Helping a Research Institute Implement a SharePoint Intranet

How Aciron does it

To start, a consortium of US universities engaged in astronomical research. They were in the process of moving their technology infrastructure to the cloud. Overall, they needed help with their SharePoint migration. Our team provided experienced SharePoint consulting.

Services

Technologies

The challenge

The consortium obtained Office 365 licenses as part of their project. Further, they were looking to migrate their existing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 sites to SharePoint Online. The consortium then asked Aciron for help with developing new SharePoint sites. In addition, our consultants helped with migrating the content.

Our approach

Firstly, we discussed SharePoint migration strategy with the client’s IT team. During the migration discussions, our team determined that the project would follow a phased approach, ensuring all employees were not affected by the migration concurrently. For the initial launch, the sites were developed using default SharePoint functionality. Aciron implemented SharePoint web parts, in order to complete any customization.

Secondly, we conducted requirements gathering interviews with key stakeholder from each of the client’s departments. These interviews provided insights to determine the specific needs of each department’s SharePoint. As a result, we created storyboards to visually articulate the layout of the system. These storyboards were designed based on SharePoint’s out-of-the-box functionality. However, it included web parts that had the desired enhancements.

Most importantly, Aciron migrated the client’s data and content from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint Online. As a result, the migration was based on the defined migration strategy.

Solutions

To sum up, the client increased collaboration by migrating to SharePoint Online. It also made document management easier, especially for staff located outside of the main organization office. For instance, the new SharePoint sites feature:

Updated document libraries to modernize the look and feel of the sites

Various web parts like calendars, task lists, and document libraries enhanced the design and made it user-friendly

Standardized naming convention and updated organizational structure to improve site navigation and searchability

Transform

In conclusion, Aciron helped the client perform a content assessment. This ensured that only current content migrated to the new system. As a result, any clutter from the legacy SharePoint system was removed.

To clarify, the client remained satisfied with their upgraded sites since the migration to SharePoint Online. For example, the client plans to continue to enhance the design and functionality.

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