Chirag Shah & Associates is a long-established accounting firm in India with a loyal client base. For years, the whole firm ran on one desktop computer doing the job of a file server, shared over the office network and Wi-Fi, with everyone sending email from one shared account.
It worked, until it didn’t. The firm was growing, and the setup was starting to show its cracks.
What was at risk
- One copy of everything. About 410 GB of client files lived on a single Windows 11 desktop with no proper backup. One dead drive, theft or spilled coffee could have wiped it out.
- No way to tell who changed what. There was no Active Directory and no audit trail, so changes to shared files couldn’t be traced.
- Office-only access. Staff had to be at their desks to get to their files.
- No undo. If someone saved over a file by mistake, there was no earlier version to go back to.
- One inbox for everyone. A single shared email account made it hard to organize, audit or keep conversations separate.
- No clean way to offboard. When someone left the firm, there was no quick way to cut off their access.
What we did
We moved the whole firm onto Microsoft 365: every person got their own secure account, and the firm’s files moved to the cloud with proper access control.
Moving the files
- Migrated roughly 410 GB of data into two SharePoint sites, organized by department, each with its own permissions.
- Created Microsoft 365 accounts for all 18 users, each protected by multi-factor authentication.
- Turned on version history and audit logging, so files can be rolled back and every change can be traced.
- Set up OneDrive sync on staff computers for anyone who needs files offline.
- Covered recovery with Microsoft 365’s 14-day self-service restore plus cloud redundancy.
Email and teamwork
- Gave every employee their own Outlook mailbox.
- Added DKIM and DMARC records so the firm’s email is trusted by other mail servers and much harder to spoof.
- Added a warning banner to every message from outside the firm, reminding staff to take care with links and attachments.
- Rolled out Microsoft Teams for chat, calls and meetings.
- Set up distribution groups and shared mailboxes for team inboxes.
Training the team
- Ran live sessions on everyday SharePoint, Outlook and Teams, sharing files with clients, recovering deleted files, and reading the audit logs in the Microsoft 365 admin center and Azure.
- Left the team with recorded videos, step-by-step guides and follow-up Q&A sessions.
- Showed the senior partners how to reach Microsoft support directly if they ever need it.
Bumps along the way
| Problem | How we handled it |
|---|---|
| The old “server” was too slow to run the migration | Ran the transfer from a more powerful machine |
| Slow office internet | Scheduled transfers outside business hours |
| OneDrive syncing slowly on older PCs | Held off on syncing for those machines |
| Getting used to Microsoft 365 | Hands-on training and follow-up sessions |
The result
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| One shared drive, no tracking | SharePoint with version history and audit logs |
| One email account for everyone | Personal Outlook mailboxes, protected by MFA |
| Files only reachable in the office | Secure access from anywhere |
| Files emailed back and forth | Real-time co-editing and Teams meetings |
| No control when staff leave | Access removed in minutes from the admin portal |
On top of the move itself, the firm now has multi-factor sign-in across the board, properly configured email security (SPF, DKIM and DMARC), a full audit trail, warnings on outside email, and a team that knows how to use all of it.