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Wednesday 9 January 2013

Lotus Notes Apps to Force.com

 

Why should I migrate from Lotus notes to Force.com?
Lotus notes was a  very popular application and was used widely for all types of business processes and was a mini ERP. Even now many of the medium to large corporations use lotus notes just because they cannot either find a good alternative or just don’t want to break things.
Today we can touch the tip of the iceberg and understand how to start the migration.
you can also read : Top 5 reasons to migrating from lotus notes to force.com
Still not convinced why you should migrate from lotus notes to force.com? check here







What does it take ?-Effort Involved

Scale of migration complexity depends on 4 different regions.
  • Data Model: if just data model has to be replicated the effort is rather easy
  • Workflows and Approvals: the effort level would be deemed moderate
    • If there are branching of logic and workflow and approval business processes are involved
    • if attachments also have to be loaded back to force.com
  • Complex Logic : if the lotus notes application contains Agents / Actions /Scripts , These logics will be migrated into force.com as Apex Classes / Triggers / Controllers and would involve significant effort
The Initial steps involved for migration of Lotus notes to force.com are
1) Identifying Data-Model changes
2) Re-creating the Forms / UI
3) Configuring Workflows / Approval Processes
4) Migrating Data
Each application / Database chosen to be migrated from lotus notes can be created as a separate app in force.com

Identifying Data Model Changes

The 1st step would be to re-create the existing data model objects from lotus notes to custom/ standard objects in salesforce
The data model is akin to a database table, the row and column listing that is the heart of every force.com application. Columns in lotus applications translates to Fields in force.com
Things to keep in mind
· Lotus ID for previous requests should be made into a unique ID in force.com
· Force.com supports relational model, so objects are to be referred using lookups
· Sharing model should be maintained as such while creating the data model in force.com

Re-creating the forms / UI

The views in Lotus notes are created using Visualforce in force.com or using the standard page layouts with the drag and drop functionality
A custom UI can be designed to replicate the Lotus notes Pages using Visual Force.

Configuring Workflows and Approval Processes

Business processes and approval processes existing in the lotus notes application must be recreated as Workflow rules / Approval Processes
Workflows are used when on a DML event, a specific action like sending out an email alert, updating a field or sending out an outbound message.
Whereas approval processes are used in scenarios where User interaction is required, Approval Processes can also send out emails and update fields similarly like workflow rules.

Migrating Data

Data migration from lotus notes to force.com is fairly simple and available with multiple options
  1. Dataloader : The apex dataloader is an apt tool to migrate data from lotus notes to force.com
    using csv files exported out of lotus notes
  2. Cloud Convertor : a free appexchange product enabling data migration from excel / lotus notes to force.com
  3. DetachIt : This tool can be used to exporting the attachments from lotus notes
  4. Custom Code : Developers can use Custom Code to migrate data from lotus notes to force.com
There are many other tools that can be used to migrate data from lotus notes to force.com
you could also watch the Best Practices for Migrating Lotus Notes App to Force.com

 

To keep you motivated here’s a video “Secret to Success Migrating off Lotus notes” do share your thoughts