Microsoft quietly released the Release to Web (RTW) version of the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool (SMAT) for SharePoint 2013 on Jan 20, 2017.  This is an update from the Release Candidate (RC) version that was released in Fall 2016.  I haven’t seen any announcements regarding this upgrade so I wanted to share here.

Background

  For those who are not familiar with SMAT it is a command line tool that will check a SharePoint farm for risks migrating to SharePoint Online.  Aside from that primary purpose it is also useful for an overview audit of the farm (name and size of content databases, name and size of site collections, site collection admins and owners, and more.   There is a backing configuration file (scandef.json) which can enable or disable various checks to be scanned against a SharePoint farm.  At the time of writing there is only a version compatible with SharePoint 2013 but there is potential for a SharePoint 2010 and / or 2016 compatible version in the future.

   In terms of the checks scanned for they include:

• Large lists
• Checked out files
• Full trust solutions
• Non-default master pages
• Unsupported web templates
• … and more

   SMAT will need to run on a server within the SharePoint farm and be run as the farm administrator.  Run time will vary depending on the size and configuration of the farm.  In a tiny lab farm I had created it took minutes to run but in sizable lab farm (multiple TBs of data and tens of thousands of site collections) it took over 24 hrs.  The output from the tool will be 1 summary CSV along with 1 detail CSV per check scanned (~30).

What’s New

  Comparing the documentation from the RC version to the RTW version I am seeing a few new risks that are scanned but I didn’t see them output in the CSV files.  I may need to be make changes to the config file in order to include the new checks.  Other than that the execution of the tool and general process is the same as the RC version.

Next Steps

   So what can you do with these CSV files?  By themselves the output CSV files can be difficult to read to get a good picture of the overall migration risks of a farm.  One option is to use these output files in conjunction with the Microsoft FastTrack Center and their SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online Migration Offer.  See this link for details on that offer and more.

   Another option is to analyze the CSV files on your own with tools such as Excel, SQL Server, or Power BI.  Personally I am very new to Power BI but with a little research and consulting with fellow PFEs I was able to generate a useful report that aggregated the risk data and filtered it into very usable visualizations.  I will write a follow up post about the process I followed to model and visualize these output files.

Conclusion

   If you are are hosting a SharePoint 2013 farm and looking to migrate to SharePoint Online or simply want to audit your farm for risks and general data I encourage you to take a look at the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool.  Look for my next blog post where I’ll dig into interpreting the data with Power BI to find useful insights and more.

      -Frog Out