Top 5 Tips Before You Migrate OnBase to SharePoint Online
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Migrating from Hyland OnBase to SharePoint Online is rarely just a document move.
In many organizations, OnBase has supported real business work for years. Finance teams use it for invoices. Human Resources uses it for employee records. Planning, permitting, legal, or operations teams rely on it for case files, approvals, and scanned documents.
Over time, OnBase becomes a mix of repository, workflow tool, records system, and business archive. That is why the migration needs more planning than a standard file transfer. SharePoint Online can be a strong destination for search, collaboration, records management, and Microsoft 365 integration, but it does not function the same way as OnBase.
Before moving content, organizations need to understand how OnBase is structured today, what should change, which tool to use, and what SharePoint needs to support after go-live.
Here are 5 practical tips to consider before moving from OnBase to SharePoint Online:
1.      Understand how OnBase is actually being used
Start by looking beyond the number of documents to determine what business need the content supports. OnBase repositories are often organized around document types, keywords, queues, workflows, retention rules, and integrations with line-of-business systems. Some areas may be actively used every day, while others may be historical. Some may contain official records, while others may hold duplicates, scans, drafts, or content that should have been disposed of years ago.
Before migration, IT should work with records, compliance, and business owners to identify major content groupings and how they are used, including:
Document types
Indexed metadata fields
Security groups and access patterns
Workflow dependencies
Retention requirements
Integration points
High-value or high-risk content
The goal with this exercise is to understand enough to avoid moving content blindly.
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2.      Do not recreate OnBase structures without question
One of the most common mistakes in an OnBase to SharePoint migration is attempting to rebuild the existing environment exactly as it exists today because SharePoint Online has a fundamentally different architecture. Sites, document libraries, content types, metadata columns, managed metadata, Microsoft 365 groups, and permissions all need to work together.
A structure that made sense in OnBase may not translate cleanly into SharePoint. Document types in OnBase may become SharePoint content types. Keyword fields may become metadata columns. Some values may belong in the SharePoint Term Store and some metadata may no longer be useful at all.
A clean target design should help users find content, support records management, and make permissions easier to maintain. It should also avoid turning SharePoint into a maze of libraries, folders, and custom fields nobody wants to manage after the project ends.
3.      Treat metadata as a migration asset
Metadata is often the difference between a usable SharePoint environment and a frustrating one. In OnBase, users may rely heavily on index values to search for documents. These fields often carry important context such as vendor name, employee number, permit number, case ID, department, document date, or record type.
If that metadata is lost, flattened, duplicated, or mapped poorly, users may technically have their documents in SharePoint but still be unable to work effectively.
Before migration, review the metadata model carefully.
Which fields are still needed?
Which fields are duplicated or inconsistent?
Which values need cleanup?
Which fields should become required in SharePoint?
Which fields are needed for retention, search, filtering, or reporting?
Good metadata planning helps SharePoint feel organized rather than simply filled with migrated content.
4.      Plan for workflows and business process changes
OnBase is often tied to business processes, not just document storage. Approvals, queues, routing rules, status changes, notifications, and integrations may all be part of the current environment. SharePoint Online can support many of these needs through Power Automate, Power Apps, Teams, and Microsoft's broader compliance and governance capabilities, but workflows rarely move over one-for-one.
Before migration, identify which workflows still matter. Some may need to be rebuilt within Microsoft 365 using Power Automate. Some may be simplified. This is especially important if users rely on OnBase queues to manage daily work, or if workflows trigger retention, classification, or integrations with other systems.
The migration plan should separate content migration from process modernization. While these items are connected, they are not the same task.
5. Use the right migration tool, not a one-time build
A successful OnBase to SharePoint migration needs more than an export script. It can be tempting to build a custom tool for the migration, particularly if the project looks like a one-time move. In reality, OnBase repositories often contain more complexity than expected. They often contain old content, inconsistent metadata, unusual file types, security exceptions, duplicate documents, TIFF images, multi-page scans, and unexpected relationships between documents and business processes. That level of complexity is difficult to handle with a tool that is built and tested at the same time as the migration itself.
A purpose-built migration tool should already account for the difficult parts of the move—and be able to support extraction, metadata mapping, permission translation, file transformation, logging, reporting, retries, and reconciliation. It should also help identify issues before they become cutover problems. These considerations are particularly important with OnBase content.
Many OnBase environments store scanned documents as TIFF images. In some cases, one business document may exist as several TIFF pages that need to be combined into a single PDF or another usable format before landing in SharePoint Online. If that transformation is not handled properly, users may technically receive the content, but it could be in a format that is hard to open, search, manage, or trust.
The goal is to avoid spending time and budget building a migration utility that will only be used once, while still leaving the organization with risk during the move.
Ready to migrate from OnBase to SharePoint?
If your organization is planning to migrate OnBase to SharePoint Online, take time to assess the current environment, design the target structure, and validate the migration approach before the final move.
Cadence Solutions helps organizations plan and execute Hyland OnBase to SharePoint Online migrations using Peregrine, which incorporates support for complex metadata, permissions, governance, and phased migration requirements.
Learn more about Hyland OnBase to SharePoint Online Migration with Cadence Solutions.