Are Office 365 Groups or Public Folder Mailboxes good options for your public folder migration? Making decisions on how to map your organization’s use of Public to the new options can be extremely complicated. What can seem to be simple from a high-level perspective can be ridiculously complex as you look further.
Finding the best public folder substitute is the next step. The biggest concern will be whether your organization's Public Folder hierarchy can fit within Public Folders in Office 365.
From the casual observer, it would seem at first glance that Public Folders should migrate just as simply as an end users’ mailbox. Copy it on the back-end while in use, continue to copy delta’s, and then when the time is right, cut over quickly. Unfortunately, this is just not how it works.
Public Folders will fully move to Office 365
If you can move all your Public Folders to Office 365, then you are fortunate enough to be able to:
Migrate Public Folders completely off premise and potentially eliminate any last vestige of Hybrid infrastructure.
Avoid disrupting your users with new concepts and a change in their working behavior.
Allow time to research and understand the options available to improve the collaboration experience beyond Public Folders.
With all of the decisions in place, it’s time to move forward with your migration plan. Stay in contact with your end users and inform them of the progress every step of the way. Getting feedback throughout the migration will ensure that any problems are identified and quickly remediated.