Select Phased Or One-step Conversion While Migrating From Notes To Exchange

By Author: data recovery software www.nucleusdatarecovery.org
Total Articles: 70
Comment this article

When you decide migrate from Notes to exchange, you are left with two choices: you can either go for a phased migration or select a one-step migration. Majority of organizations prefer one-step migration as your entire data gets migrated from Notes users to Exchange in a single step. Unfortunately, it is always possible that migration is that simple for you. Considering a situation when it will take some time for everyone to move to Exchange 2000 or when you decide to maintain Notes in parallel with Exchange. In both of these situations, it will be better to perform phased migration.

First and foremost thing that needs your attention while performing phased migration is dealing carefully with coexistence issues. Coexistence happens when you are dealing with both Lotus Notes and Exchange at once in your organization. Your aim at the beginning should be to set up a link between the two mail systems to enable users to pass messages between them. Setting a common link between the two mail systems makes the migration process much easier. Also, while performing phased migration, ...
... make sure that you are ceasing adding new Notes users and therefore all new users must be created on and used on Exchange 2000.

While you add Exchange 2000 to your organization and making it coexist with Notes, make sure that you keep a few things on priority. Synchronize directories between Notes and Exchange through Active Directory and ascertain that Notes user exists in Windows 2000 domain where the users actually reside. This is imperative as when synchronization occurs the user can reside only in one Windows 2000 domain. If in case you have Notes users who don't exist in Windows domain then create them in advance of running the Migration Wizard.

When you perform directory synchronization while migrating from Lotus Notes to exchange, you can lay entries in Notes as disabled Windows 2000 user accounts, new Windows user accounts/contacts. If your Notes users have Windows 2000 accounts already, the best way is to set the directory synchronization to create Windows 2000 contacts. You can then merge the Windows 2000 contact information with the appropriate user account with the help of AD Account Cleanup Wizard. Chances are when you migrate from Notes servers to Exchange 2000; you will not be able to migrate the servers in place. This means you will be using new hardware for Exchange 2000 while maintaining separate servers for hosting Notes. Hence, you will require establishing a gateway between the two servers. While you configure the gateways, consider the issues given below:

1. Converting Notes Doc-links- You might come across Notes messages containing Doc-links, which are used as links to other objects by Notes. It's imperative to decide on dealing with these Doc-links in Exchange as converting them to OLE documents, Rich Text Format (RTF) attachments or URL shortcuts is quite easy. If you use Domino servers, which support Web-enabled applications, convert Doc-links to URL shortcuts. However, if you are using an older version of Notes/Domino or do not support Web-enabled applications, then convert them to RTF document which is a default option.

2. Mapping fields- While migrating from Notes to Exchange, Lotus Notes Connector enables you to map Lotus Notes fields to Active Directory attributes and vice versa. If you have custom Notes fields or special fields you want to ensure that you synchronize, make sure you identify these in advance.

3. Lotus Notes Applications- Migrating from Notes to Exchange using the Wizard, you can convert Lotus Notes to Exchange public folders. You can use Application Converter for Lotus Notes Wizard is you wish to migrate the applications you run on Notes to Exchange. However, complex applications might not convert accurately to Exchange.

This way you can perform accurate phased Notes to Exchange migration without losing on important data safely and securely.