Promote subsites to top-level sites with ShareGate Desktop 11.0

By Benjamin Niaulin

Updated on February 17, 2020

With this release, we’ve made it easier than ever to restructure your SharePoint content in order to embrace the flat site structure recommended for modern SharePoint.

We find ourselves facing what I call “the second great migration”. The move to Office 365 introduces new concepts—including Office 365 Groups, Microsoft Teams, and modern group-connected team sites—that, together, make up what Microsoft calls the modern workplace.

These integrated workloads are revolutionizing how we collaborate and have the power to overshadow shadow IT. But the change in interface may leave you wondering whether you can adopt them when you’ve already built and invested in a different infrastructure. At ShareGate, we want to help you evolve as fast as the technology the cloud provides.

That’s why we’re extremely proud to announce a whole new section of the app dedicated to helping you move things around in your environment without the hassle. New in ShareGate Desktop 11.0, the Restructure tab and its first full-fledged feature, Promote, mark the start of our commitment to help you tackle the second great migration—the first step along the path to workplace modernization.

As migration experts, we know how daunting the shift can be. These tips will make the transition to Office 365’s modern workplace as seamless as possible:

Go from classic to modern SharePoint
Take your site structure from top-down (sites and subsites) to flat (no subsites)
Connect team sites to Office 365 Groups and add Microsoft Teams to them
Rebuild your structure with hub sites and a home site

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Go modern with the new Restructure tab

The secret to leveraging the full potential of Office 365 isn’t about turning features on or off. It’s about transforming—or rather, restructuring—our existing environment and, more broadly, the way we approach our role within our organizations.

A new tab is no small change; this is a ShareGate Desktop promise to help you on this journey. Dedicating a new section of our product shows our commitment to bringing innovation and simple solutions to these new challenges.

See it in action:

How to promote subsites to top-level sites with ShareGate Desktop

Simplify your SharePoint management routine.

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Office 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams can only be attached to top-level sites. That means if you want any of your existing subsites to benefit from modern workloads, you’ll need to convert them into independent sites. Here’s how to do it with the new release:

Step 1: Select from your existing subsites

In ShareGate Desktop, you can see all of your sites and subsites at a glance—giving you all the information you need to get started.

Step 2: Preview the new site structure before making a change

See the future before it happens. ShareGate Desktop now provides a visual preview of your copy—so you can preview any changes, and adapt if you need to.

Step 3: Tailor the operation to your needs

Set up a new name, URL, and—to take advantage of the true modern experience—a new site template as you prepare for the transformation from top-down to flat.

Then, choose whether to keep the original subsite as-is or delete it once it’s successfully been promoted.

Screenshot of preview screen with settings/options open.

Step 4: Track progress and results

Get a detailed report of everything happening during your subsite promotion. Identify issues—and potential solutions—to ensure a successful transformation.

The future of Restructure in ShareGate Desktop

With this release, ShareGate Desktop lays the foundation for a new story—one to guide you through the complicated process of converting what you already have—so you can fully adopt Office 365’s seamlessly integrated modern workloads.

Ideas we’re researching:

Converting classic pages to modern pages
Hubify! Helping you convert sites with subsites to flat sites with hubs
Copying more modern elements, including lists with Flows and PowerApps

Have another idea? Let us know on the official ShareGate Desktop suggestion forum.

Next ShareGate Desktop release this summer

We’re excited to share that a highly requested feature, the ability to automatically export your ShareGate Desktop reports to SharePoint, is coming to a release near you this summer.

Stay tuned to find out more!

From SharePoint migration and content management to ongoing Microsoft Teams governance, ShareGate gives you everything you need to achieve successful Microsoft 365 deployment and adoption.

In this on-demand webinar, ShareGate’s Head of Product, Benjamin Niaulin, gives a tour of ShareGate Desktop and ShareGate Apricot’s top features and shows how they can help solve common issues at each stage of your journey to Microsoft 365 adoption.