Migration strategies for moving from Stream (Classic) to Stream (on SharePoint)

Article
05/15/2023

Before you begin, it's important to plan your migration. You'll need to interact with multiple stakeholders within your organization depending on the use case. It's important for you to carefully design your migration strategy. For example, which groups, channels, and users to migrate, when, how, etc. We've provided a few example strategies across the spectrum, feel free to choose any or hybrid of these ideas depending on your use case.

Approach 1: Migrate everything right away

In this approach, you're going to be migrating all the content from Stream (Classic) without much analysis or process. This approach makes sense if you have a smaller set of users using Stream (Classic), haven’t officially deployed Stream (Classic) in your organization, or you're eager to get off Stream (Classic) as fast as possible.

Make sure your users are aware of Stream (on SharePoint) and familiar with how it works.
Follow the adoption guide suggestions for how to start encouraging use of Stream (on SharePoint) with your users.
Add a custom message to the top of Stream (Classic) telling your users that content is being migrated & uploads are blocked. Use or tweak the example text we wrote for this approach or write your own.
Block uploads to Stream (Classic)
Configure the Stream app to go to the Stream (on SharePoint) start page instead of Stream (Classic)
Migrate all the content from Stream (Classic) to SharePoint and OneDrive
Remove the Stream Classic access for users so they can no longer access Stream (Classic)

Approach 2: Stream (Classic) as archive, selectively migrate content

In this approach you’ll, lock down Stream (Classic) as an archive. In effect, old content will be in Stream (Classic) and new content will be in SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Yammer. Then as you have need you can selectively migrate specific groups, channels, or users. This approach makes sense if you want old content to age out and only migrate it if your content owners deem it necessary. For more information about how quickly videos stop getting viewed after they're uploaded, see the adoption guide.

Make sure your users are aware of Stream (on SharePoint) and familiar with how it works.
Follow the adoption guide suggestions for how to start encouraging use of Stream (on SharePoint) with your users.
Set up a process and timeline for how your users can request the videos for specific groups, channels, or users to be migrated.
Add a custom message to the top of Stream (Classic) telling your users that uploads are blocked. Use or tweak the example text we wrote for this approach or write your own.
Block uploads to Stream (Classic)
Configure the Stream app to go to the Stream (on SharePoint) start page instead of Stream (Classic)
Selectively migrate different groups, channels, or users as your users request them.
When your timeline for how long you'll take requests to migrate content is up, remove the Stream license access for users so they can no longer access Stream (Classic).

Approach 3: Slowly switch users over

In this approach, you’ll slowly switch users over to Stream (on SharePoint) over a longer period of time. This approach is the least aggressive of the ideas. This approach makes sense if you have a large dedicated set of users using Stream (Classic).

Make sure your users are aware of Stream (on SharePoint) and familiar with how it works.
Follow the adoption guide suggestions for how to start encouraging use of Stream (on SharePoint) with your users.
Run the Stream (Classic) inventory report to better understand what content is in Stream (Classic), who has active content, and which internal stakeholders you need to reach out to.
Add a custom message to the top of Stream (Classic) telling your users your migration plan and that uploads will be blocked soon. Use or tweak the example text we wrote for this approach or write your own.
Set up a process and timeline for how you'll migrate your content. One tactic could be to break up your user groups and work with them at different points in the timeline.
1. Pilot test: Migrate a few different types of videos to help you get familiar with the migration tool.
2. Power users: Work with a set of power users or people and teams willing to be the first ones migrated. These users can give you insights and best practices before you move other people's content.
3. Corporate Communications: Most content in an organization that's "high value" comes from various corporate communication teams. You'll likely need to consult with these users groups and teams before you migrate their content. If they're using company-wide channels in Stream (Classic), they'll need to provide you with which SharePoint site they want their content migrated to since the migration tool doesn't have a default for company-wide channels.
4. Everyone else: Remaining users and Microsoft 365 groups fall into this category. You can choose the default destination for most of these containers and migrate them quickly. The tool know-how gained in last few migrations can help you sail through this one as there will be a few buttons to select now to complete this group.
5. Orphaned content: As users leave your organization, if someone doesn't assign new editors to the content, it becomes orphaned. You'll need to decide if you want to migrate this content or not. If you do, you'll have to pick a SharePoint site or OneDrive to migrate it into.
After you've given enough notice to your users that videos uploaded to Stream (Classic) will be blocked, change the setting to block uploads to Stream (Classic)
After you've migrated all the content, remove the Stream Classic access for users so they can no longer access Stream (Classic).

Note: This strategy was suggested by one of our largest Stream (Classic) customer who participated in the migration private preview. We greatly appreciate their knowledge sharing spirit.

Change management templates

As we've worked with organizations in the private preview of the migration tool, multiple admins mentioned that running the tool was easier job than preparing the organization for this change. To help, we'll start collecting together various change management templates and provide them here.

Stream (Classic) in product message templates

We've provided a way that you can display a custom message at the top of Stream (Classic). For several message ideas and templates, see the adoption guide.

Migration email templates

We only have the one template right now but we'll add more over time.

Migration process kick-off email

Hello!

We are excited to introduce a new version of Microsoft Stream, the video platform for Microsoft 365 . It will be replacing the existing classic version of Stream. We hope to complete the migration in [X] weeks.

Stream (on SharePoint) is designed to empower all of you to achieve more with fast intelligent videos. Videos will now behave like any other file type in SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive and Yammer. Stream (on SharePoint) leverages the power of the SharePoint to store and manage video using standard Microsoft 365 compliance, governance, permissions, external sharing, and endpoint integrations.

To better understand the differences between Stream (Classic) and Stream (on SharePoint) read this guide: https://aka.ms/DiffStreamClassicToSP

We plan to begin this migration by inviting some of you to be early adopters and sign up to migrate your content early and get your hands onto the new player and start page. Use this [link] to sign up. By [date], we will begin the migration for remaining users and M365 groups. Here are a few things you need to know:

Once migrated the videos will no longer be visible on Stream (Classic) but will be searchable on SharePoint or under ‘Stream migrated videos’ folder in your OneDrive or SharePoint site. Get more information on how to find your migrated content here: [link to internal help pages]

Once the migration finishes you will lose access to Stream (Classic) and videos that didn’t migrate will be deleted.

Critical metadata and permissions will migrate with video. Remaining metadata on the video will be lost. Refer to this list of metadata that will migrate: https://aka.ms/StreamMigrationMetadata

Your existing Classic URLs and video embed in M365 apps and internal company sites will keep working for a fairly long period of time. We’ll inform you if and when you need to replace these links.

For more information related to migration and our plans, see this website [link to internal help pages] or reach out to [mailing address].

We are excited about this new change as it brings more capabilities with intelligent videos and makes you more productive.

Thanks, [Admin name]

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