Achieving Successful Coexistence
Between Notes and Microsoft Platforms
Written by Technology Strategy Research LLC
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C
ONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ... 4
PLANNING FOR COEXISTENCE ... 5
FOCUS ON THE USER EXPERIENCE ... 5
COEXISTENCE CHALLENGES ... 5
UNDERSTANDING AND MEETING BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS ... 6
INTEROPERABILITY EXECUTION: THE USE OF AUTOMATION DURING COEXISTENCE ... 7
CHOOSING AN AUTOMATED SOLUTION ... 7
Ensuring Fidelity of Calendar Data ... 7
Handling Links and Icons in Documents ... 8
Surfacing Notes Mail and Calendar Data in SharePoint ... 8
Handling Applications ... 8
SUMMARY ... 9
QUEST COEXISTENCE SOLUTIONS ... 10
ABOUT TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY RESEARCH ... 11
ABOUT QUEST SOFTWARE, INC. ... 12
CONTACTING QUEST SOFTWARE ... 12
I
NTRODUCTION
Whether you are migrating from IBM Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, or if establishing smooth coexistence between the two platforms is your primary goal, ensuring interoperability is a major project with significant complexities. Enabling enterprise e-mail, calendars, portal content, and applications to successfully operate between Lotus Notes and a combination of Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint is a complex, multi-step process. Migrations or side-by-side platform coexistence periods can last weeks, months, or even years. Extensive planning and good execution are required for the process to happen smoothly.
In either a migration or a sustained coexistence scenario, both environments need to run together for a period of time that may range from months to
indefinitely. This coexistence period can serve two purposes: first, it can validate the new environment by ensuring that it successfully replicates the original one; and second, it provides continuity for users who need to collaborate between the different environments and applications, either throughout the migration period or indefinitely.
In order to provide this continuity, the platforms need to interoperate. For example, e-mail sent through Lotus Notes has to be processed correctly by Exchange and appear in the Outlook e-mail client, and visa versa. And because Lotus Notes incorporates calendar items, links in documents, and applications through its portal; these features need to communicate with Exchange and SharePoint. An effective coexistence solution must handle all of these challenges.
This paper outlines the key migration and sustained coexistence challenges to consider while planning. It also explains the value of automation to achieve this goal, and details the criteria to consider when choosing an automated
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LANNING FOR
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OEXISTENCE
Focus on the User Experience
The key focus of coexistence planning should be the user experience. Users must be able to continue to collaborate between the different messaging
platforms without feeling any impact from the project. This reduces administrative and help desk burden and ensures a worry-free transition experience for the entire organization.
Organizations differ in the level of coexistence required. Some decide to adopt Microsoft technology only for certain functions, and leave other functions on the Lotus Notes platform. Some organizations have a fairly short project, requiring a short coexistence period. But when large organizations frequently acquire or divest portions of their business, managing coexistence may become an ongoing reality.
Interoperability projects are often conducted on a department-by-department basis. This enables any unique functions to be handled at the same time while end users support each another informally on the new platform. Coexistence is important; it preserves lines of communications and organization-wide
applications. However, if the migration is occurring because of an acquisition, it may not be feasible to migrate department by department. In this case, similar groups are being combined to perform similar functions, making a coherent coexistence strategy even more critical.
Coexistence Challenges
Effective planning requires that you understand the challenges of coexistence. Here are some of the most common coexistence scenarios to consider during the planning phase:
1. Mixed mail and calendar environments. When some users use Notes mail and calendaring and others use Exchange for mail and calendaring service, certain messages do not translate as they pass between the two e-mail servers. For example, updates to recurring meetings breakdown, attachments in meeting invites are lost, and it’s difficult to reserve a resource across systems. Users of different environments should have access to the same features, no matter who sent out the invitation. 2. Application documents or e-mail messages linking to other
applications. Notes databases, QuickPlace sites, and e-mail files often
contain document links or web hyperlinks that point to documents in other Notes databases. When integrating Notes and Exchange, these links often break or do not route to the appropriate application. It’s important to
ensure that behavior remains the same during the course of the project, no matter what platform is in use by the end user.
