Which jobs to create first

On a new installation the Dashboard opens with the same choices, in its start tip Start here: which jobs to create first. See Dashboard

Which job for which goal
Try it on one document library, OneDrive or file share
Discover every site or every OneDrive for the BI analysis
What a Job Import does, and when to use it
Prepare discovery and migration jobs from your own rules
Keep a copy up to date with a recurring migration
A path that works

Try one source

One job made by hand: the quickest way to see SMART Migration read — or move — the files of one library, OneDrive or file share.

Discover everything

A Job Import scans the tenant and creates one Discovery job per document library or OneDrive, side by side in the Power BI report.

Prepare the migration from rules

The same Job Import, with the rules for the migration set on its defaults steps: the jobs start in Discovery and need only their mode switched.

Discover or migrate from a list

A CSV file of libraries, OneDrives and file shares becomes one job per line, to discover or to migrate; a list of single files to migrate becomes one job.

Which job for which goal

Pick the row that matches what you want to know or do. Each one is explained in a section below.

You want to	Create	Start in	You get
See SMART Migration at work on one library, OneDrive or file share	One job, with New Job	Discovery to see what is there, Migration to see its files arrive	One run, its report and its data in the Power BI report
Know what is in every site, or every OneDrive	A Job Import scanning `SharePoint Tenant` or `OneDrive in Tenant`	Discovery	One Discovery job per document library or OneDrive
Know what is in one site or one site collection	A Job Import scanning `SharePoint Site` or `SharePoint Site and Sub Sites`	Discovery	One job per document library of the site, or of the site and every sub site below it
Prepare the whole migration from rules	A Job Import with every defaults step filled in	Discovery, switched to Migration wave by wave	Jobs that hold their destination, filters and metadata from the start
Discover or migrate the libraries, OneDrives and file shares listed in a spreadsheet	A Job Import from `CSV in Nextcloud Files`	Discovery or Migration	One job per line of the file
Migrate exactly the files a list names	One job with `Source Type` `File List CSV`	Migration	The listed files, from any number of sources, in one destination
Keep an independent, current copy of critical documents in Nextcloud	One job with a `Recurrence`, such as `Daily` at night	Migration	A first run that copies everything, then a run each night that copies only what changed

If you only want to try a discovery or a migration on one source — a document library you know well, your own OneDrive, a folder on a file share — create that one job by hand. No Job Import is needed.

Open New Job
On the Jobs tab, open New Job and pick the mode: Discovery to see what is there, or Migration to see the files arrive in Nextcloud. Both fill the Power BI report.
Give it a title and a source
On the Source step, pick the Source Type and fill in the one field it needs: the library's URL in Source URL, the user's UPN in Source UPN, or the share's UNC path in Source UNC. One folder of the source will do as well.
Choose a destination, for a migration
On the Destination step, a Team Folder or a user's files in Nextcloud. A Discovery job writes nowhere, so it has no destination.
Set it to Ready
Save, and set the status to Ready. The SMART Migration server claims the job on its next call; the run shows on the Dashboard while it works and in Run History when it is done.

Small and safe

Pick a small library for a first try, so the run is short. A Discovery changes nothing, at the source or in Nextcloud; a Migration only adds to Nextcloud and leaves the source as it is. On the free trial, each job handles the first 250 files and folders of its source.

A Test Migration is not the way to try the app: it moves nothing, and the report then shows its files only as Test Migration. It is for later — to see, before a migration, which files it would add as new and which it would overwrite. See Advanced options for discovery and migration

Read more: Jobs and job modes · The job dialog · Sources

Discover every site or every OneDrive for the BI analysis

To see the whole tenant in the Power BI report — volume, versions, age, file types and what nobody has touched in years, library by library — let a Job Import create a Discovery job for every document library or every OneDrive.

Create a Job Import
On the Jobs tab, open New Job and pick Job Import. Give it a title, such as Discovery of the tenant.
Pick the scope on Import from
SharePoint Tenant for every document library of every site, or OneDrive in Tenant for every user's OneDrive. In Import SharePoint URL enter any site of the tenant, such as https://contoso.sharepoint.com.
Pick Discovery on Action defaults
Every job the scan creates then starts as a Discovery job: it reads its source and writes nowhere.
Decide what the new jobs do on Job defaults
An Import Group to file them under, and Imported Job Status: Ready to have the discoveries run as soon as the jobs are created, Hold to check them first.
Set the Job Import to Ready
The SMART Migration server claims it, scans the tenant and sends what it found; the app creates the jobs. A tenant scan reads 30 to 50 sites a minute.

Want both the sites and the OneDrives? Create two Job Imports, one for each scope. The SMART Migration server runs at most four jobs at a time, so hundreds of Discovery jobs waiting on Ready is normal: they start one after another as slots free up, and the Dashboard follows them.

When they have run, refresh the Power BI report: every library or OneDrive is there side by side, and the scope of the migration can be decided on facts. The Dashboard's Business Intelligence section is where it all comes together: what content there is, what has been migrated and what has not — every file, in the free Power BI report.

