File organization and structuring for migrating folders and docs of many levels

Question

Sharepoint is for document management; and of course it's highly customizable (sites, libraries within which we got functionality like grouping/sorting/filtering, etc.).

So, the way you choose to structure your files in Sharepoint depends on each case. However, when it comes to migrating a whole or even a part of a file system living on a file server to Sharepoint, a file system structured like this:

├── Folder Suppliers
├── Folder Supplier A
│   ├── Folder Level A
│   │   ├── Folder A 1
│   │   │   ├── Folder A 1.0               
│   │   │   │   ├── Folder A 1.00
│   │   │   │   │   ├── Folder Specifications
│   │   │   │   │   ├── Folder Sell Sheets
│   │   │   │   │   ├── Folder Protocols  
│   │   │   │   │   ├── Folder Presentation 
│   │   │   │   │   ├── ...
│   │   ├── Folder A 2
│   │   ├── Folder A 3
│   │   ├── ...
│   │   ├── Folder A 11
│   │ 
│   │── Folder Level B   
│   │   ├── Folder B 1
│   │   ├── Folder B 2
│   │   ├── ...

(..and it could go even deeper)

What would it be the optimal way to do it?

Would it be a central team site at the top level and then libraries for each folder in A level? Maybe, sub-sites instead of libraries? Or, a team site for each A level folder?

Any suggestions drawn from your experiences would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

First things to say - analyze your source data (folder structure). Then category or group the source data... based on that come up with some team sites or may be a single site. Based on the folder data structure create content type for metadata and attach these content types to various document library - this process will steam line the nested folder structure which we should never opt - data management is very complicated there. So always go with content type based, don't go with folder structure.

In the long run, Microsoft does not recommend to go with sub site due to the nested architecture, they recommend to go with the flat architecture that one to one independent site which will be managed through the hub site - this concept is applicable for the modern SharePoint online.

Note :

• Don't plan all the source folders data into a single document library otherwise we will face threshold issue, this is very very important while designing new system... so, based on category of the source data split it up into couple document libraries.