SharePointforAll
This is the best place to find out everything that Quest is doing around SharePoint, plus where we will give guidance on all things SharePoint
Quest SharePoint Experts Mirror » All Tags » Tech Notes (RSS)

Browse by Tags

  • Migrating to the SharePoint Online platform (BPOS)

    If you are talking to Microsoft about getting off of Lotus Notes, I have no doubt that you are hearing about, and probably seriously considering, Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), also referred to as Microsoft Online (MSO). There is a Dedicated version (BPOS-D), which give large enterprises the opportunity to have private hosted servers dedicated to just them, and a Standard version (BPOS-S) for everyone else. SharePoint Online is, of course, part of these suites. There is a ton to say about the Dedicated and Standard offerings, most of which I will save for another day, but here I want to focus on migrating the content of your legacy Notes applications to the cloud. I have not blogged about it much, but I have been deeply immersed in this issue for over a year now – working...

  • How to migrate to SharePoint Wiki pages

    Notes Migrator for SharePoint has allowed for migration to SharePoint wiki pages for over a year now. Wiki pages were of mild interest in SharePoint 2007, but as described in my last post [ link ] they have evolved into an awesome target choice in SharePoint 2010. For example, you may have noticed that the Site Pages library in many of the new 2010 site templates is now a Wiki library. The following steps recap the basic steps and some of the advanced options for migrating Notes documents to Wiki pages. These steps apply equally well for SharePoint 2007 or SharePoint 2010 (but SharePoint 2010 requires the use of Notes Migrator for SharePoint 5.3.1 or higher). Basic Steps If using the Designer client, select a source Notes database, QuickPlace or QuickR room, or Domino.Doc library and then select...

  • Detailed Permission Requirements

    Customers have often asked us to do a better job documenting the permission required for operation various Notes Migrator for SharePoint components. With version 5.3, we documented this in a little more detail than previously… The person installing our tool needs: Administrator access on front-end server dbcreator server role in SQL Server instance (if creating a Link Tracking database) The person running our tool needs: Access to SharePoint targets sufficient to perform desired migration tasks (provisioning sites, adding users, provisioning lists, updating list schema, writing records) Full control access on Shared Files folder (if configured) Notes ID that can access Domino servers and read content from source databases NMSP Import Service account (application Pool identity in IIS) needs...

  • What’s new in Security Mapping in version 5.3?

    Security mapping has always been one of the strongest parts of Notes Migrator for SharePoint and a great differentiator for us. Someone who is familiar with our rich capabilities in this area will probably be surprised to see how many things we found to add to the list in this release. The good part is that while we nearly doubled the capabilities here, we think we actually improved the usability at the same time. Most people should be able to get by with a few easy-to-understand checkboxes and only a few will need to go into the Advanced areas. But for those that need it, they will have more power than ever! 1. First some cosmetic changes. We organized our increasingly confusing array of security mapping checkboxes into dialog groups and have renamed them to be clearer. Hopefully this will...

  • Automated provisioning of custom templates that use Quest Web Parts for SharePoint

    Notes Migrator for SharePoint is great at provisioning lists, libraries or even entire SharePoint sites from your custom templates. This is incredibly useful when migrating lots of custom Notes applications that are based on the same Notes template (or at least share a common design). For example, I have one customer who has 10,000 team sites based on a completely customized Notes template and is migrating them to 10,000 SharePoint sites based on a highly customized site template. Now that’s code reuse! Quest’s Web Parts for SharePoint product is one great way to build those custom application templates. As described previously [ link ] this tool has been very popular for companies wanting to “replatform” their custom Notes applications because the web parts help to reproduce much of the functionality...

  • Migrating workflow state and approval processes

    As described previously, when migrating Notes workflows to SharePoint workflows you are really switching from code-based workflows (logic encoded in button events, agents, etc.) to declarative workflows. And using Notes Migrator for SharePoint, you can migrate your workflow state so you can preserve in-progress workflows between the two systems. To achieve this, simply migrate the (status fields, next review, due date, whatever) as data columns in your list items, InfoPath documents, Word documents, etc. Depending on how you designed your workflow, you may be done at that point, or you may need to customize it. The relevant part is that when the workflow starts up for newly written list items, it should be designed to examine these columns and “advance” to the right state. For example, the...

