Lotus to SharePoint Migration
Understanding the Lotus Notes Application Landscape and the Transition to Microsoft SharePoint
Ecotech IT Solutions Private Limited Web: www.ecotechservices.com
Authored by Sujit Karpe Ecotech IT Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Last edited: 13-Jun-2012 Ecotech IT Solutions Private Limited. All rights reserved. The Ecotech IT Solutions Private Limited name and Ecotech logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Ecotech IT Solutions Private Limited. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Table of Contents 1.
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 2
2.
Lotus Notes: Trends............................................................................................................................. 3
3.
Ecotech’ Services ................................................................................................................................. 4
4.
Decision Point-Check Your Requirements ....................................................................................... 5
5.
Ecotech’s Migration Process .............................................................................................................. 6
6.
Identify Migration Requirements ........................................................................................................ 7
7.
Data Migration....................................................................................................................................... 9
8.
Data Migration: Notes Elements migrated to SharePoint ............................................................ 10
9.
Migrating Application Designs .......................................................................................................... 12
10. Security Mapping ................................................................................................................................ 14 11. Migration Tools ................................................................................................................................... 15 12. Development Tools ............................................................................................................................ 15 13. Migration Project Screens ................................................................................................................. 16 14. Summary ............................................................................................................................................. 18
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1. Introduction Part of the widespread success of Lotus Notes was due to the fact that it encapsulates a broad range of components necessary in most IT environments. They include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Email, Calendaring Directory services Database and Security Rapid application development Web server Replication Offline capability
So, as the move away from Lotus Notes continues to gain momentum, many organizations will experience the challenges associated with the transitioning of these services to other platforms such as Microsoft. Broadly speaking the three major areas involved in transitioning from Notes to Microsoft technologies are: 1. Notes Mail to Exchange migration 2. Domino Directory to Active Directory synchronization 3. Notes/Domino to SharePoint/ASP.NET application migration Definitely the Mail and Directory components pose their own unique challenges; the area which by far presents the biggest challenge in transitioning from Lotus Notes is in the area of application migration.
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2. Lotus Notes: Trends
Lotus Notes has been an idle technology for a number of years.
No new features have been added until very recently. -Market’s response was, “too little, too late”.
While very few new customers have purchased Lotus products, there are still approximately 70 million users worldwide. -Many Lotus customers are considering moving to another technology, for their e-mail, enterprise work flows, and collaborative applications.
This activity has created a need for professional services to assist with SharePoint migration projects. Planning and executing migrations can be difficult and time consuming. -Companies need a professional and accurate method to migrate the large amount of information within their Lotus data environment.
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3. Ecotech’ Services
Lotus Notes to SharePoint migration
Lotus Notes to Office-365 migration (SharePoint Online)
Lotus Notes to .NET migration
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4. Decision Point-Check Your Requirements SharePoint 2010
SharePoint Online
.NET
Security
Secured - Active Directory, FBA authentication can be used
Secured - Active Directory can be used
Secured - Active Directory, FBA authentication can be used
Development Time
Less, by using Out Of the Box features
Less, by using Out Of the Box features
More, comparing to SP2010 and Office 365
Customization Control
Limited
Limited
Full
Migration
Data To - Lists, MS SQL Server
Data To – Lists
Data To - MS SQL Server
MIS Reports
Out Of the Box, SSRS, Third Party Components like Telerik, DevExpress, Dundas Dashboard etc.
Out Of the Box
SSRS, Third Party Components like Telerik, DevExpress, Dundas Dashboard etc.
- Hosting
On Premise, Cloud
Cloud
On Premise, Cloud
- Software Licensing
On Premise - Licensing Cloud - Licensing
Subscription
On Premise - Licensing Cloud - Licensing
Infrastructure
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5. Ecotech’s Migration Process
Identify migration requirements
Synchronize Active Directory and Lotus Domino Directory - Exchange Connector
Route mail between Exchange and Lotus Domino - Exchange Connector
Perform free/busy lookups between Exchange and Lotus Domino - Exchange Calendar Connector
Migrate users' data from Lotus Domino mail databases to Exchange mailboxes Exchange Migration Wizard
Retire Domino mail servers
Analyze Domino applications:
Identify which applications are active and which applications should be archived.