3. Routed mail messages containing Active Mail. Notes users or Notes applications can send e-mail messages that contain buttons or even entire
forms that have formulas or LotusScript code. During integration, these can lose functionality. Behavior of those buttons and forms should remain the same when users try to use those forms from Outlook.
4. Notes applications surfaced in SharePoint. Some applications need to temporarily remain in Notes, but some users want to use SharePoint as their primary user interface. Users should be able to access live Notes applications from within SharePoint. In addition, developers must be able to build interfaces to line-of business applications or executive dashboards in SharePoint with back-end data coming from Notes.
5. Notes clients connect to SharePoint. Some users are keeping their Notes clients for mail, applications or both, but they are adopting
SharePoint for specific business functions. These users should be able to transfer selected e-mail messages or application documents to their SharePoint document libraries, team sites, and record retention solutions. In addition, Notes application developers must be able to extend their applications to connect to the SharePoint portal.
Interoperability projects often have to take into account some or all of these scenarios; this requires careful planning. In order to successfully ensure
interoperability between Lotus Notes to Exchange and SharePoint, it is important that IT groups ensure equivalent access and behavior across platforms
throughout the coexistence period. However, this can be a challenge. If the project involves migrating all functions, once the migration is complete, the technology fixes and integrations that connected the two platforms can simply be dismantled. But during the project, achieving similar behaviors and seamless communication across the platforms requires an intimate understanding of both, along with some trial and error.
Understanding and Meeting Business Requirements
The planning process starts with uncovering the organization’s business requirements, including those that are met by the Lotus Notes and Microsoft environments separately, as well as any additional new requirements. These must then be mapped into corresponding features on the alternative platform whenever possible. But as noted above, Lotus Notes includes a number of features that do not map easily to Exchange or SharePoint, including links within e-mails or documents. In addition, some applications written for Notes must be ported or otherwise modified to run within the SharePoint portal.
The complexity of meeting the business requirements during and after the coexistence period is precisely why a coexistence strategy is necessary. IT organizations need to understand precisely how e-mail features, applications, documents, links and other features behave on the source platform and how they can be made to operate on the target platform, possibly with enhancements or limitations.
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The first phase of the project—planning a migration or coexistence strategy—is largely manual. In particular, identifying Notes features being used and mapping them to the new platforms requires business analysts and systems architects to interview users, draft requirements, compare features, prepare and test
prototypes, and solicit feedback from users. None of this can be automated. But most of the remaining phases can be effectively automated. Automation efficiently tracks requirements for user features and moves e-mail boxes,
documents, and other data from Notes to Exchange and SharePoint. Automation can also be used to identify and propagate e-mail distribution lists.
Choosing an Automated Solution
Once business analysts and systems architects have planned the migration or coexistence period, IT project managers need to develop its execution. Once the processes are prototyped and well-understood, IT professionals may be able to devise scripts to perform some interoperability tasks. However, home-grown scripts are likely to be complex and error-prone, and do not necessarily account for all scenarios. Also, the development time for an in-house scripting solution has the potential to delay the entire migration schedule.
Usually a third-party migration solution is the best option. Two key questions to ask about a coexistence solution are:
1. Can the solution integrate the required features successfully? 2. Can the solution help automate the coexistence scenario?
IT project managers should determine whether the automated solution can effectively handle the coexistence challenges described earlier in this paper. It must do more than simply monitor e-mail between the two platforms; it must also correctly handle any attachments, calendar appointments, document links, or other data associated with the correspondence, as detailed below.
Ensuring Fidelity of Calendar Data
An automated solution should ensure fidelity of calendar data when sent between Notes and Exchange users. Specifically, it should:
• Maintain all recurrence patterns of calendar invitations. • Retain all attachments in calendar invitations.
• Avoid extraneous attachments in calendar invitations.
Handling calendars effectively is one of the more challenging aspects of
coexistence. It is also one of the most important, because loss of calendar data can have significant repercussions to the operation of the business.
