SharePoint Online and Access Services End of Life

Question

Microsoft has announced they are killing the Access Services within SharePoint Online in March 2018.

There are several ways to get data out of the system (below).

• Export Access web app tables to an Access desktop database - This works as a means of exporting data for import into another database engine or solution.
• Convert Access Web App tables to SharePoint Lists - This may work depending on the size of your database, but without being able to tie SharePoint lists together, it's not a database.

However, Microsoft has recommended the replacement be a PowerApps implementation. I spent the afternoon yesterday looking into this and I do not see how this is really a feasible solution without a significant amount of work and data migration, and even then it won't match the capability of AWA with the amount of data in the system. I've also reviewed the Introduction to Microsoft PowerApps for Access web apps developers (DOCX Download) -- it most likely will not fill the void that AWA will leave.

Has anybody else looked into this, or come up with a solution to address this end of life notice?

Answer 1

There are not many options in this case as MS wants us to use PowerApps. Good news is Access Services and Access Apps will work with SharePoint Server 2016 till Product Life Cycle.

Option 1:

Customers who are using Access Services or Access Web Apps with Office 365/SharePoint Online can be moved to SharePoint Server 2016 environment. You could look for some provider who can provide Access Web Apps in hosted SharePoint environment. There are quite a few of them. For example, we have been providing Hosted SharePoint since SharePoint 2007 days to the latest SharePoint Server 2016. We are also a direct Tier 1 CSP (we get to see both sides and hence have some benefit). Many of our customers who use Office 365/SharePoint Online along with Access Web Apps are facing the similar dilemma. We recommended some of them to move to our Hosted SharePoint 2016 environment. We have been able to move them successfully in almost all cases along with the database and Access Apps. We are doing the same with Office 365 customers who contact us-We recommend them to get a Hosted SharePoint 2016 Enterprise with a hosting company.

Option 2:

Setup an on-prem dedicated server and move the apps. This takes you away from the cloud part and you will need to manage your own SharePoint environment which is costly to manage. You will need to take the app and get it working in your on-prem environment.