Eliminate admin and mail applications from the migration or integration list.
Determine which applications to migrate and which to integrate with MS technologies.
Build Proof-of-concept to test migration to new or existing applications.
Migrate or integrate applications, or move to existing applications or off-the-shelf applications - Microsoft Application Transporter for Lotus Domino, .NET or third-party tools.
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6. Identify Migration Requirements Lotus Environment Analysis Sr. No.
Questions
1
Number of Domino servers
2
Server type and versions
Details
e.g. Lotus Notes/Domino 8, Lotus Domino.Doc, Lotus Quickr? 3
Server locations
4
3rd party software integration with Lotus e.g. LEI, Domdoc, WPS, ILM, IDM etc.
5
Are you using iNotes or Domino Web Access (DWA)
6
Number of Lotus Notes users
7
How many Lotus Domino / Notes databases will be migrated?
8
How many custom Lotus application are in use?
9
Is the Corporate Fax server integrated with Lotus Domino server? e.g. RightFax, Extrafax
SharePoint Environment Analysis Sr. No.
Questions
1
Is SharePoint Environment ready?
2
What is the primary business objective of the SharePoint environment?
3
Version and Type of SharePoint Server –
Details
Foundation/ Standard/ Enterprise 4
SharePoint services configured
5
Other Microsoft product details
6
Other line of Application integration
7
Company standard – User Interface designing (CSS,JS)
8
Any 3rd party tool installed? – Telerik, Nintex, Dundas etc.
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Lotus Database Information Sr. No.
Questions
1
Application Name
2
Is this a custom application? (Yes/ No)
3
Database Template names and version
4
Size and distribution on disk
5
Number of documents
6
Complex Forms (more than 25 fields)
7
Simple Forms (up to 25 fields)
8
Number of Agent’s
9
Serial Workflow
10
Parallel Workflow
11
Company standard – User Interface designing (CSS,JS)
12
3rd party software dependency?
Details
e.g. SAP, AS400, Oracle etc. 13
Reporting Tool
14
Is migration required? Or can the database be archived?
Application Migration: Sample List of Lotus Database Information
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7. Data Migration Correct content migration is often considered the most business critical aspect of the migration process, as failing to preserve the legacy content with adequate fidelity and completeness will result in unhappy end users and potential disruption to the business.
Lotus Notes QuickPlace, Domino.Doc
Comprehensive Migration Batch or ad-hoc, user-driven migration
SharePoint Target
Rich text documents Images, attachment, OLE Objects
List Item
Document Links Dynamic Formulas
Document Libraries
ACLS and Document Security InfoPath Forms
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8. Data Migration: Notes Elements migrated to SharePoint Following notes elements can be successfully migrated to SharePoint
Document items and display column values
Attachments
Embedded images
Embedded OLE objects
Rich text
DocLinks
Multi-valued items
Unread marks
Dynamically computed values Lotus Notes source document
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Migrated (SharePoint) Lotus Notes document
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9. Migrating Application Designs Good tools are available today for migrating the content of your Notes applications to SharePoint, but what about migrating the design? What about all the forms, views, agents, workflows, and so on? One of the biggest barriers to moving large numbers of Notes applications to SharePoint is the cost of rebuilding complex applications. Unfortunately no migration tool allows you to press a button and magically reproduce the entire design of a custom Notes application in SharePoint. As we will see in this section, there are certain aspects of design migration where it makes sense to use a migration tool and others where it does not.