Handling Links and Icons in Documents
Lotus Notes users tend to use links in documents extensively in order to reference other documents and source information. It is essential that links in documents made available for both platforms continue to work throughout the coexistence period. For example, if a workflow application running on Notes sends a notification that contains a link to an application, that link should work whether it is opened in Notes or Outlook. It should continue to work even after the linked-to document is migrated to SharePoint or InfoPath.
One way of maintaining Notes document link functionality and preserving workflow is to automatically redirect e-mail document hyperlinks to the current location of the application, whether it is on Notes or SharePoint. This approach preserves business continuity throughout the entire migration.
It may also be necessary to connect Lotus Notes clients to SharePoint servers. For example, end users should be able to select a few Notes documents and drag and drop them to SharePoint. Notes developers should also be able to use the LotusScript API to push Notes content to SharePoint directly from their Notes applications according to the organization’s business rules. This will enable live content to continue to be distributed during the migration and coexistence. Finally, it is also desirable to preserve the native appearance of Lotus Notes image icons (such as database, view and document links) embedded in
messages sent to Exchange. This ensures transparency to end users during the migration and coexistence. In order to preserve familiarity, any automation solution should include the native Notes icons.
Surfacing Notes Mail and Calendar Data in SharePoint
Another significant challenge is to surface Notes Mail and Calendars in
SharePoint for group sharing or integration. An automated solution using a web services technology can be useful. Web services can be implemented to surface standard Notes mail, calendar, contacts, tasks, and journal applications in
SharePoint. These web services should provide a direct connection to Domino where the Lotus Notes application content resides and incorporate a strong single sign-on capability so that multiple logins aren’t required.
Handling Applications
Applications can be a particular challenge in migration and coexistence. Lotus Notes applications are intended to be hosted in Notes, and hosting them on another platform can be a daunting technical challenge. However, an automated coexistence solution should allow you to access external data sources via web services. Organizations can make use of this capability to present and update back-end Notes and Domino applications in a SharePoint user interface. Last is an application development requirement. Because at least some
applications will be hosted in the Microsoft environment, .NET developers need to access live Notes applications; a coexistence solution should enable .NET developers to create direct coexistence between .NET applications and platforms and Lotus Notes.
S
UMMARY
Migration from IBM Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint is a fact of life in many organizations. Coexistence, often for months and sometimes for years, is part of that reality. In some cases, such as might be the case in a merger, migration is not the ultimate goal; coexistence is.
Ensuring interoperability may seem like a lot of work. However, interoperability during a side-by-side platform coexistence scenario is essential for business continuity. A disruption in communications, or a loss of essential features or applications for a period of time, can be devastating to the business. In cases where coexistence and interoperability are long-term objectives, the seamless interconnectivity between the platforms remains a critical part of the process. Therefore, a successful coexistence strategy is one that is seamless; there should be no long-term disruption of features, and users shouldn’t have to work through unfamiliar and obscure processes in order to accomplish their jobs. Automation both improves the likelihood of a successful coexistence, and
enables IT to achieve interoperability as a part of that strategy more easily and at a higher level of abstraction. The most effective automation solutions are those that are able to migrate and interoperate at a high level of detail, including e-mail attachments, all calendar data including recurring meetings, and links in
Q
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Quest Software offers solutions for Notes-to-Microsoft coexistence scenarios of any size and scale. Quest Coexistence Manager for Notes complements Notes Migrator for Exchange by providing high-fidelity e-mail, calendaring, and
document hyperlink coexistence. It also provides ongoing coexistence for organizations facing prolonged coexistence between Notes and Exchange. Quest Notes Migrator for SharePoint and Web Parts for SharePoint allow for smooth integration between Notes and SharePoint applications.
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BOUT
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ESEARCH
Technology Strategy Research LLC is a research and consulting firm that focuses on the value of software and automation for IT projects. The principals have more than two decades of experience in software development and IT practice. The firm can be found on the web at
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BOUT
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OFTWARE
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Quest Software, Inc., a leading enterprise systems management vendor, delivers innovative products that help organizations get more performance and productivity from their applications, databases, Windows infrastructure and virtual environments. Through a deep expertise in IT operations and a continued focus on what works best, Quest helps more than 100,000
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Contacting Quest Software
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Email: [email protected]
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