Saving time and money during Lotus Notes migration

A Lotus Notes migration is typically a one-off and quite costly affair. Therefore, companies need to take appropriate care when choosing their approach and deciding on a target platform. One approach that has already proven itself in many projects is the Notes Domino Decommissioning Method (‘NDDM’). We present this approach, which may not seem very conventional at first glance, in the following.

2021-05-06 – Christian Mennrich / Onno van Paridon

Lotus Notes and Domino vs. SharePoint and Microsoft 365

IBM Lotus Notes and Domino have been on the market for more than 20 years and are still in use in many companies. Today, significantly more powerful platforms are available, such as SharePoint and Microsoft 365. For a long time, however, the replacement of existing Lotus Notes applications associated with a change was considered to be technically difficult and very costly. At the latest with the sale of Domino and Lotus Notes to HCL in July 2019 and the associated discontinuation of support by IBM, many companies felt they had to act. They now face the daunting task of adequately replacing their existing Domino and Lotus Notes infrastructure.

The NDDM approach

The NDDM approach is a multi-stage approach to decommissioning IBM Domino and Notes application environments. This method was developed and successfully tested in practice by the Lotus Notes experts of our partner Lialis.

Step 1: Scan the existing Domino environment

At the beginning of every Notes Decommissioning project it is important to analyse the ‘as-is’ state. To gain better insight and estimate the scope of the decommissioning project, the existing Domino environment is first scanned and analysed completely automatically. For this purpose Lialis has developed the “Domino Server Application Scanner and Analyzer”. The main difference between this scanner and other scanning tools on the market is that it performs a usage and content scan. Other tools typically only look at Notes database usage, but that’s pretty much going in the wrong direction. Another difference is that the tool can run on multiple Domino servers simultaneously, making it incredibly fast.

Scanning of individual Notes application functions

It is not useful to scan individual Notes application functions. Assigning a complexity factor to Notes design elements doesn’t tell you much about how difficult it is to replace a Notes application with something else. For example, a Notes document management system typically has many design elements because you need a lot of code to implement versioning in Notes. If you scan this type of Notes database, you will find that it is superficially complex. However, replacing them with a SharePoint library is very easy, as SharePoint offers many ‘out-of-the-box’ document management features.

In other words: We advise to ignore the scanning of the Notes database design. Another reason is that Notes applications are often very old and typically not well maintained or documented. So you simply often do not know which functionality is really used in the respective Notes application.

Step 2: Analysis of the current state

Once the scan is completed, the analysis of the output starts. The results are summarised in a ‘Mastersheet’. All Notes applications are assigned to the target categories ‘delete’, ‘archive’ or ‘replace’. The mastersheet also identifies all application replicas across servers so that these duplicates can be easily removed later.

However, the scan and analysis of your environment are only the first steps in the process. The next step is to remove the Notes databases that are not (or no longer) in use. The tool also helps you to identify the owners of Notes applications. Using the built-in workflow communication function, you can then coordinate further goals with them, based on the specific scan and analysis data.

The input from application owners is extremely important for the successful and efficient implementation of a Lotus Notes migration. After all, only they know in detail how the application supports their daily business and which functions they really need. Experience has shown that many of the existing Notes functions, buttons, agents, etc. are no longer needed in the Notes database and therefore do not need to be replaced.

Assign an owner to each Notes application

Step 3: Remove orphaned Notes databases

Many Notes databases are no longer in use. With NDDM, these Notes databases can be ‘closed’ in a bundle with just a few mouse clicks. But don’t worry, you can also quickly and easily undo this action with one click. After closing, we recommend that you leave the Notes databases on the Domino server until you shut down the server. Afterwards you can copy the files to a backup location just in case.

Step 4: ‘Read-only’ archive

Practically every project we know consists mostly of Notes databases, the contents of which are only read, but must be kept for a certain period of time, e.g. for legal and/or accounting reasons. These are typical candidates for archiving to a platform such as SharePoint Online (“SPO”), Google Drive, or BOX. Lialis provides an efficient, automated solution for this while retaining the original Notes structure (rich text, response structure, metadata, attachments, etc.). You can read more about it here.

"Lotus Notes Archiver" free trial

Step 5: Replace ‘active’ Notes applications

However, there are always certain Notes databases that are still very actively used and need to be replaced accordingly by another application platform. This is the trickiest part of the Lotus Notes to SharePoint migration programme. In fact, these are often separate projects that affect the clients’ core business.

Challenges in migrating Lotus Notes applications

It can be quite a nuisance to replace Notes applications with other solutions. Because in Notes you can basically program anything, anywhere. As a result, one often encounters very sophisticated Notes applications with great functional depth that cannot simply be converted 1:1 into something else with a conversion tool. This is the real reason why many Lotus Notes decommissioning projects and application migrations fail or at least cost a lot of time and money.

And this is exactly why we like to avoid the term ‘MIGRATION’. Because even replacing a simple Notes document library in SharePoint can be harder than you expect. For example, a platform like SharePoint doesn’t support the great Notes rich text features or the typical Notes response structure. For this reason, it is very important to work together with the owner to find alternative approaches to typical Notes features. A service provider like Lialis can provide valuable support.

Selecting the right target platform

Once the design scope is 100% clear, after discussions with application owners, the next step is to decide on target platforms. There are several options to choose from:

Standard solutions from the market such as visitor registration or holiday application. The easiest and cheapest way is to buy an ‘off the shelf’ solution on the market instead of doing custom development projects.
Existing applications in your company: Talking with owners about how replacement applications should work will help move certain Notes functionality to existing enterprise platforms (e.g. CRM, ERP, HR, etc.).
Other platforms: Some complex Notes applications become a nightmare because no existing replacement can be found. Building a new custom solution can take a lot of time, effort and money. That’s why we advise having these applications on your radar in the early stages of the project. From experience, these applications are always the last to be migrated before you can shut down Domino.

SharePoint Online as an alternative

In this last category, ‘other platforms’, most companies choose to move to SharePoint Online (SPO). However, this poses a challenge because SPO lacks certain required features to build complex applications. SPO is typically very well suited for Notes applications that are “document-based”. For 100% workflow applications, we recommend looking at alternatives such as the Microsoft Power Platform.

Perform a PoC for the replacement applications

Replacing Notes functions in SharePoint Online

There are several business application platforms on the market that deliver ‘out-of-the-box’ functionality to replace typical Notes functionality in SPO. These include, for example, Nintex, Shareflex and K2. Choosing the right business application platform has a massive impact on how much time and money you have to spend on creating replacement solutions in SPO. Therefore, we recommend testing one of these solutions in a Proof of Concept (‘PoC’). Conduct the PoC with the application owner with whom you agree on a simplified application design.

If a company decides to archive the data from the original Notes application, e.g. to SPO, and starts with an ’empty’ new SPO application (see step 4: ‘Read-only’ archive), this can significantly reduce the migration effort. The archived data can be made available via a link/button in the new SPO application so that the user can easily access it at any time.

Man with laptop and checklist for Lotus Notes migration.

Checklist: Lotus Notes Migration in 10 Steps

Here you will find all the important steps for a successful decommissioning of your Lotus Notes & Domino environment in a short and clear summary. Keep track of your migration project and save time and money!

Download Lotus Notes Migration Checklist