Legacy ECM to SharePoint Migration  

The Process of Laserfiche to SharePoint Migration 

Evolvous is a certified Microsoft SharePoint migration consultant and over the past many years, we have been helping clients make the transition from outdated ECM. Let us drive straight into the process that we follow for legacy ECM to SharePoint migration. 

Here are the stages that we follow 

In-depth Technical Assessment & Solution Discovery

The first step of the process is to understand your existing legacy ECM environment. You see most legacy ECM is not a file system, but a content intelligence platform.

Things to Do: 

It is important to understand why content behaves in a certain way. If you don’t do that, you will cause issues with compliance, approval, and search.

Things to Do:

The following things need to be examined.

• Repository Structure
• Folders and smart searches.
• The existing Legacy ECM document hierarchies.
• Templates and Fields 
• The different field types that are currently in use. 
• Mandatory and optional fields. 
• Lookup fields, which are often linked to external systems. 
• Existing Workflows 
• Routing logic. 
• Approval conditions. 
• Automatic metadata updates. 
• Security Settings 
• Users and group settings. 
• Permissions at the record level. 
• Retention and Records 
• Cutoff rules. 
• Legal holds. 
• Conditions for document freeze. 

Outcomes: 

At the end of the assessment, we will be able to draft a detailed Migration blueprint including the following details:

• What needs to be migrated.
• Which files should be transformed. 
• What should be retired. 
• What stays archived. 

Designing the SharePoint Architecture 

There are some fundamental differences between Legacy ECM and SharePoint architecture. So, a simple ‘lift and shift’ approach will not work here. SharePoint will collapse under bad architecture. It can result in slow performance, broken permissions, and multiple other features.

At Evolvous, we just don’t copy the outdated ECM. Our SharePoint consultants will follow the first principles. 

Things to Do:

• Developing the Information Architecture 
• Decide whether you need separate site collections or a single document hub. 
• Choose between business units or process-based sites. 
• Define the content types. 
• Decide on the columns that will be used across SharePoint libraries. 
• Mapping the Metadata 
• We will map the Laserfiche Field to their corresponding SharePoint Column. 
• Multi-value field to Managed Metadata in SharePoint. 
• Lookup to Term Sets or Lists. 
• Mandatory fields to Column validation rules. 
• Translating Folder Logic 
• Deep folders in Laserfiche to Document Sets. 
• Case folders will be translated into One Document Set per case 
• Search-driven folders will be transformed into metadata views 

Outcomes 

After all these decisions are made, we will be creating a SharePoint Information Architecture (IA) diagram along with a detailed metadata model. This will make it easier to execute the next stage.

Executing Migration

This is where we start to actually move the data from Legacy ECM to SharePoint. At Evolvous, we prefer the ‘ETL’ or ‘Export-Transform-Load’ methodology. We follow the best practices to avoid issues like missing metadata, broken links, and others.  

Things to do 

• Choose between OOTB migration tool or custom PowerShell code-based migration approach. It depends on the size, customization, and other requirements that you might have. 
• The files are exported from Legacy ECM. 
• Export the metadata into an XML or CSV file.  
• Export the version history  
• Once the data is exported, it will be cleaned. We will remove the invalid characters and normalize the date formats.  
• Next, the metadata will be enhanced. The documents will be auto-tagged according to the departments, and the document types will be inferred.   
• In some cases, we will have to rename the files by following the applicable naming conventions in SharePoint.  
• Now that the ‘Export’ and ‘Transform’ functions are complete, we will move to ‘Load’. While loading the files to the SharePoint environment, we will make sure the file is moved to the correct site, library, and document set.  
• We will apply permissions through Entra ID and the relevant content types.  

As a SharePoint migration consultant, we use innovative methods like pilot migrations, incremental synchronization, rollback strategy, and automated validation scripts, to make the data migration smoother.  

Outcome 

At the end of it, we will have a full, verifiable, and auditable migration from Legacy ECM to SharePoint Online. You will also have access to error logs and reconciliation reports.  

Process Modernization 

Legacy ECM to SharePoint migration presents a perfect opportunity to modernize your processes. We will review, re-engineer, and re-deploy the workflows that are being used in the dated ECM. 

Things to Do 

1. Rebuilding the different workflow categories using Power Automate. This includes approval of workflows, document routing, notifications, record declarations, etc.  
2. We can also integrate Power Platform applications for added functionality. For example, we can use Power Apps to replace Legacy ECM forms or Microsoft Purview to apply retention labels and legal holds to the documents. 

Outcomes 

You will have simpler, faster, and more efficient business processes. 

Testing and Validation 

Finally, it’s time to test and validate the newly migrated data on SharePoint. This is important as it helps to manage site sprawl, security issues, and user adoption challenges.  

Things to Do: 

• Data validation
• File count comparison
• Metadata sampling
• Permission testing
• Simulating workflows
• Governance Settings
• Site provisioning rules 
• Following consistent naming standards 
• Building ownership model 
• Implementing lifecycle policies 
• Adoption Strategy 
• Role-based training 
• Search and eDiscovery settings 
• Enhancements based on feedback 

Go Live 

Lastly, it’s time to go live. We will offer you maintenance and support solutions which will allow you to rectify issues and ensure consistency. Once the system gets working as expected, we will decommission the Laserfiche platform and archive certain files, if deemed necessary. 

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why should we migrate from a legacy ECM to SharePoint?

SharePoint modernizes document management while providing stronger collaboration, Microsoft 365 integration, search, security, governance, and scalability, without the limitations of aging ECM platforms.

2. How do you migrate documents, metadata, permissions, and retention rules?

We assess the existing ECM structure, map content and metadata to SharePoint, redesign permissions and information architecture, and use migration tools and validation processes to preserve critical business information.

3. How can we minimize disruption during the migration?

We use a phased migration approach with discovery, pilot migrations, content validation, user testing, and controlled cutovers. This allows teams to continue working while content is migrated in manageable stages.