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 user
experience and the navigation scheme to be similar to the one the
designed in Notes.
• Any changes in the UI elements [for example differences in the
behavior of multi-select boxes between Notes and SharePoint/.Net
environments] should be done in a standardized format.
• A guide for UI changes should be developed to highlight the
differences in the navigation in the converted applications.

2. Database Design –
 • Given that the databases in Lotus Notes are non-relational while SQL Server
is a relational database certain standardization is required during the
conversion –

• Standardization of Unique identifiers for entities within the database and

mapping scheme from the Lotus Notes ID scheme to the entity ID scheme
in the relational database.
• Parsing attachments from rich text fields to be stored in separate
relational tables with BLOBs.
• Transforming multi-values from a single string to a set of entries in a
relational 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 the
forms/database. The more complex forms should either be targeted for
ASP.Net or InfoPath while the simpler forms can be targeted for the
SharePoint environment.
• Validations – Complex logic based validations can be achieved using
VBScripts in .Net forms or InfoPath forms while simple validations can be
achieved in SharePoint without any code.
• Lookup data – Single level lookups are easily possible in SharePoint while
multi-level dependent lookups can be accomplished in either InfoPath or
ASP.Net
• Application Security – A common framework for application security should be
developed so that both authorization of roles based security can be handled
within 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