Don’t leave a stone unturned before you start your migration with the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool!
Video Summary
Here are the key points from the video:
- Introduction to SMAT: The SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool (SMAT) is a command-line tool used to analyze SharePoint farms and generate reports on potential migration blockers.
- Downloading and Running SMAT: To use SMAT, download it from the Microsoft Download Center and run it on a SharePoint server where you have administrative permissions. Choose the appropriate executable based on your SharePoint version (2010 or 2013).
- Identifying Migration Blockers: SMAT identifies various blockers such as custom profile properties, email-enabled lists, large lists (over 5,000 items), and managed metadata columns that may need special attention during migration.
- Detailed Reports: The tool generates detailed CSV reports for each category of potential blockers, providing URLs, site IDs, content database details, and more, to help you address these issues before migration.
- Handling Large Lists and Custom Templates: Specific reports like the “large list details” CSV provide information on list URLs, item counts, and content types, helping you decide how to handle these lists during migration.
For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!
Video Transcript
Let’s talk about how to analyze our current SharePoint Farm using the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool (SMAT). Planning is key to a successful data migration to SharePoint Online. The SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool, also known as SMAT, is a simple command-line tool that scans your farm and generates multiple reports on items that could impact your migration. Each report also provides links to Microsoft resources on how to address items that may not be easily migrated.
To use the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool, you first need to download it from the Microsoft Download Center on one of the servers in your SharePoint farm. You need to be a local administrator on the server, a farm administrator on the farm, and have full control permissions on all the different service apps and web applications. When you download the tool, you will see multiple executables, including SMAT 2010 and SMAT 2013. As the names suggest, the one with “2010” is for SharePoint 2010, and the one with “2013” is for SharePoint 2013. As of August 2018, there are no versions that work with SharePoint 2007, 2016, or 2019, but this may change in the future, so check the download page for updates.
When you run the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool, you will see that it is a command-line tool that provides quick results on the number of items in each category that could be a blocker. For example, on my current test farm, I have a custom profile property mapping done in the user profile, which cannot be migrated to Office 365. I also have a list or document library with incoming email enabled, a feature that doesn’t exist in Office 365. Additionally, I have a large list with over 5,000 items, and several lists with managed metadata columns, indicating that I may need to migrate my entire managed metadata service application.
Other potential blockers include 16 publishing pages in five publishing sites, which are usually supported by Office 365, but may require review for customizations. I also have 15 sites with templates that do not exist in Office 365, so I will need to map these to existing templates and decide how to handle the content. Finally, I have three web application policies, which cannot be migrated to Office 365 since web applications do not exist there.
In addition to the on-screen display, SMAT provides detailed CSV reports for each category of potential blockers, including URLs and other relevant details. For example, the “email enabled list details” CSV includes site IDs, site URLs, web applications, content databases, and list details. Similarly, the “large list details” CSV provides information on list URLs, item counts, content types, and more, helping you decide how to handle these lists during migration.
To run SMAT, download it, unzip the files, and run the appropriate executable as an administrator. If you encounter resolution issues, you may need to adjust your screen resolution or run the tool in quiet mode. Once the tool is running, it may take up to two hours to complete the analysis, depending on your environment. The results will be saved in the log scanner reports folder, where you can review the detailed CSV files to address any potential blockers before starting your migration.