Migrating Schema from Notes Applications A custom Notes application may have dozens or even hundreds of fields, it is fortunate that high-end migration tools contain features that help you automate this task. This is typically a two-part process of “deducing” the schema being used in a Notes application and then provisioning a similar schema for SharePoint. Mapping the Notes schema to a SharePoint schema may be as simple as doing a one-to-one field mapping; in more complex cases, you may need to significantly transform the data between the two systems. A sophisticated migration tool will allow you to write formulas, perform lookups and apply other data transformation techniques.
Migrating Form Designs to InfoPath
Structure your solution as a SharePoint List and customize the default web pages used to add, view, and modify documents in SharePoint. This form of development usually occurs in SharePoint Designer and requires a good understanding of web parts, web parts pages, and SharePoint internals. Structure your solution as a SharePoint library and use custom Microsoft Word templates to create complex documents. Your Word templates can contain content controls and be very structured and form-like. Word integrates with SharePoint very nicely, and portions of your Word documents can be synchronized with SharePoint properties for viewing and searching. Structure your solution as an InfoPath form library (as described above) and design a custom InfoPath form template to edit and view them. This is a popular solution if you have complex, multi-level Notes documents. Structure your solution as a SharePoint lists, but use InfoPath forms to edit them. This is an exciting new capability that was introduced with SharePoint 2010. It is in many ways the best of both worlds: the data is stored as a simple flat SharePoint list and developers can use InfoPath Designer to create nice looking form layouts.
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Migrating Approval Process and Workflow State Organizations trying to migrate complex applications often consider workflow migration to be their biggest hurdle. The basic problem is that in the Notes world, “workflow” consists of buttons, forms, agents and scripts. In other words, all the workflow logic is buried in bits of code scattered throughout the application and implemented differently by each developer. This is quite different than SharePoint’s modern declarative workflow environment. With declarative workflow you have a structured set of human-readable conditions and actions that is interpreted by a central workflow engine. No migration tool is going to be able to automatically convert code-based workflow to declarative workflow, so human intervention is definitely required here. The good news is that implementing workflow logic is generally much easier in SharePoint than it ever was in Notes. Don’t be dismayed when you find a Notes application with hundreds of lines of code; depending on what that old code actually did, you may not have to write any new code at all. Of course, plenty of existing Notes applications cannot be rebuilt using just code-free declarative workflow “as is,” but many migration teams are looking at how they can simplify the application requirements so they can. The result is an application that is easier to understand, maintain, and upgrade later.
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10.
Security Mapping
An extensive set of options are available for mapping various access control properties of the source Notes database and individual Notes documents to the equivalent security constructs in SharePoint. The following diagram summarizes the possible security mapping options available. Document items and display column values.
Security mapping options allow translation of Notes access control rules to SharePoint
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11.
Migration Tools
Migration tools from Microsoft and third party are available
Select appropriate tool based on requirement and availability
12.
Development Tools
Development tools from Microsoft and third party are available.
Select appropriate tool based on requirement and availability.
SharePoint Designer
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13.
Migration Project Screens SharePoint landing page representing list of 20 migrated application.
Lotus Application
SharePoint Application
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“Duty Travel Application”, application form developed in SharePoint.
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14.
Summary
Migrating Lotus Notes applications to Microsoft SharePoint is a two-step process. First, you must move the application content, and then work to migrate the application design. You should begin your migration in one of these ways:
Correct content migration is often considered the most business critical aspect of the migration process. You can always tweak the design of an application later, but if you fail to preserve the legacy content with adequate fidelity and completeness, your users may be very unhappy. Some legacy content is very sensitive for compliance reasons or other business reasons, so the stakes are very high to get both the content and access permissions right. In many cases, there is no need for design migration. You simply migrate the old content into one of the new SharePoint site or list templates and you’re done. In some cases, you will want to take the time to rethink the application design to take advantage of all the great new features of SharePoint and SharePoint Online. This would also eliminate the need for a design migration.
Ecotech IT Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Website: www.ecotechservices.com Email:
[email protected]
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