What a Job Import does, and when to use it

A Job Import creates jobs: it discovers and migrates nothing itself. One scan of SharePoint or OneDrive — or one CSV file — gives a job for every library or OneDrive found, all with the same rules: hundreds of jobs in minutes, nothing typed twice. Each time it runs, it creates one job per document library — or per OneDrive, or per line of a CSV file — for the scope picked on its Import from step:

Diagram: the Job Import's scope and what it creates. Import from — the scope: SharePoint Tenant (the whole tenant), OneDrive in Tenant (every OneDrive), SharePoint Site and Sub Sites (a site collection), SharePoint Site (one site), CSV in Nextcloud Files (a list you made). The Job Import creates the jobs and moves nothing; it is a run in Run History. It creates one job per library — Discovery jobs such as Finance › Documents, Finance › Contracts, HR › Documents and Sales › Price Lists — one for every library or OneDrive found, side by side in Power BI. Every new job is given the rules on the Job Import's defaults steps — mode, filters, destination, metadata, group and status.

Scope	Import from	One job for each
The whole tenant	`SharePoint Tenant`	document library, in every site of the tenant, that holds items
Every OneDrive	`OneDrive in Tenant`	user's OneDrive in the tenant
A site collection	`SharePoint Site and Sub Sites`	document library of the top site and of every sub site below it that holds items
One site	`SharePoint Site`	document library of that site that holds items
A list you made	`CSV in Nextcloud Files`	line of the CSV file

The Import from step says what it will do. For the scope picked, it describes what the scan reads and which value lands in which field of each new job: the title and description from the naming templates, the library's URL as Source URL or the user's e-mail as Source UPN, and the destination.
A scan is run by the SMART Migration server, once the Job Import is set to Ready. A CSV file is read by the job dialog at once, with Save and import CSV now.
Each run is recorded in Run History, with its counts, messages and log, like any other job's run.
The new jobs are filed in a group of their own, named after the Import Group and the time the run started. Show imported jobs in the Job Import's row menu shows them on the Jobs tab.
An import never changes an existing job. Running it again creates the jobs again; the Duplicates filter on the Jobs tab finds them. Empty libraries are skipped.

Create one job when	Create a Job Import when
You try SMART Migration on one source	You want every library of a site, a site collection or the tenant, or every OneDrive
You migrate one folder or one library on its own	You want hundreds of jobs that follow the same rules
You migrate a list of single files, with `File List CSV`	You have a spreadsheet of libraries, OneDrives and file shares

Prepare discovery and migration jobs from your own rules

A Job Import's defaults steps hold the rules every job it creates is given — marked in teal in the dialog, because they describe the new jobs rather than the Job Import itself. Set them once, and every library or OneDrive the scan finds becomes a job that already knows where it goes.

Step	The rules every new job is given
Job defaults	Group, tags, status, disabled or not, scheduled date, priority, recurrence, retention schedule and notifications
Action defaults	The mode the jobs start in
Source defaults	Include Subfolders, version history, the date, size and file type filters, and the .url link option
Destination defaults	The destination type, user and folder, empty folders, and the rules for adding and overwriting files
Metadata defaults	How the SharePoint columns are carried into MetaVox
Import from, with Advanced Settings on	The naming templates: each job's title and description, its Team Folder and the folder in it

Pick Migration on Action defaults
The Destination defaults step appears, and for a SharePoint source going to a Team Folder the Metadata defaults step as well.
Set the destination, the templates and the metadata
Where the jobs land, how their Team Folders and folders are named, and how the columns are carried.
Pick Discovery again, and save
The destination and metadata steps hide again, but nothing is cleared: every new job is given them all.
Set the Job Import to Ready
The jobs are created in Discovery, holding everything they need to migrate.

When the discovery is done and the scope decided, tick the jobs of a wave and switch their mode to Migration — there is nothing else to fill in; a Test Migration first shows which files it would add and overwrite — and release the wave: Change selected jobs … in the Actions menu sets Mode and, with Ready under Status, releases it in the same step.

Keep a copy up to date with a recurring migration

A job does not have to run only once. Give a Migration job a Recurrence — Daily, at night — and it runs again by itself, copying only what changed since the last run, because the default rule for existing files, Add New Overwrite Existing By Newer, leaves alone what is already there. Nextcloud then holds an independent, current copy of your critical documents, under your own control.

Run	What it copies
The first run	Everything the job's source holds
Every night after	Only the files added or changed since the run before

Needed today, scheduled for tomorrow?

Run now in the job's Status menu sets it Ready and first in the queue, whatever its scheduled date. That run counts as the next one, and the schedule carries on after it.

A path that works

Most projects start the same way. Each step builds on the one before, and each can be the last.

Diagram: five steps. 1. Try one library — one job by hand (Discovery, Migration). 2. Scan one site — check the names (Job Import). 3. Discover the tenant — and every OneDrive (Discovery). 4. Decide on facts — in the Power BI report. 5. Migrate — wave by wave (Migration).

Try one library
One Discovery job, then a Migration of the same library: see a run, its report, its Run History row and the files in Nextcloud.
Scan one site
A Job Import of one SharePoint Site shows what the naming templates make of your site and library names before you scan more.
Discover the tenant and every OneDrive
Two Job Imports in Discovery, with the migration rules already set on their defaults steps.
Decide on facts
Refresh the Power BI report: what to migrate, what to clean up first and what to leave behind. Merge the imported groups into waves, and delete the jobs for what stays.
Migrate wave by wave
A pilot wave first, as Migration jobs released with Change selected jobs … and Ready — a Test Migration before it when you want to see what would be added and overwritten.

The whole path on the free trial

The 7-day trial has every feature. Each trial job handles the first 250 files and folders of its source — enough to see your own content in the Power BI report before you commit to anything.

See also