Learn How to Connect SharePoint On-premise to Office 365?

Office 365 is a cloud-based solution offered by the Microsoft. It let business users access their Office applications or all other services online. For example, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype for Business, etc. What all features one can use is all dependent upon the subscribed business plan. But now most of the users want to connect SharePoint on-premise to Office 365 and looking solution for the same. Now, migration from on-premise to Office 365 SharePoint online is not at all an easy task to perform. Therefore, in this blog, different approaches to switch from SharePoint to Office 365 is discussed. However, if a user wants to have an effortless solution to upgrade SharePoint to SharePoint Online, he or she can use SharePoint Migrator software. It is one of the quick and reliable ways to perform the migration.

Point to Remember: If a user migrates from one version of SharePoint to another, then always keep in mind that they are not same completely. Both of them are from different plans that a user can subscribe with a different set of available features

How to Migrate SharePoint 2013 on-premise to office 365?

Considering all requirements of users in mind, five different ways to upgrade from SharePoint to Office 365 SharePoint Online are covered below.

Method #1: Copy Desired Files to Office 365 Manually

The first and least preferable way of doing the same is extracting the files from SharePoint via Explorer View, and migrating all of them to the destination manually. But, there are some side effects of doing so like a user will lose all Metadata, including created by and created date. It is because of the users who are responsible for copying the file. Thus, this method is least recommended to the users because on ones wants that someone else owned his or her documents suddenly and get modified at the same date and time.

Method #2: Use Office 365 Migration API

In order to have the quick way to connect SharePoint on-premise to Office 365, one can use Office 365 Migration API. It is a new way to perform the migration, which will increase file migration speed by leveraging Azure. All data is exported to a migration package first, which is later on sent to Azure Storage. After that, a timer job is executed in the Azure and they will simply take the package and transfer it all to office 365 environment depending upon the package settings.

No doubt it is the fastest method, which is developed by Microsoft that will make migration easier for the users. But it is really complicated to configure and is used to move only content. Apart from this, one needs to set up the whole environment before starting the migration packages.

Method #3: Hybrid Upgrade to Office 365

In this method, the main approach is to keep both environments running, On-Premises and the cloud. However, in the Hybrid mode, both the environments are linked.

Instead of migrating older content to Cloud, the main concept is to keep using On-Premises SharePoint and also starts using Office 365 by creating new sites. As the connection is established successfully, one can easily navigate between the two in a seamless manner without any hassle. Yes, it is a seamless solution and a user can perform a number of transitions whenever a user upgrade or export data to cloud.

Method #4: Migrate Data from Microsoft FastTrack

Microsoft provides a free data migration service, which will help guide administrators to migrate data from SharePoint to Office 365 or SharePoint Online.

Method #5: Third-Party Migration Tools

If any of the two methods do not work perfectly, then a user is recommended to use some trusted third-party tool also. SharePoint Migrator software is one such solution that let users migrate from SharePoint. It is a quick and reliable solution that will simplify and fasten up the SharePoint to Office 365 SharePoint Online migration process. Apart from all this, the software is compatible with all versions of SharePoint like SharePoint Online.

Conclusion

Migration to the cloud is a big attempt that can bring many positive changes in organization collaborates. Therefore, it is really important to use the right method to connect SharePoint on-premise to Office 365. However, manual solution is not perfect of doing because it does not maintain data integrity of the documents. Therefore, a user can try any other methods also discussed above to migrate from SharePoint to SharePoint Online. However, if a user wants to use an effortless, simple, and easy-to-use solution without any complication, then one can try the third-party tool discussed above.