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Hello,

We are in the process of migrating a file server to Sharepoint Online to take advantage of the document libraries. I am wondering if it’s better to create 1 sharepoint site, and multiple document libraries representing each departmental folder…? Or one Sharepoint site with one document library and child folders representing each department…? Or multiple SP sites and put them in one Hub site. Idk… Does anyone have any ideas, template or just from experience how to build a sp site and consolidate different department folders??

Thanks a bunch!

7 Spice ups
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Probably Single site with Document libraries for each department. What you will want to pay attention too is how the permissions are inherited from there parents. Make sure you plan this out. Speaking from experience I have tried it with separate share point sites for each department and the permissions quickly became a convoluted mess.

All in all the whole project of trying to move our shared drive to share point failed miserably here in addition to the nightmare of permissions is why in hopes you can avoid them.

Off the bat we had a poor understanding of what we even had on the shared drive. No documentation at all, no clear structure, no standardization. So obviously you need to be organized before you move to share point. Moving a dumpster fire to a different parking lot is still a dumpster fire.

Lack of understanding of what SharePoint can and cannot do out of the box. What the person in charge of the project wanted and the capabilities of SharePoint are did not line up. So make sure everyone is on the same page on what this is going to look like when it’s done.

Mapping the drives just is not going to work you need to train the end users to use the Sync button that is what is was SharePoint was designed for, not mapping. Mapping will work just fine for you to work on the back end and migrate folders, but don’t push it out as a mapped drive.

Lack of training and communication with the users. Not that SharePont is hard to use but it’s hard to break people of there old habits. Ultimately there was no enforcement in kicking the users off of the existing shared drive and onto SharePoint.

1 Spice up
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You should set up separate site collections for each department and maybe even a main company site collection. Each site collection should be on its own content database. Use Active Directory groups to assign permissions to the libraries within each site collection and the subsequent folders. Do not assign unique permissions. These concepts are to prevent performance and maintenance problems in the future. Separate databases prevent each department from impacting the others.

Once you have each site collection for each department created, have each department tell you who needs administrator access of their site collection. Provide the new administrator the names of the AD groups they should manage and let them go for it creating libraries and folders as they see fit.

You don’t want to manage all of these sites. Let your users do it. Assist and guide them when needed. Provide them technical expertise. You set up the framework.

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Not too many opinions, huh? And the two above me are perfectly opposite each other.

Ok, I agree with Tom. Unless your user count is going to be in the high hundreds or thousands, a single site with multiple doc libraries will be fine.

When you create a new site it also creates three new user groups - more administration = more aggravation. Especially with Sharepoint permissions. With a single site you can much more easily manage permissions, and people can be allowed to fully manage their library.

Now, if you have some users that are more technically advanced and they have a large project, then create a site for them and turn them loose. A new site will have a doc library, calendar, and other pieces that can come in handy for a specific project. Then when it’s over, just delete it if it doesn’t need to be saved.

1 Spice up
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What we have done with file server migrations is a single site per file server with libraries for each root shared folder. We did have a few cases where the root folder had multiple share names which became a fun little political battle that we stayed out of, mostly.

This kept a somewhat familiar feel for the end users.

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Hey! Thanks for all your input. I can already imagine the nightmare it can be if this is not well planned. Our office has about 500 users with 6TB of data. SO I believe that if I create one site and create multiple documents library for each department should work(break the inheritance permission for each library) Sounds good?
Also, since the users are so used to mapping, I will leave the sync feature on, so that they can use to sync the library on their local desktop(at least the Windows users). to give them a familiar feeling. And course, a lot of training so that they understand that this is not a mapping instead a smart syncing.
yeah?