Business Challenge 

The organization previously operated an on-premises SharePoint 2013 farm, which had become outdated and no longer met modern collaboration and security requirements. System maintenance was costly, version upgrades were cumbersome, and support for remote work was limited. The goal was to transition to a modern, scalable, secure, and accessible-from-anywhere platform — while preserving the organization’s extensive knowledge base and large-scale content library.  

Solution 

The migration encompassed more than 5,000 sites, lists, document libraries, custom solutions, and workflows from the existing environment. To support this complex process, Abesse’s experts implemented a custom PowerShell-based automation framework utilizing the ShareGate migration tool. This framework was capable of handling unique column names, non-existent users, and content type discrepancies. The migration was executed in phased, iterative cycles, with validation and feedback after each round, ensuring the preservation of permissions, metadata, and version histories. Following completion, a thorough verification and issue resolution phase was carried out, complemented by documentation and user training to ensure a seamless transition. 

As part of the project, a customizable SharePoint application was developed, enabling the creation of approval workflows with any number of levels for documents, folders, or list items. The solution supports sequential approvals, restarts, change requests, and the dynamic management of approvers and notification recipients. Its purpose is to ensure transparent, auditable, and automated approval processes that can be easily adapted to diverse business requirements. 

Results 

The organization transitioned to a modern, cloud-based SharePoint Online environment that provides robust support for hybrid and remote work. As a result, operational costs and administrative workloads have been significantly reduced. Users now benefit from a faster, more secure, and mobile-friendly interface, while management gains greater visibility and control over document and permission management processes.