Lotus Notes to SharePoint Migration

SharePoint Conference Room Reservation System Case Study

Our client was using a Lotus based application to manage a Conference Room Reservation business process that was required to be converted into an attractive portal. Inefficient work flows and scattered communication processes were a source of major frustration. When the company needed help to transform the system quickly, the answer came in the form of SharePoint Portal. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2010 was a good fit given the functional requirements of the project.

Challenge Lotus Notes to SharePoint Migration

The core challenge was to perform the conversion of the system into sharepoint with all its existing data intact.


The Existing System had a mechanism that would allow the user to configure the required equipment along with the room reservation. A list of ordinary available rooms was presented to the reserver to select a room of choice. There were some special rooms which required the reserver to obtain approval from the designated approval authority to reserve. All the concerned stakeholders were notified about the reservation through the system’s interface with Domino Server.


The organization was running the same business process in different geographical regions. Isolated Lotus applications were used to serve each location and there wasn’t any central management available. In addition to this, the system was lacking the following:

 

  1. An Efficient Workflow for the Approval Process.
  2. A sophisticated way to handle the quantity of the equipment.
  3. A feature to edit existing reservations.
  4. Centralized Management to handle multiple locations.
  5. Switching from Lotus Domino to Microsoft Outlook for mail related functionalities.
  6. An Interactive User Interface.
  7. Security Management at different levels.

 

Solution Lotus Notes to SharePoint Migration

Data conversion was performed by using VisiMigrate, a proprietary tool designed to transform Lotus Notes application data into the SharePoint site. VisiMigrate proficiently migrates your data from Lotus Notes into SharePoint without loss. During migration, you can convert their data type as per your convenience before transferring to SharePoint. It allows you to map a single Lotus view to multiple SharePoint lists and vice versa. Data transformation Mapping Schemas Templates can be saved in the form of XML for reusability purposes.


Migrate an entire Lotus view or just an individual content item or field. Granular or bulk content migration allows administrators to plan migration jobs according to business needs and other organizational timetables, reducing the impact on functioning production environments. Administrators can create a mapping file that can be used by all other users


In the event that migration jobs fail or do not meet the needs of the business requirements one can easily rollback to his existing SharePoint environment without missing a step. This gives administrators the opportunity to reassess the migration process to ensure a properly executed task with minimal error.

 

 

Back to Lotues Notes to SharePoint Migration Case Study

 

The approval process workflow was successfully configured in SharePoint portal. The Reserver sends a request for the reservation the special room to the Approval Authority. Then, a member of the approval authority makes a decision accordingly and notifies the requester by sending an email.


Equipment quantity is managed quite sophisticatedly. The system checks the available equipment for the requested timeslot and reserves the equipment only when it is available. The Facility team has access to the equipment repository and is responsible for managing equipment’s movement.

 

Using SharePoint portal, we are now able to centralize operations for Conference Room Reservation application. This makes the user’s life easier to search and reserve rooms on the basis of location.

The replacement of Domino with Microsoft Outlook isn’t just the simple replacement of mailing features. The system utilizes Outlook’s built-in calendar views to accommodate all meeting requests made during room reservation. The remaining Outlook features including address book management, automatic reminders, and mail generation have also been exploited through intelligent interfacing of outlook with different forms.

When it comes to Interface design, every enterprise level application deliberately needs a highly attractive, easy to use and highly configurable interface as well. SharePoint Portal provides this in the form of configurable views and interactive lists with appropriate access rights to various user groups. The Conference Room Reservation System contains information about rooms, locations, reservations, and equipment that is shown at different levels.

SharePoint also provides built-in security features. Role-based security integrated with active directory is implemented to provide the appropriate access to the site users. Security is implemented for Access control, Site groups and Windows groups, Authentication and authorization, Administrative, Process and Database, Portal Site.

This system combines MOSS 2010 including custom web parts, custom lists, custom workflows, document collaboration, standard site templates, calendars, email integration, and task coordination.

 

 

Results Lotus Notes to SharePoint Migration

The goal of our group is to have a successful system transformation from Lotus Notes into SharePoint Portal site. It was critical to accomplish this transformation in such a way that existing application data and states of the objects are transferred into new system without losing their spirit. After preliminary testing, the system has successfully moved to the UAT phase where it is performing well beyond expectations.

 

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