Microsoft Office Migration Planning and Implementation

In order to insure a successful Microsoft Office migration from one version to another, documents need to be tested for compatibly and usability. Quest Data Group offers a full migration strategy led by our Microsoft Office IT development team. An experienced and skilled Office Developer can not only remediate the document in question but can also make the application more efficient by utilizing best practices methodology and enabling readiness for future migrations.

The decision to incorporate a remediation strategy into your migration plan should be based upon the level of Microsoft Office usage.

Quest Data Group Migration Strategy

1. Assess and Identify Document Compatibility.

   Whether your organization utilizes Microsoft or third-party vendor tools to assess and identify the document compatibility issues, identifying these documents is absolutely essential.

2. Analyze the Issues.

   Categorize the documents by the type of severity issue:
   1. Critical – issues that can cause a migration failure, result in significant data loss or impede document/application performance and execution
   2. Moderate – issues that can cause formatting changes, minor data loss or require user intervention
   3. Non-critical – issues that can cause aesthetic or functionality changes

3. Identify the Issues to Remediate.

   When identifying the issues to remediate a careful consideration should be given to the level of reliance of your user base on Office documents to perform their daily operations and maintain productivity.

4. Identify Business Critical Documents and Applications.

   Identifying these documents and application allows you to decrease the possibility of compatibility issues which may result in productivity loss for your organization

5. Create and Perform Remediation in a Test Lab in Client Environment.

   Since Office documents are highly portable creating a test lab allows you to remediate documents, test and validate in the environment you are migrating to and identify any potential issues you will encounter.

6. VBA Macros and Code Intervention

   The VBA Object model changes with every new release. Along with introducing new and more efficient methods and functions, every new VBA Object model also deprecates and removes some of the older methods and functions. If your documents rely on macros for correctly functioning they may not be compatible with the new Office release or the new VBA Object Model. These documents will need manual remediation on a per file basis either using a remediation tool or an experienced and skilled Office Developer. Every remediation tool has its own limitations and the remediation is limited to mend the document to make it compatible.

7. User Acceptance Testing.

   This is especially important for your business critical documents and applications. Since these documents are critical for one or several of your business functions ensuring that they will function correctly and efficiently allows you to migrate with confidence. Testing and validation of documents enables you to identify any issues with

8. Production Remediation

   Upon successful completion of the phases listed above your organization will be better prepared to perform remediate to the documents in production. This will also allow you to tackle any issues that may arise during production rollout and deployment.