# O365 - Our experience as a Small Contractor



## kentdalimp (Aug 15, 2013)

I decided to document my headache for the past week of moving our File Server over to the Cloud. (Office 365/Sharepoint) I wrote this article and published in on Linkedin. (Link Here) But some of you may find it useful as well! 

*O365 Migration - Our experience as a small contractor (Part 1)*

Anyone who works in construction, especially Small to Medium sized companies know that one thing is a given: You have to wear a lot of hats. While it can be a headache most times, there is a sense of freedom that comes from not being pigeonholed into a single role. The problem is when you become essential to multiple facets of the company, then you struggle to accomplish anything during the day because you spend way too much time having to put out fires in EVERY department. [Facepalm]

Two years ago, while I was on a project in Haiti, our office was hit by not one, but two different ransomware attacks. They had access to everything including our servers and effectively shut down the entire company. We were caught unawares, having trusted in our previous IT services, and it took us over a year to finally feel like we had overcome the attack.

Fast forward to a year later when we decided to finally switch IT service providers to a more reputable company. Having wrote the actual RFP for managed IT services, it became clear that whomever we chose, wanted to move us to Office 365 and away from our self hosted solutions. Moving over to hosting our Exchange email server with Microsoft was fairly painless. (With the exception of one user who has an inbox of over 100GB.) After the initial setup I was asked to pair down the file server to facilitate moving the files to Sharepoint online. I had no idea what that entailed, and I am by no means an expert, but this is what it has meant for us.

We have a File Server with about 3TB of stored information. This includes:


Individual Estimators Folders (Future/Current/Past Estimates)
Individual Job Folders (Completed/In Progress/Canceled/Suspended)
Company Wide Folders (Safety/HR/Reference Materials/Materials Pricing/etc.)
Accounting/Scheduling/Archive/Etc. Folders
Each of these folders follows a strict subfolder structure that breaks them down into even more segmented information. We use a template for each folder that already has the subfolders and sub-sub folders created. It may seem like a lot of work but it allows anybody in our organization to open a job folder and immediately find anything. Have the submittals been approved? What materials are being used? The change order log, everything has a place and its easy to find the information we are looking for.









Of course, because we keep this information, our File System is large. Multi Year Projects at LAX can contain multiple revisions of Architectural Drawings, changes, PDFs, etc. This puts some of our Main subfolders at hundreds or thousands of GB worth of information. Having been sold on the benefits of OneDrive and seeing the beauty of being able to access that information from anywhere in the world without the use of a VPN or the security issues that eventually lead to the previous ransomeware attacks, we were ready to make the move. Or so we thought.

I had anticipated a simple click and drag operation. Take our network drives, drag them to the cloud, wait for it to finish uploading, and viola! Everything will stay synced between the office and the cloud. Come to find out it doesn't work that way.

I was informed by our IT guys that our file structure was going to be problematic because of the size of the information. I spent the last week in a crash course of Sharepoint architecture, and come to find out, there is not a lot of clear information out there. Instead of main subfolders, Microsoft wants you to create something called a Site. Which is actually a website that can have multiple "Document Libraries" (I.E. - Subfolders). All of which sounds easy enough.

The caveat is that the current way of thinking of data is that everything should be flat. Meaning you shouldn't need Subfolders for information. You want all of your files available within a limited number of sub-folders, and the belief seem to be that you should just be able to search for the documents you want or create a list that highlights it. And why would you want multiple copies of documents, they should all be grouped together into libraries of similar documents. Needless to say, it's a lot of "Best Practices" that seem to be at odds with our company's "Best Practices" and not real clear documentation as to why or how it should follow the new structure.

The other problem is that adopting any new system is going to be problematic. Our users are not really keen on implementing and learning a new system, especially one that is at odds with the way we currently run. What I was hoping for was an online Storage where instead of a Mapped Network Drive, each user's OneDrive showed the same, familiar folder structure. That becomes a problem with Sharepoint wants you to break everything up into different sites and different Document Libraries. Sharepoint seems like it would prefer for each Project to have its own Site. Then all the Document's for that Project go into a Document Library on that site. Problem is, now each time we spin up a new project, every user would have to go in and "sync" that project to their OneDrive so they can access it, and if we have 30 Projects running then it shows up listed as 30+ folders in their OneDrive.

I have spent the last week during my deep dive trying to design a Folder and Site Structure that would work and not be drastically different than what we currently have. I have created about 5 main sites with at least one document library on each. Our main folders have become the sites and everything else is broken down from there. Trying to resolve how to migrate files from different Folders into different sites was a headache, but it has finally been mapped out. Of course then we had issues with permissions and file naming limitations that would not transfer files over and not tell you they hadn't been moved. All of this in addition to the fact that I still had no working way to sync the Network Drives and the Sharepoint files while we transitioned.

There are services out solve this type of problem, and if we wanted to spend a lot of money then we could have looked at one. and while our IT guys can handle most of the technical aspect, architecting the Folder/Site/File Structure was going to require an intimate knowledge of our workflows and processes. So It fell to me.

Eventually I found a working solution with local software (SyncBack Pro) that has been dutifully migrating all of our files to their respective locations. It will also serve to keep our files synced between the local drives and the cloud until we completely switch over. I have looked at solutions like NetDrive for mapping Sharepoint as Network Drives, but I think with our current setup, OneDrive will suffice. We still have over 100GB to upload, but many parts of the migration are complete.

The ability to still access and manage projects from anywhere on the Globe is huge for the kind of work that we do. When I was in Haiti and Projects back home had issues, I was unable to get to the information I needed to work through them. Once we got hit with Ransomware, I was effectively shut off from the rest of the company as everything we do ground to a halt. We recovered, but it was a hit that was difficult to survive. The potential benefits are huge, but the headache to get there keeps growing.

I still have to then figure out how best to backup our Data, now including Sharepoint. Again there are lots of Services available, so I will have to dig into what works best. The problem with wearing all the hats is, other portions of the company don't stop while I get to figure this out. I thought I was just a lowly painter. Next week comes the stress testing and implementation. Pray for me to whatever deity you worship.

If you have any questions, experience or are considering the move to Sharepoint, please reach out. I have a bunch of information I would love to dump on someone.


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## Masterwork (Sep 13, 2020)

I'm using OneDrive, after using Dropbox for years. I'm a much smaller company than you, so it was headache free for my move. I only have one employee I share the folders with, but it's pretty straightforward. I'm not sure if I prefer one over the other....

OneDrive has a cheap plan, though, $2 per month for 100gb. The cheapest plan at Dropbox was $10 per month. That's what sold me, since I don't need terabytes of storage.


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## kentdalimp (Aug 15, 2013)

Masterwork said:


> I'm using OneDrive, after using Dropbox for years. I'm a much smaller company than you, so it was headache free for my move. I only have one employee I share the folders with, but it's pretty straightforward. I'm not sure if I prefer one over the other....
> 
> OneDrive has a cheap plan, though, $2 per month for 100gb. The cheapest plan at Dropbox was $10 per month. That's what sold me, since I don't need terabytes of storage.


We've had Dropbox accounts for years but they served teh main purpose of uploading photos to the cloud so that we could move them to their estimate/Jobs Folders. It works well, But with Microsoft now hosting our Exchange Server, One Drive seems to be the best option. It's a learning curve for sure, but I think it's going to be better in the long run!


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