The challenge
Vestdavit AS is a leading supplier of boat davits, which are used to lower and raise boats from larger vessels. The company has over 40 years of experience in delivering safe and reliable solutions to marine and civilian customers worldwide.
Vestdavit previously had its documents stored on a file server, where they had organized them with a certain logic in folders and subfolders. However, this system was not optimal for finding and managing documents effectively. Documents were difficult to search for, share and update, and there was a risk of duplicate versions and inconsistent information.
Vestdavit therefore wanted to modernize its document management and move its documents to a cloud-based platform that could offer better functionality, security and accessibility. They chose to use MetaShare, a solution based on SharePoint that makes it easy to use metadata to classify, filter and find documents.
The solution
To help Vestdavit migrate their documents from the file server to MetaShare/SharePoint, they hired Ways, experts in digital transformation and Microsoft 365. Ways has extensive experience in implementing migration projects and has developed its own tools and methods to simplify and automate the process.
Ways carried out the migration in three steps:
- First, Migration Manager for Microsoft 365 was used, a tool that facilitates and automates the transfer of documents from different sources to SharePoint. With this tool, the documents could be quickly and securely migrated, without losing any information about the documents (created by, modified by, created modified).
- Then a PowerShell script was executed that tagged the documents in SharePoint with logic based on the folders they were in. This gave them a consistent and relevant metadata structure, which made it possible to filter and sort them in MetaShare.
- Finally, a PowerShell script was executed that first moved the documents from subfolders to the root folder and then removed the old now empty folders.
The result
By migrating its documents from the file server to MetaShare/SharePoint using Ways, Vestdavit has achieved several benefits:
- They have a modern, cloud-based document management system that is easy to use, secure and accessible from any device.
- They have a better overview and control over their documents, thanks to metadata and filtering.
- They have increased their productivity and efficiency, as they can find, share and update their documents faster and easier.
- They have reduced the risk of errors and inconsistencies, as they have a single source of truth and avoid double versions.