Mapping your current services

Module 3: Taking stock and planning · Reading time: 11 minutes

Learning objective: After this lesson, you can build a complete inventory of your current cloud services, including the links and usage you don't see straight away.

Key concepts: inventory, component, current service, target, owner, priority, shadow IT, link, single sign-on (SSO), shared mailbox, alias, distribution list, verification record

Why start with an inventory?

A switch rarely fails because of the big work. Copying mail and moving files usually goes fine. It fails because of what nobody wrote down: the website's contact form that suddenly stops sending mail, the scanner that scans to a mailbox that no longer exists, the colleague who kept the customer list in a private Dropbox.

An inventory is a list of everything you currently do in the cloud: which service, which data, who owns it, what will happen to it, and how important it is. It takes a few hours, and it saves you days.

Bakkerij De Korrel started with eight boxes. After a round of questions to colleagues, there were thirteen.

The eight components

Start with these eight. They all come back throughout the rest of the course.

What you don't see straight away: links

This is the most important part of the inventory. A link is anything that sits outside your cloud service but depends on it. Look for them in these places:

1. Single sign-on (SSO). Apps where you log in with your Google or Microsoft account. The security settings of each account list the apps with access. Check this for a few colleagues, not just for yourself.
2. Your website. Contact forms and online shops send mail. Through which server? With which address?
3. Devices. Scanners and multifunction printers that scan to mail or to a folder. Tills, alarm systems or other devices that send mail.
4. Other software. Accounting, CRM, planning, newsletter service. Do they send mail on behalf of your domain? Do they pull files from your storage?
5. Your domain's DNS. This shows you who's allowed to send mail on behalf of your domain (SPF), which services have set a verification record (TXT records such as google-site-verification= or MS=), and whether there are DKIM records from other services. Exercise A2.1 from the previous module has already worked this out for you.
6. Phones and laptops. Which apps sync with the old service? All of these will need to be reconfigured later (lesson 7.2).

Shadow IT: what colleagues arrange themselves

Shadow IT is software or storage that colleagues use on their own, without the organisation having arranged it: a free Dropbox, a WhatsApp group with customers, a private Gmail for the newsletter, an online planner. It's usually not done with bad intent: someone solved a problem.

For the switch, shadow IT matters for two reasons. It often contains organisational data that needs to move too. And if you don't ask about it, it will simply carry on existing after the switch, outside your new European setup.

So ask about it in a way that gets honest answers. Not "who's using services that aren't allowed?", but: "We're switching and don't want anyone to lose anything. Which programs, sites and apps do you use for your work, even if you arranged them yourself?" A short list of examples helps people remember.

Per line: five fields

For each line in your inventory, write down five things:

1. Current service: for example, "Gmail via Google Workspace".
2. Size: as concrete as possible, for example "12 mailboxes, 38 GB combined" or "3 shared calendars".
3. Owner: who decides on this and knows how it works? That's someone with a name, not "everyone".
4. Target: what will happen to it later? Move to a new service, close down, archive, or leave as is for now.
5. Priority: high (the organisation can't work without this), medium or low.

Example of a few lines from the bakery:

Pitfalls

• Only checking your own account. An admin doesn't automatically see which apps a regular user has linked to their account. Check with several people.
• Forgetting shared mailboxes. info@, invoices@ and orders@ are often not a mailbox of their own but an alias, a shared mailbox, or a group. During the switch, each of these needs to come back in the right way (lesson 4.4).
• Counting licences instead of usage. Twelve licences don't mean twelve people are actively using the service. Check the last sign-in.
• No owner. A line without an owner doesn't get picked up.
• Not updating the inventory. Whatever you discover during the migration, add it in afterwards.

In practice: what this looks like with a provider

When switching to a WebOké Nextcloud and a WebOké mail package, the inventory immediately becomes your task list: for each component, the manual tells you which tool to use (for example, the Import Tool for Google, Data Migration for OneDrive, or the Email Migration Tool for mail) and in which order. With other European providers, the tool is named differently, but the inventory is exactly the same: it's about your organisation, not about the provider.

Summary

• An inventory prevents you from forgetting, during the switch, things that nobody wrote down.
• Start with eight components: email, calendar, contacts, files, documents, chat and meetings, passwords, backups.
• Look for links: single sign-on, website, devices, other software, DNS records, phones.
• Ask colleagues about shadow IT in a way that gets honest answers.
• Each line gets a current service, size, owner, target and priority.

Quiz

Exercise

Exercise A3.1: Is your inventory complete? Fill in the inventory form for your own organisation (or for your own private use). The program checks whether all eight components are included, whether you've found at least three links, and whether each line has a current service, size, owner, target and priority.

Exercise E3.1: The round of colleagues. Ask at least three people (or, if you work alone, go through your own devices) which programs, sites and apps they use for their work. Note down what you hadn't already got on your list, and what you learn from it.

Further reading

The steps in these articles apply to WebOké's services; with other providers it works in a similar way.

• Nextcloud manual 13.1: Preparing: what to bring and in which order
• Nextcloud manual 13.6: Switching from Microsoft 365 to WebOké: files, documents, mail and calendar
• DirectAdmin guide 10.1: Moving your email: your options
• WebOké manual 14.1: Domain health (also without an account)