Turning your folder structure into searchable SharePoint metadata
One of the biggest things organisations lose during a migration is something nobody ever thinks to document. It's not the files themselves. It's the meaning hidden in the folder structure and the filenames.
A document might sit under Clients > Contoso Ltd > Riverside Project, while its filename carries a drawing number, revision and issue date. Users understand all of that instinctively. They know where to look because the structure has evolved over years.
SharePoint doesn't. Unless that information becomes metadata, it stays buried inside folders and filenames where SharePoint Search, filtered views, Power Automate and Power BI cannot make use of it.
A migration is the ideal time to change that, because every file is already being processed once. Rather than simply copying documents into SharePoint, Liscaragh Migrate can extract information from the existing structure and write it into SharePoint columns as part of the migration. No separate project, no manual reclassification, no asking users to organise thousands of files after the migration has finished.
Every file can carry its own history
The simplest metadata isn't about structure at all. It's about provenance. Liscaragh Migrate can record a source path, a source owner and a migration date against every migrated document, so years later someone can still answer "where did this file originally come from" without referring to spreadsheets or migration notes.
This feature is optional and disabled by default, because writing these values updates the document's own SharePoint metadata. On libraries with versioning enabled, that creates a new version, so it's worth considering before enabling it on a large, active library.
Source owner is only populated when the source platform can provide it reliably. Datto Workplace personal spaces expose an owner; local folders and network shares do not. In those cases the field is left blank rather than guessing.
Built to preserve meaning, not just move files
Liscaragh Migrate can turn folder structure, filenames, file type and migration provenance into searchable SharePoint metadata during the migration itself. Every feature is optional, and each can be enabled independently to suit the destination library. See the naming-convention rules that drive it.
Folder names become SharePoint columns
Many organisations already organise information consistently. A structure such as Contoso Ltd \ 2024-118 Riverside Refit \ Drawings \ Electrical already tells users quite a lot.
With a simple mapping rule such as 1=Client; 2=Project, Liscaragh Migrate writes Contoso Ltd into a Client column and 2024-118 Riverside Refit into a Project column, on every document beneath that folder. Other common examples include Department, Site, Year, Contract and Region, whatever the folder depth already encodes for a given client.
If a folder doesn't contain enough levels, the missing columns are simply left blank. If a mapping rule contains an error, only that rule is skipped; the migration itself continues normally.
Filenames can become metadata too
Not every organisation relies on folders. Many encode information directly into filenames instead, a name such as DWG-1023 Rev C.pdf already contains useful metadata on its own.
Liscaragh Migrate can extract values from filenames using named-capture regular expressions and write each captured value into its own SharePoint column. This is intentionally an advanced feature aimed at MSPs and experienced administrators. Rather than hiding the flexibility behind a simplified wizard, it exposes the full power of regular expressions for organisations with established naming conventions, your client never needs to see the rule itself.
If a rule cannot be compiled, only that rule is ignored. The migration continues unaffected.
File type and review candidates
Not every useful column requires complex rules. A simple extension mapping such as Drawing=dwg,dxf or Spreadsheet=xlsx,xls can categorise files automatically. Both .DWG and .dwg are treated identically, producing a consistent Category column regardless of filename casing.
Liscaragh Migrate can also flag files that may deserve review by looking at their last modified date. Documents that haven't changed in longer than a number of years you choose, seven years for example, get a Retention column stating plainly why: "Review candidate: not modified since 2019". Nothing is deleted, and nothing is archived automatically. The migration simply makes those files easy to find afterwards using standard SharePoint filters.
Why this matters
Once information becomes SharePoint metadata, it becomes useful throughout Microsoft 365. Instead of searching folders or relying on filenames, users can filter documents by client, build project-specific SharePoint views, find every drawing with a particular revision, locate documents older than a chosen age, build Power Automate workflows and Power BI reports, and get better results from Microsoft Search. The information was already there. The migration simply turns it into something SharePoint understands.
Everything happens as part of the migration
None of these features requires another pass over the source. After each file has been copied, Liscaragh Migrate uses the information already collected during the migration to populate SharePoint metadata; the source is never revisited simply to build columns.
Every feature is independently optional and disabled by default. If multiple rules could write the same column, explicit folder or filename mappings always take precedence over the simpler automatic mappings, so a deliberate configuration is never overwritten.
Before enabling metadata extraction
- Start with a single library. Confirm the resulting columns are exactly what you expect before applying the same rules more widely.
- Check SharePoint versioning before enabling provenance columns. Updating document metadata creates a new version on libraries where version history is enabled.
- Treat folder and filename mappings as client-specific. A convention that works perfectly for an engineering company may be completely unsuitable for a finance department.
- Category and retention columns are usually the safest place to begin, since they depend only on file extensions and modified dates rather than a client's folder structure.
This isn't a replacement for a well-designed information architecture project. What it does ensure is that the structure people have relied on for years isn't discarded during the migration. Instead, it becomes searchable, filterable SharePoint metadata that continues adding value long after the files have been copied.