Distributed Logic Corp. Partners with ReplaceMagic

Every so often we come across a technology that we know will make a fast and positive impact for our clients and our work. We’re excited to announce that we’ve found such a technology and partner in ReplaceMagic, a software built to address an often overlooked issue: broken document links that surface after a SharePoint migration.

Broken links are a major thorn in the sides of expert providers the world over. Thousands can crop up unexpectedly during a migration, and it can be debilitating to an organization.

Consider the countless documents – Excel, Word, PDFs – that link to various files to build complex tables or to simply create user-friendly interactions. Excel alone has at least five different ways to link to other files through pivot tables, inline cells, and formal references.

When we migrate from one Sharepoint environment to another, whether on-premise or online, document locations change and those reference links can lose their anchor. No well-known tools address the issue, including ShareGate, Content Matrix, SoAp, and Quest. As a result, solutions to rampant broken links have historically been custom-built, labor intensive and expensive.

Enter ReplaceMagic, a hidden gem of a tool in the Sharepoint migration world.

ReplaceMagic works in an incredibly straightforward fashion. It begins by turning against the SharePoint environment, testing and hunting for broken links. Once those links are identified, we can provide the software with a map that guides it from the old location to the new – it even employs pattern matching to further automate the process. With all locations in hand, ReplaceMagic updates the information and repairs the links.

Purpose built for reconstructing link pathways, ReplaceMagic was originally developed for file system migrations long before SharePoint became the go-to intranet solution. That means a tremendous amount of testing and learning was done before it was applied to SharePoint, and we can now benefit.

For example, in one case we found more than 400,000 broken links after a client migration. Link issues were scattered across critical documents, and there was some concern that the project had hit a daunting challenge.

We put ReplaceMagic to work, however, and 90% of the broken links were quickly resolved. This saved the client significant investment, time, anxiety and – importantly – kept the project on the rails to completion.

Deploying solutions like ReplaceMagic is another way that Distributed Logic Corp goes above and beyond to create a better intranet. We focus on identifying the best path to improvement, and stay ready to adapt as technology evolves so we can implement the most reliable, user-friendly solution for each organization.

Contact us to find out more about how we evaluate organizations and create the right environment for each client.