SharePoint Portal Migration for an Aircraft Maintenance Company

Summary

An aircraft maintenance company's collaboration portal had fallen into disrepair on an aging SharePoint 2010 platform. INNERLUXES migrated it to SharePoint 2016 through a database-attach two-step upgrade, restored its broken functionality, and redesigned it into a single solution serving both employees and external contractors, with ten departmental sites and dedicated contractor sites. Power BI integration brought performance and compliance reporting straight onto the portal pages, giving management accurate data to compare results over time.

About the Client

The Client is a US company providing aircraft maintenance services.

An Aging SharePoint 2010 Portal That Had Become Hard to Use

The Client ran a corporate portal on SharePoint 2010 that served both internal and external users as a single collaboration area. Because of insufficient SharePoint maintenance and support, the portal had become hard to manage and use. To put it back on track, the Client asked INNERLUXES to migrate the solution from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2016, redesign it using SharePoint 2016's out-of-the-box capabilities, and improve its analytics by integrating it with Microsoft Power BI.

A Two-Step Migration, a Redesigned Architecture, and Power BI Reporting

Following the Client's requirements, INNERLUXES's SharePoint team began by migrating the SharePoint 2010 solution to SharePoint 2016. Using the database-attach method, a SharePoint developer and a SharePoint administrator performed a two-step migration — SharePoint 2010 to 2013 to 2016 — while concurrently restoring all missing and defective functionality, including templates, metrics, and sources, with Windows PowerShell.

With the migration complete, the team redesigned the solution around a new architecture that serves as both an internal portal for team, departmental, and cross-departmental collaboration among employees, and an external portal for collaboration with contractor companies acting on the Client's behalf. The portal now has three major components:

• Portal homepage — welcomes both internal and external users with the latest organizational announcements and the corporate calendar, and provides direct access to portal resources through quick links.
• Departmental sites — a set of SharePoint sites united into a single site collection, each a collaboration area with its own calendar, announcements, document storage, policies and objectives, domain-specific metrics, and reports. The sites cover Human Resources, Business Development, Operations Management, Contracts Management, Accounting, IT, Security, Safety Management, Quality Management, and Purchasing.
• Contractors' sites — designed to keep collaboration between the Client and its subcontractors streamlined and transparent, letting contractors manage their own internal processes such as HR, participate in bids, manage customer relationships, and report performance and compliance metrics.

Beyond contractor-specific reports, the Client wanted enterprise-wide reports reflecting overall business outcomes across different periods. INNERLUXES's BI consultants assisted the SharePoint team in integrating the portal with Microsoft Power BI, so key metrics on the Client's and contractors' performance appear directly on the portal pages. Using the dynamic Power BI reports, management can compare business results across years and months and make decisions based on accurate data.

A More Powerful Portal and Easier Reporting

• The Client gained a more powerful portal on SharePoint 2016, improving performance and opening wider collaboration capabilities for end users.
• Making maximum use of SharePoint 2016's out-of-the-box capabilities reduced the total cost of the solution.
• The portal's reporting capabilities were extended, making the reporting process easier and more efficient.
• The Client continues to work with INNERLUXES, receiving ongoing SharePoint support to customize the portal and add new business-critical features.

Technologies and Tools

Microsoft SharePoint 2016, Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft SQL Server 2016, SharePoint Designer 2013, Visual Studio 2015, Windows PowerShell.