Administration

Faculty and staff encouraged to prepare Box accounts for migration to Office 365

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — As Penn State IT continues to migrate Box files to comparable Office 365 services, University IT leaders are asking faculty and staff members who have not yet done so to clean up their Box files to help facilitate successful, timely migrations. 

Before their unit is migrated to OneDrive or SharePoint, faculty and staff should follow the steps outlined in the Box pre-migration checklist on the Box migration website. Migrating excessive amounts of data, particularly outdated and unnecessary information, has drastically slowed migrations. Since migrations began in October, Box accounts with more than 60,000 files have taken weeks to move and have caused delays for units waiting to migrate. 

The checklist will help to eliminate unneeded or redundant files, allow for a quicker migration, and minimize disruptions to workflow, as Box files will not be accessible while they are being migrated.

“We have learned many valuable lessons since the first Box migrations began last fall,” Penn State Vice President for IT and Chief Information Officer Don Welch said. “Those lessons have informed our agile approach as we seek to move faculty and staff data with minimal impact.” 

More information, including training tutorials and other resources, can be found at the Box migration website. The Office of Records Management has created a guide to help confirm which records can be deleted and which records need to be migrated.  

For questions, employees can reach out to their unit's IT staff or use this form to contact the Box migration team.

Last Updated April 14, 2021