You have made the decision to move from Confluence to SharePoint, but don’t know where to start. There are many important things to note, such as taking the right precautions, migrating information in the right order, and making sure that information is fully functional and accessible in SharePoint. The following steps help create a successful plan for migrating from Confluence to SharePoint.
1. Document Your Information Architecture
First, understand the file and size distribution of all your data. Document and prepare for any customizations, and workflows that may need special attention in the migration. A deep dive into your data pre-migration allows you to best determine and select any custom tools needed for a smooth migration. Another item to note early on is ensuring you have the right permissions in both Confluence for exporting, and SharePoint for uploading.
2. Select the Right Migration Tool for Your Organization
To select the right migration tool, determine several things about your Confluence host, and the data within it. Whether you are moving your confluence instance from a data center, an individual server, or the cloud, it’s crucial to evaluate the status of your host before selecting the best tool. This leads to evaluating the type and amount of the different data being stored, users, groups, and spaces. If you’re migrating apps within Confluence, have larger complex files, or simply want to ensure the migration is seamless, a customizable migration tool is best. A company with the right software development experience could build its own or find one of the many specialized migration solutions already created by technology partners.
3. Export All Data from Confluence
To avoid the risk of losing information in this migration, create an unzipped Confluence Space export as a backup. Migrate a copy of everything there first, and then continue exporting with confidence. Take the following steps to export from Confluence properly, so that files will upload to SharePoint correctly in the future:
Export all content (attachments) from Confluence as HTML files, PDFs, etc.
Because of compatibility issues, if you don’t convert to HTML, you are likely to lose some information during the migration.
Convert all HTML files to ASPX files (rename them first).
4. Transfer and Upload the Data to SharePoint
This is the most important part of the migration, and if done correctly, leads to maximum value out of your new SharePoint instance.
Most of the files and data from Confluence should upload to SharePoint fairly easily, looking almost identical to how they did in Confluence. Moving pages from Confluence, however, takes some extra effort. Transform pages from Confluence to a SharePoint page using a custom API.
Enable custom scripts at the tenant and site level.
Put all of the .aspx files into a folder on the SharePoint Sites Documents page.
5. Provide End-user Training for Optimal Adoption
For ideal end-user adoption, it’s crucial to show your users how to get the most out of SharePoint as their new productivity platform. Determine what resources to rely on for training such as Microsoft Learn, working with a technology partner, or selecting a person on your team to be a point person for questions and onboarding. First, begin with checking the migration reports. Validate results in SharePoint with those who used the data previously in Confluence to ensure all the data was correctly migrated.
To learn more about the differences between SharePoint and Confluence, read this article.
Read more about why SharePoint is an excellent knowledge management platform.