Lotus Notes to Microsoft Application Migrations

In the recent years, due to the increasing popularity and user demand of Microsoft

messaging and collaboration environments like Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft

Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Active Directory; companies are

looking into migrating their messaging and application infrastructure from other

platforms, like Lotus Notes to the Microsoft Messaging and Collaboration

environment.

SharePoint and .Net provide key integration benefits with Exchange, Active

Directory, Outlook, and Microsoft Office “out of the box” allowing the development

of better collaborative business applications while being standardized on a Web

based architecture and having a relational databases as the data store for

reporting, scalability and disaster recovery. SharePoint and .Net applications can

also integrate both structured content from enterprise applications and

unstructured content from intranets, file folders, etc. due to the many utilities

provided with the development environments. Also, given the large Microsoft

developer community; extensive online support and the ease of rapid application

development in the .Net environment it is easier for Lotus Notes based

development groups to translate their skills into a Microsoft based environment.

Since Microsoft SharePoint and .Net are web based environments they provide

many benefits in being able to centralize administration and management while

reducing client based administration. Also, given that they have robust integration

frameworks and methodologies, organizations can extend their ERP, MRP, Supply

Chain and CRM platforms by providing easy access and integrations from those

platforms into the SharePoint Portal and .Net environment.

Given that the goal of any migration is to reduce disruption to the business and the

users of the systems, it is critical to come up with standards and best practices to

make the adoption of the new platform easy in the end user community and reduce

support requests after the migration. The following are some of the standards and

best practice areas –

1. User Experience –•  To facilitate the transition of business users from the Notes platform to

the Microsoft platform, it is necessary to keep the essence of the userexperience and the navigation scheme to be similar to the one thedesigned in Notes.

• Any changes in the UI elements [for example differences in thebehavior of multi-select boxes between Notes and SharePoint/.Netenvironments] should be done in a standardized format.

• A guide for UI changes should be developed to highlight thedifferences in the navigation in the converted applications.

2. Database Design –

 

• Given that the databases in Lotus Notes are non-relational while SQL Serveris a relational database certain standardization is required during theconversion –

• Standardization of Unique identifiers for entities within the database andmapping scheme from the Lotus Notes ID scheme to the entity ID schemein the relational database.

• Parsing attachments from rich text fields to be stored in separaterelational tables with BLOBs.

•  Transforming multi-values from a single string to a set of entries in arelational table

• Analyzing and converting relationships from hierarchical to relational

3. Development –• Forms – Forms and sub-forms in Lotus Notes can be translated into ASP.Net

forms, SharePoint lists, or InfoPath forms dependent on the complexity of theforms/database. The more complex forms should either be targeted forASP.Net or InfoPath while the simpler forms can be targeted for theSharePoint environment.

• Validations – Complex logic based validations can be achieved usingVBScripts in .Net forms or InfoPath forms while simple validations can beachieved in SharePoint without any code.

• Lookup data – Single level lookups are easily possible in SharePoint whilemulti-level dependent lookups can be accomplished in either InfoPath orASP.Net

• Application Security – A common framework for application security should bedeveloped so that both authorization of roles based security can be handledwithin all of the converted .Net applications.

Converting Lotus Notes applications to the Microsoft environment can be a very

systematic and manageable project. The project needs upfront planning and

dedication of the right resources, tools, frameworks, and processes. The converted

applications provide for greater standardization, accessibility through a web

browser, greater scalability, along with the ability to do comprehensive reporting

using standard commercial tools like SQL Reporting Services, Crystal reports among

others. Additionally, the applications provide for integrations with Microsoft office,

Microsoft Outlook & Exchange along with the integrations with the company Active

Directory infrastructure leading to better sharing of information, collaboration and

utilization of the resources within the organization.

For Further Information on our Lotus Notes Capabilities, or to discuss your Lotus

Notes Migration requirements visit the website http://www.optimusbt.com