Project Overview

As part of the University's ongoing efforts to reduce costs and improve the security of University data, the Confluence Wiki Migration Project is underway. It will migrate all content from our Confluence Wiki platform to SharePoint.

The current Wiki platform has been in use for over 16 years and is widely used across the University by around 20,000 users. Due to significant increases in licensing costs (previously free to approximately £300k per annum this year) and the information security risks associated with this legacy technology, the content needs to be transitioned to SharePoint to enable us to retire the Confluence Wiki platform. The retirement of the on-premise Confluence Wiki platform and any reduction of redundant content will also contribute towards the University’s Climate Action objectives.

Below, you will find important information regarding the migration timeline, required actions, key contacts and training resources.

Migration Timeline

The timeline below outlines the key milestones and activities for the project through to its completion in December.

Migration work is already underway with colleagues across DDaT to pilot the migration of their content from Confluence Wiki to SharePoint.

Over the coming weeks, we will contact colleagues across the University to advise on what they need to do to prepare for the migration of their content, understand any issues or challenges and confirm the migration schedule. We aim to migrate all content to SharePoint by the end of December 2024.

To prepare for the migration, from 14 October 2024, the Confluence Wiki platform will only be accessible in read-only mode. This means that users will not be able to add new content or revise existing content.

What you need to do to prepare for migration

Much of the content on the Confluence Wiki platform has been stored for several years.

All content owners will be requested to review their content stored on the Confluence Wiki platform, deleting content that is out of date, no longer required or should no longer be retained. This is to ensure that we minimise the amount of data transfer where possible, reducing risks and ongoing storage costs and that content owners are managing University data in line with the University Information Management Policy.

The Confluence Wiki platform should not be used for the storage of personal or sensitive data. This should be managed and stored appropriately in line with the University policies and guidance on managing data.

Migration Approach

We are aiming to minimise the impact on colleagues as much as possible during the migration process. The following approaches will be taken for the migration of content as appropriate and as agreed with the content owners:

• Automated migration to Sharepoint by DDaT - the majority of content will be migrated by DDaT using an automated migration tool.
• Manual user migration - in some cases, automated migration may not be possible or some colleagues may prefer to migrate their content themselves. Guidance and support will be provided.
• Manual migration to other suitable locations - some content may need to be migrated to other suitable locations (e.g. Moodle). This will need to be done manually by the content owner.
• Content that is no longer required – this will be archived and not migrated.

What to expect after migration

Following migration, colleagues will be required to check and confirm with the project team that their data has migrated successfully. Once your content has been migrated, we will remove read-only access to content on the Confluence Wiki platform.

In early 2025, this content will then be archived to a secure backup and the Confluence Wiki platform will be decommissioned.

As outlined above, the functionality on the Confluence Wiki platform does differ from that of SharePoint so there will be a change in the user experience. Unfortunately, due to the volume of users and wiki spaces, and the time and resources available to us, we will not be able to create the same level of enhanced wiki functionality and experience on SharePoint. We appreciate this may be frustrating for some colleagues; however, the primary objective of this project is to ensure the continued security and availability of the content currently stored on the Confluence Wiki platform.

Next Steps

By the end of September 2024, the project team will have contacted all admin users of the Confluence Wiki sites to advise on the next steps as outlined above.

Your cooperation and timely action on all requests from the project team will be appreciated to enable us to meet the target migration completion date so that the migration of content goes smoothly and we can ensure the security and availability of University data.

Training and Support

We understand that this migration may raise questions or concerns and we are committed to supporting you throughout the process. To help ensure a smooth transition, staff will be able to access training resources and FAQs here:

• Training Resources
• FAQ’s

We strongly encourage all staff members to review these materials before the migration.