June 1, 2026
Zero Disruption: How Te Tumu Paeroa Migrated Thousands of SharePoint Sites to Microsoft 365
Te Tumu Paeroa moved off a decade of legacy SharePoint into Microsoft 365 - and out of a document environment where every site was set up a little differently.
Zero
- Thousands of sites, one consistent setup
- Pātaka and Kea moved into Microsoft 365 without every site being rebuilt from scratch.
- Template-driven provisioning
- New workspaces come out the same way every time, so settings stop drifting as the environment grows.
- Findability without folder-knowledge
- Consistent metadata means people don't need to know where something lives to find it.
- Governance built into the default
- Retention, protection, and disposal are set up in the structure - not left to individual judgement.
Challenges
A decade of growth had made Pātaka hard to trust.
Pātaka, Te Tumu Paeroa's document management environment, had grown across SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2016 for more than ten years - thousands of sites covering entities, projects, business activities, and the intranet.
That growth brought complexity. A large, deeply embedded architecture held business-critical and sensitive information, but no two sites were quite set up the same way. Confidence in the system - and ease of use - dropped as it grew. Te Tumu Paeroa had limited ability to use what Microsoft 365 could actually do.
The organisation needed to move to Microsoft 365. But not at the cost of trust, compliance, or operational stability.
Solution
Information Leadership partnered with Te Tumu Paeroa to build a staged, connected foundation using iWorkplace™ and Microsoft 365.
The approach was staged deliberately - balancing ambition against risk, budget, and organisational capacity. Not a lift and shift, but a foundation built to preserve institutional knowledge, cut administrative overhead, and support governance at scale without bespoke development or ongoing manual clean-up.
Working with Te Tumu Paeroa, Information Leadership migrated Pātaka and Kea (the intranet) into SharePoint Online. The iWorkplace™ foundations included:
- Standardised workspace and library patterns aligned to real business activities
- Template-driven provisioning to cut variability and configuration risk
- Consistent metadata and navigation patterns to improve findability
- Governance-by-design settings supporting safer collaboration and long-term compliance
The project also delivered search configuration improvements, integration updates to existing business systems, and a simplified intranet experience — built for how people actually work, not for perfect user behaviour.
Following go-live, Information Leadership provided on-demand hypercare: day-to-day SharePoint and Microsoft 365 support, rapid response to user questions, ongoing refinement of sites and libraries, and advice on best-practice use of iWorkplace™.
"The hypercare support from D'Artagnan made a huge difference to our adoption, issue resolution, and overall confidence in the system with kaimahi. He was always approachable, and kaimahi loved working with him."— Scott Rooney, Kaihautū Hangarau Whakaaturanga | IT Manager
Results
Te Tumu Paeroa now has an environment kaimahi can trust.
Staff now work in structured workspaces that behave predictably across teams and activities. Sites and libraries are provisioned from approved templates, so structures don't drift over time. Metadata follows repeatable patterns, cutting manual effort. Navigation stays familiar across teams, and findability improves because information is described consistently - people don't need to know where something lives to find it.
Te Tumu Paeroa has reduced its reliance on manual intervention and bespoke fixes, with simpler, more predictable navigation. Foundations are now in place for information protection, retention, and disposal, cutting the risk tied to unmanaged legacy content. As Copilot and other AI tools mature, the structured, curated content gives Te Tumu Paeroa a clearer path toward using them safely.
"What iWorkplace™ gave us was predictability. Before the migration, every site was a little different, permissions were complex, and the environment was increasingly hard to manage. Now our kaimahi can access information from anywhere, security is visible on every site, and new workspaces come out the same way every time. That consistency is what makes the environment supportable long-term, and it's what we'll build on from here."
Not sure where to start?
Most organisations come to us at a moment of change. If something has shifted and you're not sure what good looks like - that's enough of a reason to talk.
