We will be an update short this week due to the Easter long weekend, but for anyone who is still reading blog posts over the holidays or catching up after the long weekend, here is where things stand in my DDM -> DOCOVA migration efforts.
Some Obvious Advice:
Some initial words of advice that I would like to impart to anyone undertaking a similar task. Please do not attempt to perform a Domino.doc migration over a remote VPN connection!
Now, I know you are thinking this is an obvious point. Domino.doc (DDM) is full of attachments, which are large and which will take a long time to process and transfer over a VPN connection.
And I knew this, and wasn’t under any misapprehension about being able to perform the migration completely over the VPN. Especially for the larger File Cabinets/File Rooms.
But I was encouraged by the results of Day 2 and the fact that the initial Analysis of the smaller 10GB File Cabinet completed in 2 hours. I thought I could perform some additional analyses on the other file cabinets remotely without having to access a local client side workstation.
Well my processing of the next File Cabinet wasn’t able to complete its Analysis. The process ran all night and the VPN connection must have dropped sometime in the morning while it was still running.
This second file cabinet isn’t the largest in terms of size, and contains roughly 4 times as many documents as the first one I attempted (which completed in 2 hours). So the analysis processing time isn’t linear based on number of documents in the database or size of the database. I emailed Mike Davey at Time Technology to see if he can educate me about what the Analyser looks at when it is doing its processing and what might explain the differences in processing times apart from document counts.
Going forward I will definitely be making use of a Remote Desktop connection to a workstation running at the client’s location to perform any additional migration steps. I can connect direct via VPN for the review stages, and some general configuration and review, but any of the heavy lifting will be done internal to their network.
Moving Ahead:
While waiting for access to an on-site local workstation I took the opportunity to explore the next stage of the migration effort which is the IIUI DDM Migrator from Innovative Ideas Unlimited Inc. The IIUI DDM Migrator is designed to assist in the migration of Domino.doc environments to other systems. It extracts the document and attachment meta data along with the library taxonomy to a separate database or xml extract, and extracts attachments to the file system. Dan Lieber ( @danlieber ) and Matt Mangels at IIUI have provided a great tool and set of documentation for assisting in the migration of DDM systems to other ECM platforms such as DOCOVA.
Migrator Profile:
I started with the IIUI DDM Migrator by setting up a new Migration Profile. In the migration profile you configure key details like the Library Name, Library Server, Library Path, and Library URL along with additional Migration options.
The migration profile contains options for outputting to either XML or Quickr. Even though we are not migrating to Quickr, I chose this option as being a Notes based solution it is simple for us to read the data from the working database for transfer into DOCOVA which is also (in this implementation) a Notes based database, and the additional extract to XML isn’t any benefit to us.
One item to be aware of is that even though we aren’t migrating to Quickr, the IIUI DDM Migrator expects a value in the Quickr Server field. Otherwise it will stop with an error stating that the HTTP Url is required.
I solved this issue by inputting a dummy host name in the field. The migrator doesn’t actually validate this host name for the stages we require so a dummy host name works fine.
Migration Options:
Next, I configured the Migration Options settings. I chose to export an entire File Room, but in this case the file room only contained a single File Cabinet, so this would be the same as exporting a specific File Cabinet.
I selected the File Room that I wanted to export from the Library (in this case the Sales and Marketing file room).
As I mentioned the IIUI DDM Migrator extracts file attachments from Domino.doc to the file system for use in importing to an alternate system such as DOCOVA. The location of the directory where these file attachments should be stored is specified on the Migration Options page.
In addition to the File Room to export and the location to store the file attachments, I also configured the following settings.
- File Naming: Selected the “Use Document Title” option. This option was recommended by IIUI.
- Export All Versions: Enabled this option since we want to extract all versions of a document for a complete version history in Domino.doc.
- Export Notes Documents: Enabled this option since we want to extract documents even if they don’t contain attachments.
- Append Version Information: Enabled this option to include version information as part of the export.
- Export Empty Binders: Enabled this option since we want to create folders for each binder category/binder entry in Domino.doc, even empty ones.
- Export View Files: Enabled this option so that Document View Files are included in the extract.
- Create XML File: Disabled this option since we don’t need the XML data as we can read directly from the NSF.
After filling out the migrator profile and migration options pages, I returned to the first tab and selected the “Process Current Step” button. This validates the configuration options entered.
A prompt will display confirming that the required configuration options have been entered.
Export DDM Taxonomy:
The next step after validating the migration profile was to export the DDM taxonomy by selecting the “Process Current Step” button.
At this point I ran into another snag. An error message displayed stating “Cannot create automation object”. Based on information provided by Matt Mangels it turned out I needed to install the Domino.doc API software which is used by the IIUI DDM Migrator. The API software is available as part of the “Doc Manager Desktop Enabler” package installed from Domino.doc. Run the setup program (ddsetup.exe) on the client running the migrator and select Custom installation and choose to only install the API components. (Note: Matt recommended not installing any of the other components beyond the API as it may interfere with existing software such as Microsoft Office)
After installing the Domino.doc Doc Manager Desktop Enabler API and rebooting I was able to run the Export DDM Taxonomy process.
This process searches the selected File Cabinet or File Room and extracts the directory/folder structure of all binders and generates the DDM taxonomy. An example of the output of the Export DDM Taxonomy process is shown in the image below.
Next Steps:
The next step to this process is to “Create Document Profiles” which reads the individual DDM document entries and exports them to the working database and extracts the file attachments to a local file system location.
But, for that step I will wait to gain access to a workstation located at the client’s site. I have learned my lesson 
