This feature allows you to generate Microsoft Word 2007 / 2010 (OpenXML) documents from Lotus Notes documents. Microsoft Word is a very flexible and powerful environment and NMSP supports a wide range of migration scenarios:
1. Migrate Notes rich text to new (blank) Word document – In this scenario the user wants to map the rich text portion of their Notes documents (typically the “Body” field) to Word 2007 / 2010 documents (DOCX files) created from scratch. The generated rich text content is pretty much the only thing in the resulting documents. The fidelity of the migrated content is very high and includes tables, fonts, bullets, images, doc links, and much more. The known limitations are listed at the end of this document.
Optionally, the user may want to migrate specific Notes data items to Standard Document Properties such as Author, Category or Description within the generated Word documents. As these documents are generated, they will be checked into the designated SharePoint library.
A large number of existing Notes Migrator for SharePoint features apply here, including the ability to set created/modified metadata, document permissions, target folders, content types, workflow state, version history, data transformations and more.
Furthermore, the user may want to migrate specific Notes data items to specific metadata columns in the document library. When the document is opened in SharePoint, these properties will appear as “Server Properties” in the Word user interface.
2. Migrate Notes rich text to new Word documents based on existing templates – This scenario is similar to the one above except that the user can specify the Word 2007 / 2010 template (DOTX or DOTMX file) they want to start with. The generated documents will pick up the headers, footers, backgrounds, etc., of the original template. If the template includes any rich text content, the migrated content will be appended to it.
If the Word template defines Custom Document Properties, the user may want to migrate specific Notes data items to these Custom Properties as well as to the Standard Properties described above.
3. Migrate Notes documents to Word documents with embedded content controls and legacy controls – In this scenario, the user is using the Word template as a “form” with rich layout and data entry fields (and possibly data validation rules, computations, actions, etc.). For each Notes document, Notes Migrator for SharePoint will generate an equivalent Word document with specific Notes data items mapped to these controls.
There are several distinct cases here:
3a. If the user is taking advantage of SharePoint’s automatic mapping of SharePoint meta-data columns to Word content controls (exposed to SharePoint developers as “Quick Parts”) then the best approach is to simply map the Notes data items to the metadata columns in the document library and let SharePoint synchronize them with Word.
3b. Notes Migrator for SharePoint can also set the contents of the content controls or legacy controls directly with the mapped Notes data. They will continue to appear as data entry fields in the document, but they will not be synchronized with SharePoint metadata columns.
3c. Notes Migrator for SharePoint can also replace the content controls or legacy controls entirely with the mapped Notes data. They will no longer appear as data entry fields.
Note that in each of the above three cases, the user may still want to map a Notes rich text “Body” field to the document in addition to populating the controls, as described in the first two scenarios.
Here are three samples of Notes documents from our standard demo database that I converted to Word:
No Template: [White Oak.docx]
On Quest Letterhead: [Eastern White Pine.docx]
On Data Sheet Template: [Swamp White Oak.docx]
Using This Feature
When designing Target Data Definitions in NMSP, you can now add target columns of type WordDocument. You must also specify a column Name (which is used in the field mapping process).
Specifying a Template is optional. If you do not specify one, you will always get plain word documents containing whatever rich text contents and standard properties you choose to map from Notes. If you want to specify a template, simply click on the Template property and press the details button to launch the Word Template Options dialog.
In the Word Template Options dialog you can optionally import a Microsoft Word 2007 / 2010 template (.DOTX file) using the Import button. Note that a complete copy of the imported template will be saved as part of your Target Data Definition and will be used as the basis for any documents that you generate with it.
Word Template Options dialog also includes a complete list of the available Mappable Fields, which are the parts of the generated Word documents that you might want to map Notes data to. This list includes the main rich text Body of the document, all the Standard Properties available in every Word document (Author, Created date, Subject, Title, Keywords, Category, Status and Revision) and well as any Custom Properties that may have been defined by the Word template you loaded.
If desired, you can customize how these Mappable Fields appear on the Mapping tab. (Recall that Notes Migrator for Sharepoint maintains the distinction between the reusable Target Data Definitions that describe the schema of your SharePoint targets and the mapping of source columns to target fields in a specific migration job.) You can uncheck certain Mappable Fields that you do not want to show on the Mapping tab. You can also override some of the Mappable Field properties such as the MappableName that is visible on the Mapping tab, the AutomapNames property that provides a hint as to which Notes source columns should automatically map to the target field, and the AllowMultiple property which controls when mapping of two or more source fields to one target field should be allowed.
Note that your Target Data Definition may well contain additional target fields that are not part of the generated Word Document. In particular, you can add target columns for any additional metadata properties that should be written to the SharePoint document library, rather than inside the generated Word documents (as described in scenario #3 above).
You may also want to specify Folder names as well as the alternate locations for embedded attachments and OLE objects that should be migrated separately to SharePoint. These are existing features that are described elsewhere, but they apply equally well to Word documents.
One final thing you may wish to enable in your migrated Word documents is the new “Migrate Attachment Icons” feature. While this is not always desirable when migrating to List Items, it looks pretty nice in Word Documents.
Once you save your Target Data Definition, the various parts of the WordDocument field you defined will be available on the Mapping tab. Note that a special “Field.Part” notation is used here. In the example above we called the WordDocument field “Doc” so the mappable parts are called “Doc.Body”, “Doc.Title”, “Doc.Status” and so on. There is also a special field called “Doc.FileName” that allows you to set the names of the generated Word files from dynamic Notes data.
In most cases, you will (at a minimum) want to map the Html version of your Notes documents to the Doc.Body field and map the Subject (or a similarly descriptive Notes item) to Doc.FileName. You can also add additional mappings for standard properties and custom properties as needed.
When you run the job, Notes Migrator for SharePoint will generate one Word document for each Notes document. You can inspect the migration log for any issues.
