What is the Most Overlooked Step in a Community Migration?

During a community migration, our clients tend to overlook platform configuration more often than any other aspect of the process. Clients are generally more focused on and interested in the software platform selection, and ensuring their content and data will be safely migrated over to their new platform.

Why You Should Care About Platform Configuration During Your Community Migration

Platform configuration matters because there is no automation to move these configuration and design settings from one platform to another. Unlike the content migration, there are no REST APIs built into the software platforms to pull or push these configurations. They must be implemented manually, which can drive significant costs if you do not properly plan for this work. Luckily, Social Edge customers don’t have to worry about this as they benefit from our expertise and experience. 

How Social Edge Mitigates Platform Configuration Costs

Social Edge mitigates platform configuration costs by implementing some of the key data migration to the new platform. Once that is done, we use training and enablement strategies to help the client do the rest on their own. 

Our data migrations can set-up the basic group (or site) name as a container. When it comes to laying out the landing pages for a group, there is no automated way to set up each individual widget inside the group. The big driver of cost and time is all of the groups your community might have. Internal communities for a large enterprise could have 1,000's of groups. Therefore, with any migration project, Social Edge works hard to be transparent and efficient with these costs. 

Once data migration is complete, we’ll help you by facilitating train-the-trainer programs, creating a self-service getting started area with tutorials, providing office hours to support the client’s team members responsible for various areas of the community, including:

1. Configuration of settings: Configure the settings of your new community platform according to your organization's specific needs. This includes settings such as user roles and permissions, content management, and community moderation tools.
2. Integration with other tools: If you use other tools such as customer relationship management (CRM) or marketing automation platforms, ensure that your new community platform can integrate with them. This will help you streamline your workflows and improve efficiency.
3. Customization of themes and templates: Customize the themes and templates of your new community platform to match your brand and ensure a seamless user experience for your community members. Coming up with standard templates can streamline the re-creation of the site landing pages from your old site. Having a partner can help ensure that you are making smart choices to create a new experience based on what's possible in the new platform.
4. Testing of configuration: Before launching your new community platform, test the configuration to ensure that everything is working as expected. This includes testing user roles and permissions, content management, moderation tools, and integration with other tools.
5. Documentation of configuration: Finally, document your settings so that you can refer to it later if needed. This ensures that your community platform remains consistent and organized over time.

Overall, platform configuration is a critical step in migrating your community to a new platform. By paying close attention to the details and ensuring that everything is set up correctly, you can ensure a successful migration and a positive experience for your community members.

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