SharePoint 2010 upgrade real world exception handling

After about four month struggling to find workaround to several major SharePoint 2010 upgrade issues and solution to third party software 2010 compatibility issues, we have successfully upgraded to SharePoint 2010 from 2007 on August 2010. Consider we just implemented SharePoint 2007 in November 2009, we were already on 64 bit servers and database SQL server on 2008 R2. We also have limited amount of customizations and data need to be migrated. However, we are surprised by the number of different issues we were facing and the knowledge we are lacking from Microsoft product team and support during the upgrade.

After Microsoft production team on site visit on September 2010, we all believe it would be beneficial for both sides that we share our strategy, experience, and solution for our SharePoint 2010 upgrade so Microsoft production team could better prepare for future upgrade and support. I’m hoping it would be even beneficial for users who are planning to update their SharePoint to 2010.

This blog will highlight our overall scope of the upgrade and summary issues we were facing. I’ll provide details on each issue and the workaround or solutions we applied in the following topics. Since we are on SharePoint 2010 already, I’ll also share some tips and tricks on 2010 version.

Here is the high level of our SharePoint 2007 to 2010 upgrade.

1.       Scope of the upgrade from 2007 – We have single farm, five webApps, close to 300 site collections, over 14,000 sites, more than ten third party software, several customized site definitions, half dozen customized web parts, dozen customized features, and close to 300 GB database, over 10,000 end users, and Microsoft project server upgrade at same farm.

2.       Upgrade approaches – We evaluated different upgrade options and decided to use database attached approach with customized automation scripts and reports to minimize the downtime and verify system. Thank God we made the right decision since we were able to keep the 2007 SharePoint as read only so we could debug and resolve several major issues after 2010 go-live. More details to follow in the following blogs.

3.       “Clean up” 2007 system before upgrade and report are key for the success of the upgrade. More details to follow in the following blogs.

4.       Major issues during upgrade – I have listed some major issue here and will provide additional issues with details on each issue the following blogs.

a.       Fab 40 template site especially knowledge base site migration upgrade issues

b.      Deprecated template site including collaboration portal site upgrade issues

c.       Incompatible web parts upgrade issues

d.      Incompatible open source components such as site delete capture solution

e.      Could not delete customized master pages on root webs on each webApp

f.        Some sites migrated but with empty contents

g.       Extra sites created after upgrade

h.      Email enabled list could not receive emails after upgrade

i.         Owners could not edit default.aspx page with error access denied

j.        Contributor could not add/update items for some list with calculated Title

k.       Broken navigation tree for some sites

l.         Could not see the ‘Open with access’ option in the List tool ribbon

m.    Could not save site as template

n.      Could not display user profile pictures in three different sizes in my profile page

o.      Upgrade take long time and no out of box automation scripts

p.      Could not create web part page

5.       Major challenges after upgrade – After 2010 upgrade and users are requesting new features to be available immediately. It’s challenge to plan the capacity and performance with upgrade. Some new features need some planning include metadata services, PerfromancePoint feature, web analytics services, and MySites social capabilities. More details to follow in the following blogs.

As you could see there are lots of tricks to have accurate SharePoint 2010 upgrade with minimized downtime. More  detailed explanation will follow up on each topic.

Good luck for your upgrade.