PERSONAL FILE MIGRATION AT SCALE
SMART Migration helps you migrate users’ local files and personal network folders to OneDrive. Combine visual configuration, selective migration, incremental operations and consolidated reporting to manage projects across multiple users.
Understand the OneDrive destination
Section titled “Understand the OneDrive destination”A personal SharePoint site
OneDrive for work or school is built on a personal SharePoint site collection, with files stored in a document library named Documents.
A typical OneDrive URL follows this structure:
Main capabilities
Section titled “Main capabilities”Manage volume and multiple users
Manage high-volume migration projects across multiple OneDrive users through a repeatable configuration and shared reporting.
- Scalable execution: Organise and execute migrations across many users and source folders.
- Visual management: Configure standard migration scenarios without PowerShell coding.
- Error handling and retry: Use built-in handling and retry capabilities to manage migration issues.
- Performance: Support efficient transfer at scale. Actual throughput depends on source performance, network capacity, file characteristics and Microsoft service conditions.
Select the right content and destination
Use filters and business rules to determine which files to migrate from personal network folders and where to place them in each user’s OneDrive.
- Selective migration: Include or exclude content according to the project requirements.
- Destination rules: Determine the destination user and folder structure using configured logic.
- Activity-based filtering: Optionally exclude files that have not been accessed for a defined number of years, where reliable last-access information is available.
- Multiple sources: Push content to users’ OneDrive from legacy SharePoint, other tenants and accessible file shares using configured rules.
Continue after the initial migration
Use incremental operations and business rules to manage subsequent transfers and updates after the first migration run.
- Incremental migration: Run subsequent operations to transfer new or changed content according to the job configuration.
- Content creation and updates: Create or update content in users’ OneDrive based on business rules.
- Metadata processing: Set document metadata during migration or apply updates afterwards, subject to the supported destination fields and configuration.
Consolidated reporting across users
Review migration progress and results across all users in one configurable reporting dataset. Reporting is updated as migration results are recorded, reducing the need to view and manually consolidate separate CSV or Excel files.
- Track migration status across users and jobs.
- Review successful transfers, failed files and exceptions.
- Identify content requiring retry or corrective action.
- Document the results of initial and incremental migration runs.
Prepare users’ OneDrive before migration
Section titled “Prepare users’ OneDrive before migration”Pre-provision destination accounts
Ensure that the destination OneDrive sites have been provisioned before migration. Microsoft provides a PowerShell-based process for pre-provisioning users’ OneDrive sites. Provisioning many users can take multiple days, so include this step in your migration plan.
Microsoft guide: Pre-provision OneDrive for users in your organisation
Choose an approach that fits the project
Section titled “Choose an approach that fits the project”Small, straightforward migrations
For a small group of users with limited content and straightforward requirements, a manually configured migration using Microsoft’s migration tooling may be sufficient.
Projects requiring automation and control
Evaluate SMART Migration when your project requires repeatable automation, many users, selective migration, destination rules, metadata processing or consolidated reporting. These requirements are more useful selection criteria than a fixed user count or data-volume threshold.
Select the right files. Migrate them to the right users. Track and document the results in one place.
See also