The ultimate intranet migration strategy to ensure a smooth transition and promote platform engagement
Migrating your intranet from a legacy or third-party platform to Microsoft 365 is no mean feat, but the benefits are well worth the planning and effort.
An effective SharePoint intranet becomes a gateway to the digital workplace, with the power to improve employee engagement by streamlining communication, promoting collaboration and providing easy access to important resources and information.
But Gallagher’s State of the Sector 2024 report found that despite employee intranets being the 2nd most-used internal communication channel – sitting just behind email – they are ranked as the 2nd least effective out of all 29 different IC channels that were considered.
So, it’s time to make a change.
Organisations around the world are investing in digital transformation projects that create a more engaging, streamlined and user-friendly digital employee experience (DEX) with an intelligent intranet at the centre and an array of in-built and fully-integrated applications.
And with over 200 million users, SharePoint is leading the charge.
This article contains everything you need to know to plan a successful intranet migration. From pulling the best team together to ensuring the right platform governance that avoids headaches in the future, we’ve got you covered.
The Microsoft 365 intranets of today

SharePoint has become a part of the puzzle rather than the entire puzzle itself. What we think of as ‘an intranet’ has evolved into a range of intuitive M365 tools that seamlessly integrate to create a more modern, interactive and engaging employee platform.
Today’s M365 intranets are much more than the basic document storage and news-sharing platform of years gone by. Things have moved on, and organisations are now thinking about the entirety of the digital workplace rather than just an intranet in isolation.
“An intelligent SharePoint intranet is engaging, informative, personalized, and integrated with the other portals and sites in your intranet as well as other Microsoft 365 apps like Microsoft Teams and Viva Engage.”
So when approaching an intranet migration, it’s no longer enough to just think about the move to SharePoint. To see the best results, you need to take a more holistic approach to Microsoft 365 and consider the wider ecosystem of tools from the outset – including applications like Viva, Copilot and Power Platform.
When people meet technology
The rapid evolution of workplace tech has brought us to an interesting intersection between the needs of our people and the organisation’s technical strategy.
The most pressing challenge for many IC and technical teams is to strike a balance between ‘people’ and ‘tech’, where they’re able to meet employee expectations while also applying technical best practice and aligning with the organisation’s wider approach to digital transformation.
And this is where the importance of a truly collaborative approach between IC and technical teams is really highlighted.
Effective collaboration between functions is a critical ingredient of a successful intranet migration. So start working on creating a solid internal network as early as possible by establishing common goals, investing in building a strong relationship and involving the right stakeholders in big decisions.
6 steps to success
Whether you’re migrating your intranet for operational, technical or strategic reasons, working through a step-by-step plan helps set you up for success.
The following 6 steps are tried-and-tested, and will support a smooth transition that promotes platform engagement and interaction.
Let’s make a start.
1. Define your goals
The first step of any intranet migration project is to define your goals. We like to think of them in two categories – ‘people goals’, and ‘technical goals’.
The ‘people goals’ include things like channel engagement, usage and employee satisfaction. What percentage of employees do you want to turn into active site users within how many months? What will ‘good’ look like in terms of weekly platform engagement? And by how much are you hoping to turn the dial on employee satisfaction?
On the other hand, the ‘technical goals’ focus more on the site structure and infrastructure. Many organisations set a goal to streamline large numbers of fragmented SharePoint sites into a more manageable site structure. Others set goals around information architecture and user permissions.
This is your opportunity to define your key success metrics. You’re going to be investing a lot of time and resource into the migration, so it’s important to be able to measure the impact of the new platform and highlight the ROI.
Decide on your goals by combining a review of employee feedback channels – including survey data, workshops and focus groups – with a technical audit to define where you currently are, and where you want to be.
2. Assemble your A-Team
After defining the goals, it’s time to pull together a project team.
