As a BrightWork Customer Success Architect, I frequently get a call from my customers asking to archive a project or to move a project site under another Project Office. As part of good housekeeping, and to keep your uncached reports rendering in a timely manner, I would recommend setting up an archive area to move those old, completed projects.
These projects are still an asset and can be used to recreate other projects. Below I will outline the different ways to move or archive your projects, depending on the version of SharePoint you are running. Not sure which version of SharePoint you are using? Follow the steps in this blog.
Project Archive Area in BrightWork
BrightWork doesn’t ship with an Archive Area. You will need to create your own Archive Area to store your old projects. Some customers create the Archive Area with the same hierarchy as their Projects Area, while others just pop everything under the Archive Project Office.
Create an Archive Area
- Navigate to the top level site i.e. Home level of your site collection.
- Click on Site Settings and then Create Project Area. This option will only be available at the home level of your site collection.
- Enter the Name, Description, and URL of the Archive Area.
- Click Create. After a few moments, the Archive Area will appear on the top link bar.
- Within the Archive Area, we recommend creating an Archive Office and putting the sites underneath here for reporting purposes. Then replicate your PMO structure if you wish using (or copying) the Project Office template used per PMO.
SharePoint Foundation / BrightWork Online
In SharePoint Foundation, you have to do what is essentially a copy and paste approach, and then delete off the original. There is no site move feature available; this is only in SharePoint Server explained later. Unfortunately, with this way, metric histories are lost.
Copy a SharePoint Site
- Navigate to the Project Office Archive or Archive Area where the project site is to be relocated.
- Go to Site Settings and click Create Project
- When going through the wizard, select the project that you wish to copy when shown which site to use as a template. Complete the wizard as normal.
- The site is now duplicated to the new location
Delete a SharePoint Site
- Navigate to the original site.
- Click Site Settings.
- Under Site Actions, click Delete this site
- Click Delete
- NOTE: If you delete the wrong site, the site will remain in the site collection recycle bin for a limited duration.
SharePoint Server
Note: This step requires using the Site Content and Structure Tool (Publishing Infrastructure). This tool allows you to move sites between different sections of the same site collection. This tool is not available on SharePoint Foundation. Some users find that activating Publishing affects the Quick Launch. If this is the case deactivate the Publishing feature after archiving the site.
To activate the Publishing Infrastructure, do the following:
- Navigate to the top level site i.e. Home level of your site collection.
- Click Site Settings.
- Click on Site Collection Features.
- Activate the Publishing Infrastructure feature.
- Navigate to the top level site i.e. Home level of your site collection
- Copy and paste the following after the top level URL over where it says default.aspx _Layouts/sitemanager.aspx? e.g https://server/sites/ghc/_layouts/sitemanager.aspx?You will be brought to the Site Content Tool.
- The Site Content Tool allows you to select different areas within your Site Collection and also to move sites. A second Site Collection is not needed, however, you will need a separate projects area.
TIP: I recommend changing the color of the Archive Area and all sites within the Archive Area solely to differentiate it from the live Projects Area. This should prevent people from tracking projects in the Archive.
