SharePoint 2013 has been RTM’ed yesterday and it is becoming a main stream SharePoint platform for development. However this article will focus on how to handle deprecated functionalities/APIs during MOSS 2007 to SP 2010 migration. This may sound outdated, it still holds good for people who want to move from SP 2007 to SP 2013, because there is no direct migration path from MOSS 2007 to SP 2013. The portal has to be migrated to SP 2010 from MOSS 2007, then it has be migrated to SP 2013.

1. Deprecated product feature / functionality in SharePoint 2007

During the Analysis phase a list of deprecated MOSS 2007 features / functionalities implemented in the MOSS 2007 environment need to be collated. In the pre-migration phase, the strategy for the deprecated functionalities needs to be formulated. The fix for a deprecated functionality may vary from a simple re-configuration to a complex re-build or a re-implementation of the component.

For example, the Site Template of MOSS 2007 is completely deprecated in SharePoint 2010. The fix for site templates is to create a new site in MOSS 2007, Upgrade to SP 2010, Resolve Issues and Save as Template in 2010.

Another example of a deprecated MOSS 2007 feature is the custom tool bar items of the List Forms.

The recommended fix of the MOSS 2007 Custom Tool bar of List Form is to re-build the custom tool bar in V4 Ribbon by embracing the Ribbon User Interface. This requires a re-build and re-configuration effort.

The another example is STSADM commands used in MOSS 2007 deployment scripts. In this case STSADM is completely deprecated; the recommendation is to implement these scripts by leveraging PowerShell Scripts for SP 2010.

Finally, the fixes for deprecated features / functionalities necessitate us to plan for training effort for the end users. Because most of the times the fixes for deprecated features changes the way the end users perform the day-to-day work using the SharePoint platform.

2) SharePoint 2010 Deprecated APIs

This is a scenario where an API or set of APIs in the Object Model of SharePoint 2007 is no longer valid, which means the components that uses these APIs may break. The strategy for the deprecated APIs needs to be formulated in the pre-migration phase (Pilot Migration activity). During the pre-migration activity, the custom solutions need to be migrated to Visual Studio 2010, re-compiled and tested for occurrence of deprecated APIs. If  a deprecated API is found, the corresponding replacement API of SharePoint 2010 needs to be implemented in the code.

The following excel contains the exhaustive list of deprecated APIs in SP 2010.

 Subscribe to my blog