Managing Digital Collaboration: ICRC’s Seamless Migration from Jive to Microsoft 365

The Challenges

Over the years, ICRC faced few challenges with its present Jive platform.

• Legacy Platform Limitations: Jive’s aging infrastructure lacked modern collaboration features and integration with Microsoft tools along with significant licensing costs.
• Complex Content Structures: A difficult to manage content load with over 3,000 Jive places, including groups, projects, spaces, and personal spaces, with diverse content types (Notes, blogs, discussions, videos).
• Custom Permissions and Metadata: An unwieldy set of permissions, tags, categories, and authorship metadata.
• Heterogeneous User Experience: Working with Jive as well as M365 environment.
• Archival and Compliance Requirements: There is significant inactive or stale content that needs to be archived but to be retained for future reference and compliance purposes. These need to be kept in an existing archival portal but strictly in PDF/A-2A format. Jive platform is unable to support this readily.

The problem statement in summary was - How can we maintain business continuity, avoid overpaying for overlapping technologies, and provide a streamlined user experience to employees that maximises the existing investment in M365 enabling our future roadmap of digital workplace innovation?

The Solution

The natural choice was migrate from Jive to M365. Netwoven took a phased migration approach tailored to ICRC’s needs with the following activities:

Content Discovery and Assessment:

The process began with a comprehensive assessment of the ICRC’s Jive environment. Using proprietary tools and Power BI dashboards, Netwoven extracted and analysed content usage, structure, and metadata to decide on the content to be migrated. The findings were reviewed with stakeholders and used to decide the overall migration strategy. This helped creating a clear segregation of in-scope content types (notes, blogs, discussions, videos, events) and out-of-scope items (polls, tasks, status updates) in agreement with International Committee of the ICRC Below is a summary of content inventory report.

A particular mapping complexity arose during migration since not all user scenarios aligned with a single Microsoft 365 workload. Depending on the nature of collaboration and content type, International Committee of the ICRC adopted a hybrid “mix-and-match” approach using Viva Engage, Microsoft Teams, and SharePoint Online — ensuring the right platform for the right use case (social engagement, team collaboration, or structured document management)

Infrastructure Setup

• Provisioned dedicated migration servers, redirect servers, and configured firewall rules to comply with IT and migration requirements.
• Registered Azure app for API-based migration.
• Used private VIVA api for VIVA posting.

Migration Execution

• Pilot Migration: Initial migrations were conducted for selected Jive places to validate the process and gather user feedback. This included test migrations to SharePoint and Teams, followed by UAT sessions with community owners.
• Production Migration: Full-scale migration was performed in waves, with automated scripts handling content extraction, transformation, and upload. Content types included binary files, notes blogs, discussions, videos, and events.
• URL Redirection: Legacy Jive URLs were preserved through IIS rewrite rules and SharePoint-based redirection pages. A mapping XML was generated from migration databases to support accurate redirection.
• Impersonation and Metadata Preservation: Where possible, original authorship and timestamps were retained using impersonation. Tags and categories were migrated as enterprise keywords and managed metadata.
• Validation and Issue Resolution: Automated and manual validation ensured content fidelity. Issues were tracked in SharePoint lists and resolved collaboratively with International Committee of the ICRC stakeholders.

User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

• Community owners and designated testers were actively involved in validating migration through structured UAT guides and checklists. This ensured early engagement and built confidence in the new platform.
• Enabled validation of documents, blogs, discussions, and permissions across platforms.

Adoption and Change Management

A key pillar of the migration’s success was a structured and user-centric change management approach:

• Educational Workshops: Netwoven conducted targeted workshops to familiarize International Committee of the ICRC users with Microsoft 365 workloads, including SharePoint, Teams, and Viva Engage. These sessions emphasized usability differences and best practices for content collaboration.
• Tailored Training: Specialized training decks were developed for community owners, focusing on M365 tools and their application in daily workflows. This included guidance on managing migrated content, using new collaboration features, and understanding the structure of modern SharePoint sites.
• UAT Participation: Community owners and designated testers were actively involved in validating migration through structured UAT guides. This ensured early engagement and built confidence in the new platform.
• Feedback Loops: UAT feedback was systematically collected and addressed, with iterative improvements made to enhance the user experience. This included refining permissions, improving metadata mapping, and resolving content formatting issues.
• Post-Go-Live Support:
  • Delivered final reports, redirection maps, and closure documentation.
  • Offered two weeks of post-go-live support and issue remediation.
• Governance and Best Practices: Users were educated on governance models for SharePoint and Viva Engage to manage content sprawl, enforce permissions, and maintain content quality.

The Benefit

The Jive to M365 migration was received as an overwhelming success, enabling the company to:

• Modern Collaboration: Transition to Microsoft 365 enabling seamless collaboration via Teams, SharePoint, and Viva Engage.
• Improved User Experience and Operational Efficiency: Enhanced navigation, mobile access, and integration with Microsoft tools offering a regular UI/UX experience.
• Content Governance: Structured metadata, tagging, and permissions improving content discoverability and compliance.
• Scalability: The new architecture supports future growth and digital transformation initiatives.

What truly distinguished this initiative was the activities on adoption and change management put in place. By engaging users early through workshops, onboarding guides, and structured UAT, the project ensured not only technical success but also enthusiastic user adoption. The process helped International Committee of the ICRC teams work together better using SharePoint, Teams, and Viva Engage, supporting the organization's goal to fully adopt the M365 platform.