  • Migrating Lotus Notes Applications to Microsoft SharePoint: Understanding Application Complexity and the Value of Consolidation and Automation

    Here is a new white paper by yours truly: http://www.quest.com/documents/landing.aspx?id=9746&prod=352 . In some ways, this paper is a direct challenge to the four-quadrant system and Design Element Index (DEI) algorithms that have been floating around recently for understanding the complexity of Notes applications. Even though Notes Migrator for SharePoint implements some of these methodologies, I have a strong belief that such complexity calculations do not adequately address the practical question of which applications are going to be easy to migrate and which ones are going to be difficult. What organizations really need is a way to rank applications according to how much effort will be required to migrate them to SharePoint and to recognize the rare cases where SharePoint may not be...

  • Case study in debugging InfoPath data migration jobs

    Notes Migrator for SharePoint has the ability migrate Notes documents to InfoPath data documents. As described in previous posts [ link ], this feature currently requires hand-editing an XML template file. It is one of the more complicated parts of the product and, frankly, it is all to easy to generate an XML document that InfoPath does not like. We will be making all this a lot easier in an upcoming patch release, but meanwhile some debugging tips are in order. The best way to resolve almost any problem here is to create a sample InfoPath document directly in your SharePoint document library and compare it line-by-line to an InfoPath document generated by Notes Migrator for SharePoint . To download the XML data documents to your local hard disk, right click on the documents in question in...

  • Teeny-Tiny Rich Text Boxes

    People migrating Notes content to SharePoint lists (a powerful option, as discussed here [ link ]) often ask me this: What can I do about the tiny rich text editors in the default SharePoint List Item forms? Yes, the default rich text editor is small and telling users that they now have to work inside a box the size of a business card can detract from their first impressions of the brave new SharePoint world. Happily, there are a number of solutions to this problem. Changing Styles The first and simplest solution to to simply change the defaults across your entire SharePoint site. As with most UI things in SharePoint, the rich text box size is controlled using CSS styles. As this article indicates, you can use SharePoint Designer to customize individual forms or specific site themes. Being...

  • Using Active Directory lookups to map user names

    In my previous post [ link ], we discussed the various options for mapping Notes user/group names to the equivalent identities in SharePoint. One of the most popular options for doing this is to configure Notes Migrator for SharePoint to perform a lookup in Active Directory, or some other LDAP directory. In order to use this feature, it must be possible to construct an LDAP query that will find the account that should be used in SharePoint, given the Notes name. For example, if your company stores the Notes name in an AD property called "NotesName", you could execute a query like this: (&(ObjectClass=Person)(description={0})) In the above query, the {0} part will be replaced with a formatted version of the Notes name and the entire Query will be send to the directory server. For...

  • Mapping Notes User and Group Names

    Notes Migrator for SharePoint has a powerful facility for translating Notes user/group names to account names that can be used in SharePoint. Some examples of where this is used: Setting the Created By and Modified By metadata on migrated documents Adding users to SharePoint site collections Setting permissions on migrated documents Setting permissions on provisioned sites, lists or libraries Provisioning SharePoint Groups based on the Roles in a Notes ACL) Mapping a Notes name to a "user" data column (such as the Assigned To column in a Task item) In all these cases, we have to convert Notes names (which usually reference Domino Directory accounts) to accounts in the directory that SharePoint is configured to use (usually Active Directory). Notes Migrator for SharePoint gives you...

  • New CBTs available for Notes Migrator for SharePoint

    Our EMEA support team (one of three global support centers where you can get awesome support on my product) has recently put together a series of Computer Based Training labs on installing and using Notes Migrator for SharePoint . Of course their immediate objective was to better support customers who might be struggling with certain aspects of the product, but (as usual) these guys have over-achieved and what they delivered was an entire training course! The table of contents for the first release is shown below. Each of the links points to a "solution" on the Quest SupportLink web site. A login is required. Any Quest customer should have an account on this site, but if you don't have one, a really good way to get one is to register to download a free trial version of Notes Migrator...

  • Migrating embedded parts to alternate libraries (part 2)

    In my last post, I introduced a new Notes Migrator for SharePoint feature for saving embedded images, attachments and OLE objects to a different location than the "main" document being migrated. I showed the feature in use with a List Item,...

  • Migrating embedded parts to alternate libraries (part 1)

    For many Notes Migrator for SharePoint users, the most significant new feature added in version 5.1 (currently in beta) is the ability to save embedded images, attachments and OLE objects to a different location than the "main" document being...

  • NMSPCMD: the forgotten interface

    Almost every Notes Migrator for SharePoint blog post I have done over the last year has either featured the Designer Client or the newer Migration Console. It is easy to forget, however, that our tool also has a command line interface. This can be very...
(c) 1987-2010 Quest Software Inc.
Powered by Community Server (Non-Commercial Edition), by Telligent Systems