For all client projects, it’s important that Digital First have access to key IT admin personnel and can perform deep analysis of the existing software & solutions within the organisation, including the current use of SharePoint, and Office 365. For the ‘on-premises’ SharePoint, we will assess the suitability for a move to Office 365, to highlight any migration issues.

For the existing use of Office 365, we can assess the configuration from a governance standpoint, and assess if there are any issues with authentication, such as Azure AD.

Within an organisation, there are often several ‘shadow IT’ applications, in which users have purchased or subscribed to software that meets their immediate needs, but without the approval (or knowledge) of the IT stakeholder team.

In some cases, this is due to a lack of knowledge or understanding of tools that they might have already been able to use, as part of the wider stack of Microsoft products suite. This could include platforms such as Confluence, Jira, DropBox, Slack, etc.

Other organisations that we have engaged with have identified these through discussions with staff, and chosen to surface and integrate these channels, as opposed to migrate to the Microsoft equivalent. As part of the analysis, consultants will request for admin-level permissions, in order to view server & software configurations, and to execute scripts that will list further underlying setup.

The final aspect of the analysis covers the permissions matrix, and thus Active Directory. There are tools/utilities that can assess the health completion of people data, which is vital, given that this feeds into Azure Active Directory, and SharePoint User Profiles.