Considerations for Upgrading SharePoint 2003 to 2007

Question

Thanks in advance!

I was wondering if you SharePoint architects/experts out there could help me nail down the specifics and concerns around upgrading an existing SharePoint 2003 deployment to SharePoint 2007.

I know this is general and vague and the steps/problems will depend greatly on the current SharePoint deployment. Any help would be much appreciated.

I will update this as the details of the existing deployment become available.

Answer 1

This depends on so many things. Site structure, database structure, content structure/size, availability, workflows, governance model(s), change management procedures, etc.

Here is the 1 million foot view I used for a new MOSS implementation, but I think some of the points might transfer to an upgrade as well:

• Determine what is NEEDED. This is such a loaded term, it isn't funny. Have senior management define 'need'. Everyone thinks their content/job is 'needed' and will want a slice of the farm.
• Develop a taxonomy and have senior management sign off on it. Also, the fewer the levels of the hierarchy, the easier you have made your job. That way, when someone from customer relations wants some crazy site set up for whatever reason, you have a signed off on document to tell them 'NO' with. And this will also help with the whole 'what is needed' question as well.
• Determine an administration chain. Start at the top. Farm Administrator (maybe you) and then site collection admins (facility supervisor(s)), site admins (department managers), etc... This will help if you want to have approval workflows later on as well.
• Design approval. Try your best and get a single design approved for use across the board. This will save loads of time. Let custom design templates be down the line for version x of your implementation, not version 1.0.
• Governance. This is easily the most important thing if you want this to be successful down the road. Set up policies and procedures for practically all tasks and have those signed off on. Personally, I set up a Governance Board of senior management, and department staff and once a procedure or policy was defined, it was signed off on by the CIO.

Hope this gets you started. There are tons of great checklists and whitepapers all over the web from farm admins who have tackled this.

Answer 2

I needed to migrate several SharePoint 2003 sites to SharePoint 2007, mostly consisting of document libraries and other lists. The official methods of migrating or upgrading failed, so I ended up writing a tool that must run on the destination SharePoint 2007 server, but can copy from the 2003 server all lists and document libraries with metadata and version intact. It's available with source at http://sourceforge.net/projects/splistcp so feel free to use and improve it.