Checklist: 10 steps to a succesful Lotus Notes Migration
Here you will find all the important steps for a successful decommissioning of your Lotus Notes and Domino environment in a brief and clear summary. Keep track of your migration project and save time and money!
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. In order to gain a 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 Analyser’. The main difference to other scanning tools on the market is that this scanner performs a usage and content scan. Other tools typically only look at Notes database usage, but this is pretty much a wrongheaded approach. Another difference is that the tool can run on multiple Domino servers simultaneously, making it incredibly fast.
Scanning individual Notes application functions
It does not make sense 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 on the surface it is very complex. Replacing it with a SharePoint library, however, is very easy because SharePoint provides 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 what functionality is really in use 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 ‘master sheet’. All Notes applications are assigned to the target categories ‘delete’, ‘archive’ or ‘replace’. The mastersheet also identifies all application replicas across servers so that it’s very easy to remove duplicates later.
Yet, scanning and analysing 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 identify the owners of the Notes applications. Using the built-in workflow communication function, you can then agree on further goals together with them, based on the specific scan and analysis data.
The input of the 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 shows that many of the existing Notes functions, buttons, agents, etc. in the Notes database are no longer needed and accordingly 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 to 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 of consists mostly of Notes databases whose contents are read-only but need to be kept for a certain period of time, e.g. for legal and/or accounting reasons. These are typical candidates for archiving on 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 learn more about this here.
Step 5: Replace “active” Notes applications
Nevertheless, 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. This is because you can basically program anything and everywhere in Notes. As a result, you often come across very sophisticated Notes applications with a great depth of functions that you cannot simply convert 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 enormous amounts 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 more difficult than you expect. For example, a platform like SharePoint does not support the great Notes rich text features or the typical Notes response structure. Therefore, it is very important to find alternative approaches for typical Notes features together with the owner. A service provider like Lialis can provide valuable support.
Selecting the appropriate target platform
Once the design scope is 100% clear, after discussions with the application owners, the next step is to decide on the target platforms. There are several options to choose from:
- Standard solutions from the market like visitor registration or holiday application. The easiest and cheapest way is to buy an “off-the-shelf” solution from the market instead of doing custom development projects.
- Existing applications in your company: Talking to the owners about how the 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 it’s impossible to find an existing replacement. Building a new customised solution can cost a lot of time, effort and money. Therefore, we advise to have these applications on the radar in the early stages of the project. Experience shows that these applications are always the last to be migrated before you can shut down Domino.
In this last category, “other platforms”, most companies choose to move to SharePoint Online (SPO). However, this presents a challenge as SPO lacks certain required features to build complex applications. SPO typically works very well for Notes applications that are “document-based”. For one hundred percent workflow applications, we recommend looking at alternatives such as 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 provide “out-of-the-box” functionality to replace typical Notes functionality in SPO. These include Nintex, Shareflex and K2, for example. Choosing the right business application platform will have a massive impact on how much time and money you have to spend on creating the 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 their data from the original Notes application, e.g. to SPO, and starts with a ‘blank’ new SPO application (see step 4: ‘Read-only’ archive), this can significantly reduce the migration effort. The archived data is available in the new SPO application via a link/button so that the user can easily access it at any time.
Checklist: 10 steps to a succesful Lotus Notes Migration
Here you will find all the important steps for a successful decommissioning of your Lotus Notes and Domino environment in a brief and clear summary. Keep track of your migration project and save time and money!
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