Regardless of the fact that you are already a user of Microsoft Office 365 or you just have planned to move to it, you should always be aware of few considerable things about moving to office 365. The majority of users of Office 365 are very much familiar with the way of managing various file shares as well as on-premises SharePoint environment for last few years; however, it brings in some big and new challenges to us. In this article, we will talk about some way outs to deal with these challenges effectively and how to report an issue on Office 365 rightly.
1) Should Get A Governance Plan Of Sharepoint
Making a governance plan for SharePoint can be quite helpful to you and your organization because it proves helpful with all projects of your company. For example, if you want to include some guidelines or rules to assist people to utilize the platform in a way it actually means, this governance plan will help.
2). Evaluate Where Several Sub Sites Are Being Made
One who creates too many subsites on SharePoint, often finds it challenging to manage them because it brings in too many issues to a user. For instance, the parent always manages the permissions by default. And a similar thing happens with the content types and site columns and there are chances you somehow do not want everything should be copied to the subsites always.
3). Standardizing Libraries, Lists, And Sites
You must agree with the fact that by standardizing something according to your company, you can easily support or maintain it. On the contrary, when all the users in your organizations are allowed to create sites as per their wish and also libraries and lists into it, then things will turn quite complicated for you to update or help other users.
4) Learn The Job Of Everyone Including Administrators
While making a SharePoint project, the first thing you should consider is to check roles and responsibilities of various users including administrators. On SharePoint along with Office 365, there are several different things that different users manage. Therefore, to assist your entire team and users, check out who takes responsibility of what and who should be contacted.
5) Prevent Breaches Or Be Compliant With Regular Audit Of Sharepoint
It is not mandatory to keep staring at each audit log in every hour, however, you should definitely keep checking some requisite things time to time. Specifically, in MS Office 365, you should keep your eyes on the Anonymous Guest Links and External Users who can access the content. So, ensure that you keep a regular check on your Audit Reports to stay updated on what others do.
6) Be Aware Of Your Support Model And Ensure All Users Follow It
The time a user faces an issue, make sure they should know how to deal with it or who should be called for help to sort the problem. Therefore, having a clear and accurate support model is necessary and the best will be to have an agreement for site of Site Owners to sign prior to they have their sites.
So, in usual situations, it is found that SharePoint team has only few people who serve numerous users all the time. Hence, it will be not practical to call that you can have them all call you from SharePoint team.
7) Do Not Get Much Involved To SharePoint Master Page
No doubt, Master Pages in SharePoint are very helpful to users in many ways as it enables one to edit the appearance of SharePoint by rewriting in the layout; yet it is highly recommended from Microsoft to not to touch it though. So, when you are using Office 365, updates can be pushed out or in sometimes it could overwrite the Master Pages which are edited as it would aim to change the properties’ appearance or add the new button.
So, try to look at previous practices and patterns provided to get the solution you require without any modification to the Master Pages.
8) Change Communication & Management
Office 365 gives businesses a way to bring users to the cloud; and for many of you, it is a way to change the way everyone works to the whole. Hence, an effective communication plan and also applying required change management would be essential for the victory of this project. So, let people know the reason it is going on and by sharing dates and milestones will help them be affected.
9) Get An External Users Plan With An Ability To Audit Them
It is mandatory to consider managing anonymous links and external users with auditing when needed; therefore, a need of having a strong plan for external users should be grabbed. Moreover, the users of Office 365 should know the right time and the way to use it as well. This plan will tell you the exact location where an external user should be used, or you can also disable it to minimise the risk factor. In case, you are ok with enabling External Users, do not forget to keep checking their movement and what they try to access. Also, a report can be sent to a person who has invited them.
10) Learning Collaboration Modalities
Learn various modes of association and collaboration in your company, or the way people work. It is a fact that everyone would not be interested to use a similar tool for a similar need. For example, some want to use Planner to work, and some of them would like to use Project to manage their work, and others would be interested to use SharePoint lists. Here, you should find out different ways to deliver beyond only SharePoint and different methods to get your work done with Office 365 productivity suite.
Final Verdict
So, if you still wonder, then it is the time to make a Site Collection. But, be always sure that you must have a strong reason to create a sub site. By considering these 10 things about moving to Microsoft Office 365, you can make a successful move that will be long lasting and effective for your business and each user.
