I'm João Lívio, founder of pH7x Systems®. I have built software since 1993 and was a Microsoft MVP from 2002 to 2013. This is where I publish the work: analysis, a migration field guide, verified answers and open-source tools. Not everything can be proven, so each one says what was tested, what remains uncertain and what comes next.
Choose the work in front of you. Each one shows the problem, what the published work gives you, the limit it states about itself and where to start.
The path from the decision to a validated farm. Each step names the question it settles and the Field Guide chapter, analysis or tool that settles it, the database-attach procedure included.
Microsoft supports one way across, a database attach to a new farm. The path links procedures; it runs nothing against a farm.
What Microsoft supports today, five options side by side, and three questions that place each option with its reason, with a record you can take to your team.
It reads your answers, not your farm; the planners' inventory scripts it points to are checked for syntax and not yet run against a farm.
Read what the farm has installed against what its sites use, and decide to keep, adapt, replace or eliminate each customisation. Then audit every operation that runs with elevated privileges: who invokes it, which permission it borrows, which account acts, how the caller is authorised and what is recorded.
The scripts in both chapters read and change nothing, and a service account is never offered as the fix for elevated code.
Verified answers, each with the command, an example output, what it proves, what it does not prove, and the date it was last checked.
Measured against SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365. None of them is a claim about SharePoint Server.
Analysis that separates what the evidence establishes from what it does not, with every source dated and the limits stated.
Analysis informs a decision about your system; it does not make one.
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pH7x Systems® is a Portugal-based technology company focused on software engineering, enterprise platforms, cloud architecture and modernisation. We approach technology through architecture, implementation, testing and outcomes that can be verified.
Enterprise applications, APIs, backend services and integrated platforms. Architecture, maintainability, automated testing, security and operational reliability are treated as core engineering concerns, not as a phase at the end.
Development and automation analysisSharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Server on-premises: platform architecture, custom development, administration, governance, integration and modernisation.
34 verified answers, on SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365Assessment and modernisation of legacy SharePoint farms: application dependencies, farm customisations, authentication, APIs and the supported migration paths. A platform upgrade and an application modernisation are two different projects, and we say which one you have.
The path to Subscription Edition The readiness reviewApplication architecture, identity, integration, hosting, observability and operational engineering on Microsoft Azure.
Azure and cloud analysisSystems connected through APIs, gateways, clear service boundaries and secure communication patterns, including .NET integrations and the legacy applications in between.
Migration analysisTechnical architecture, engineering governance, testing strategies, delivery automation, security controls and operational readiness.
Governance and security analysisPractical applications of AI and automation, with attention to security, evidence, governance and responsible integration. Experimental work is described as experimental.
AI and agents analysisWe build on
Founder & Software Engineer · pH7x Systems®
I started in 1993 writing Pascal and Clipper, then spent years running systems, networks and databases before SharePoint became most of my work: farms, intranets, hybrid architectures and migrations.
pH7x Systems® is where I publish what I had to work out on real projects, in a form someone else can check.
Each entry is published as the badge or certificate reads, with its qualifier and period. A founder's certification is not a certification of the company; the company's own programme status is listed apart.
About the founder
Most Valuable ProfessionalMicrosoft · Alumni · 2002–2013 · historical recognition
Copilot for Microsoft 365 Technical ChampionMicrosoft · 2024
Microsoft Certified Technology SpecialistMicrosoft · SharePoint Development · 2011
Microsoft Certified ProfessionalMicrosoft · 2014
AIGPE Certified Lean SpecialistAIGPE · 2023
Nintex Process Automation ExpertNintex · Office 365 · 2021Nintex Certified Solutions ProfessionalNintex · SharePoint and Office 365 · 2019
Certified Trainer (CAP)IEFP, Instituto do Emprego e Formação Profissional · 2003
Microsoft · ISV · independent software vendor. pH7x Systems is a Microsoft Partner in the ISV programme, a programme status of the company, kept apart from the personal credentials beside it.
The same engineering practice applied to software projects developed by pH7x Systems.
$ m365-governance evaluate --evidence list-over-limit.json --format json
"resource": { "type": "list", "display_name": "Archive" }
"counts": { "pass": 0, "fail": 1, "unknown": 2 }
{ "rule_id": "SPO-LIST-001", "outcome": "fail" }
{ "rule_id": "SPO-LIST-002", "outcome": "unknown" }
{ "rule_id": "SPO-LIST-003", "outcome": "unknown" }
Software for evidence-based technical governance across supported Microsoft 365 environments. Collection, evidence, assessment and interpretation are kept separate, and what could not be established is said in those words.
A separate software platform for environmental compliance and the circular economy: operational execution and territory management, with public dashboards for recycling, waste and water. Certified by the Portuguese Environment Agency to transmit electronic waste tracking forms into the national system.
A working practice, not a certified or audited methodology.
Business requirements, technical constraints, dependencies and operational risks, written down before anything is designed.
Alternatives evaluated, system boundaries defined, and engineering decisions that can be checked later.
Maintainable components, documented contracts and secure integrations.
Automated tests, integration checks and real operational evidence decide whether it works.
Maintainability, observability and controlled change through the life of the system.
Evidence-based analysis of enterprise architecture, platform compatibility, modernisation, security and software engineering.
All technical analysisKeeping the old farm available preserves a fallback environment. It does not preserve changes accepted by the new one. A decision matrix and an offline counterexample separate routing recovery from data reconciliation.
A release of this site passed every check in its release gate and was refused by the deployment client before a single file was uploaded. What the gate proved, what only the platform's own validator decides, and how a test written from the same assumption as the code it tests agreed with an error instead of finding it.
A deployment slot swap warms the new version, moves production traffic to it without dropping requests, and keeps the old version one swap away. It does not protect the work running on the old instances, stop timers and WebJobs running in both slots, carry the identity and some settings across, or undo on the way back what the new version wrote.
Whether you are modernising a legacy platform, evaluating a SharePoint migration, developing enterprise software or exploring a new integration, I start with the technical problem and the constraints that matter.
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