Getting the right people on board is one of the most important keys to a successful migration. Think about who your key stakeholders are, and then begin mapping responsibilities to each person. In most cases, the core project team will comprise a cross-functional group of colleagues including representatives from the comms team, IT, and HR. It can also be incredibly helpful to invite leaders from operational teams to join the project team, who will help to ensure all bases are covered and provide valuable insights on intranet usage within their functions.
In addition to your project team, this is also a good time to begin thinking about gathering a network of ‘employee champions’ from across the business. These individuals will become your internal influencers – helping to gather employee feedback, encourage involvement and drive engagement.
3. Take stock
You’ve defined your goals and gathered your intranet migration A-Team. The next step is to take an inventory of all existing SharePoint sites and content, including mapping existing site owners and reviewing content upload dates. This will identify which content will need to be migrated, and which content is outdated and ready to be archived or deleted.
Alongside the content inventory, this step also involves conducting a thorough audit of how the existing intranet is being used. Look at the existing user access for different sites, the most frequently accessed pages and the size of uploaded documents.
The aim is to paint a clear picture of what you already have, what can be removed, and what needs to be migrated.
4. Lay foundations for the future
While the migration process itself can sometimes feel all-encompassing, it’s important to think about future site sustainability to avoid any headaches in the future. We’re talking about things like processes for document lifecycles and retention, governance of tagging and metadata, and ground rules for the creation of new SharePoint sites.
Make a future-focused plan for the new site structure, including a detailed hierarchy of hubs, sites and subsites. It needs to be logical and scalable to allow for organisational growth in the future.
Taking the time to set clear rules around these types of things will lay valuable foundations for future success. Aside from ensuring your intranet doesn’t become a mess within a few years, this step will define best practice around naming conventions and metadata that will improve the quality of AI output as we pave the way for Copilot. Trust us – future you will thank past you for this!
5. Prioritise employee centricity
While steps 1-4 have been quite technically focused, this step is all about stepping back and ensuring you’re taking a people-first approach.
First and foremost, your new platform needs to be user-friendly, intuitive and engaging. To make sure everything is on track, we recommend getting employees involved with user testing activities while you’re still designing the site structure. Does the flow and structure of the site seem logical to them? Are they finding it easy to navigate? Is anything missing, or hidden?
This step also provides an important opportunity to think about the all-important site integrations we discussed earlier in this article. How is your intranet going to integrate with your other M365 tools? Adding web parts to display content and updates from various sources works well, such as the ‘News web part’ and the ‘Highlighted content web part’. And what about Viva Engage? Could you create different department communities within Engage and embed them in each department’s hub site?
Nailing your integrations is one of the best ways to prioritise employee centricity. Nobody wants to waste time clicking around all over the place looking for a link to a seemingly unconnected tool.
6. Deliver a solid communication and engagement plan
You’ve made it to the final step, congratulations!
It’s time to turn your attention to the communication and engagement plan. Think about training, user adoption and your launch communication. The aim here is to engage employees from the get-go, and then maintain site adoption even after the launch-day excitement has quietened down.
Don’t wait until the very last minute to tell employees about the new intranet. Gather feedback throughout the migration process, and invite people to get involved wherever possible. Keep managers and team leaders in the loop with the proposed launch date, and build excitement through existing communication channels.
Consider training your site owners and platform champions – we love a ‘train the trainer’ approach, where a set number of employees receive formal training and are then tasked with cascading the information and hosting their own workshops for colleagues. To help employees navigate their new intranet, it can also be useful to share a series of ‘how to’ video tutorials, or host live Q&A-style events using Viva Engage’s Ask Me Anything feature.
And remember to put a solid two-way communication process in place, allowing you to continue gathering suggestions and feedback well after the migration has taken place.
We hope you’ve found this article helpful, and are feeling ready to tackle your intranet migration project!
Our team of people-first M365 experts are here to help if you would like a little more support with your migration. Come and say hello if you’d like to find out about the services and products we can offer.
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