millions of records in a distributed archive: This is an effective place for Hierarchy, Driven By Metadata 

     Here are some of the major features:

• Document ID: Every document can be assigned a unique identifier, which stays with the document even when it's archived. This allows records to be easily referenced by an ID no matter where the document moves.
• Multi-Stage Retention: Retention policies can have multiple stages, allowing you to specify the entire document life cycle as one policy (e.g. review Contracts every year, and delete after 7 years)
• Per-Item Audit Reports: You can generate a customized audit report about an individual record.
• Hierarchical File Plans: You can create deep, hierarchical folder structures and manage retention at each folder in the hierarchy (or inherit from parent folders).
• File Plan Report: You can generate status reports showing the number of items in each stage of the file plan, along with a roll up of the retention policies on each node in the plan.
• Taxonomy and Centralized Content Types: The archive will be a consumer of enterprise-wide taxonomies and content types, ensuring consistency and context transfer between the collaborative spaces and the archive. We'll be talking a lot more about our 2010 taxonomy investments in future posts.
• Content Organizer: The records router can use meta data to route incoming documents to the right place in the hierarchical file plan. For instance, it enables you to automatically enforce rules on content that is submitted, like "If a Purchase Agreement is tagged with Project Alpha, send to the Alpha Contracts sub folder and apply that's folder retention policy to the item."
• Virtual Folders: The file plan is a great way to manage a repository but often time isn't what you want to use to navigate and find the content you are looking for. The SharePoint 2010 Records Center makes use of a new feature called meta data based navigation, which allows you to expose key meta data as virtual folders: