+23Hi All
Have any users in this forum got experience on Migrating a set of documents from Sharepoint to IFS? How did you carry out the migration? What were the challenges you faced in terms of document size, disc space, IFS performance etc?
Any reflections on the lessons learnt would be great. Our goal is to close down sharepoint and utilize IFS only.
Thanks,
Asela
Best answer by Mathias Dahl
That’s quite a lot of data… We don’t have any premade tool to import all that so you probably need to build something custom. It does not need to be very hard. My recommendation would be to create one document repo per class to give you flexibility at a later stage. Then, create one document (without file) for each file you want to import. A script should be able to do that, reading data from some temporary table where you arrange all the SharePoint data to be found in. Then, once all documents are in place in Docman, you can put the files manually behind a FTP server and/or file shares and use the FTP or Shared repo type. The key then is to get the correct file name on disk into edm_file_tab. The most critical part is keeping track of/syncing/mapping the document that you created in Docman with the file name of the file to be “imported”. It’s not very hard once you understand the structure of the EdmFile, EdmLocation and EdmLocationUser entities. Analyze some existing records there and you will understand how it fits together.
Good luck!
+32Hi,
I don't have any direct experience to share, but I think you will be better off keeping the documents in IFS, especially if you want to connect them to different business objects (and you should). Unless people want to collaborate around them in Teams etc. Then it’s easier to keep the docs in SharePoint. You could of course use a mix.
Performance should not be a problem. The only thing to look out for is a growing database if you decide to keep the documents there, or some of them. It's convenient to keep the documents in the database for many reasons, but as the database grows backup and recovery (and cloning) times will increase and might cause issues if you are not prepared. In a cloud setting, database storage is also the most expensive one. You can use external storage for all or some document classes though, which solves the database size problem. But you get a "sync problem" instead, making sure that the files on the FTP or file share are backed up at the same time as the database.
Someone reported here earlier this year, or even last year, about being very happy with the transition to IFS/Docman from SharePoint. If you search I think you will find it and perhaps you could contact them for tips on how to do the migration (getting the files into IFS can be done in several ways but I don't know how easy it is to get them out of SharePoint.)
Good luck!
+23Hi
I was wondering if the old thread you were referring to is the below? If not, kindly help me find it.
In fact, we did start the job on the TEST environment a few months back. But it was kept on hold due to various reasons. Overall, I figured that IFS DocMan could totally replace sharepoint (We did have to configure a few custom pages in IFS to map 1:1 with Sharepoint in order to facilitate a similar user experience) and I guess it will be matter of time till we get the docs migrated.
I would highly appreciate anyone else’s experience doing something similar.
+32Haha, your old reply was what I was referring to. That will not help you much :)
How many documents and how much data are we talking about? Do you have a clear idea on what classes to use, what access templates, etc.? And do you want to control the document number or just have the system generate it for you?
+23
No, the Doc number will only be automatically generated. The custom page in IFS that we developed will serve whenever the users need to search for specific documents :)
+32That’s quite a lot of data… We don’t have any premade tool to import all that so you probably need to build something custom. It does not need to be very hard. My recommendation would be to create one document repo per class to give you flexibility at a later stage. Then, create one document (without file) for each file you want to import. A script should be able to do that, reading data from some temporary table where you arrange all the SharePoint data to be found in. Then, once all documents are in place in Docman, you can put the files manually behind a FTP server and/or file shares and use the FTP or Shared repo type. The key then is to get the correct file name on disk into edm_file_tab. The most critical part is keeping track of/syncing/mapping the document that you created in Docman with the file name of the file to be “imported”. It’s not very hard once you understand the structure of the EdmFile, EdmLocation and EdmLocationUser entities. Analyze some existing records there and you will understand how it fits together.
Good luck!
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