Document Migrations – What do you need to know?

When we first meet with clients who are interested in using OpenMigrate to meet a migration need, they typically know that they need to move documents from one system to another, but many times they haven’t yet identified all of the specific migration requirements.  Determining and discussing this information as early as possible is helpful to minimize the migration effort and ensure that the documents are migrated in a way that makes them useable and accessible to the appropriate users.

Below is a list of basic questions we ask these clients to help identify the parameters of the migration.  Hopefully they will be helpful for you if you are contemplating a document migration as well.

Migration Scope

• Which documents will be included or excluded in the migration?  Can this be determined based on any of the following metadata?
  • Object type
  • Lifecycle state
  • Creation date
  • Modify date
  • Folder path
  • Which document versions should be included?
  • Which document renditions should be included?
  • Will related objects be included in the migration?
    • Folders
    • Relations (including related documents)
    • E-signatures
    • Users
    • Groups
    • Security

Metadata Mapping

• How will metadata be mapped in the target system?  Can an existing object model be utilized?  How will the following items be mapped?
  • Object type
  • Folder path
  • Lifecycle state
  • Timestamps
    • Do creation date, modify date or other system dates need to be maintained?
• System generated IDs
• Security
• Versions
• Custom metadata

Getting answers to all of the above questions is a great first step towards a successful migration.  Look for a follow up post discussing additional migration considerations.