As described in yesterday's post [link], the Link Tracking Service allows Notes DocLinks to be migrated as "Dynamic Links" instead of Direct Links. As users click on Dynamic Links they are automatically redirected to the current location of the target document, whether or not it has been migrated yet and regardless of whether the linked-from or link-to document was migrated first.
When we describe this feature to customers, two important questions often come up:
- What happens if I move my content, change the external host name of my SharePoint farm, etc? Will the Link Tracking Service still send users to the right place?
- What happens when I am done migrating? The Link Tracking Service is cool, but am I stuck with it forever?
Notes Migrator for SharePoint version 5.2 [link] contains several new tools that address these and other questions. These tools are all available of the page (in SharePoint Central Administration).
Managing the Link Tracking Database
Part of the magic of the Link Tracking Service is that it keeps track of each document as it as migrated in a SQL Database, known as the Link Tracking Database. This database is created when you first install Notes Migrator for SharePoint Services and may be reconfigured using the above configuration page. Note that the installation program will prompt you to upgrade your database if you create it with an older version of Notes Migrator for SharePoint.
There is now a new tools for managing the Link Tracking Database.
Update links in the Link Tracking Database - You can use this tool to update the locations of your migrated documents in the Link Tracking Database. This will be useful if the locations of your migrated documents have changed (for example, you may have changed the external host name of your SharePoint server, changed the path for a SharePoint site, or moved your content database to a different server).
For example, imagine that you have migrated all your Notes documents to a staging SharePoint environment (http://staging01:8080) and now it is time to go live. You plan to detach your content database and reattach it in your production environment or even a hosted environment such as Microsoft SharePoint Online (say, http://acme.sharepoint.online). The "Update links in the Link Tracking Database" function will allow you to update all references to documents that will be impacted by this move in the Link Tracking Database. The user interface is very simple and contains a Preview function.
When you are ready to make the changes, press the Update button. If you have lots of documents to update, you will see a status page that updates every few seconds and then a final results page.
Managing Dynamic Links in Migrated Documents
In some cases, updating the Link Tracking Database is not enough and you want to update the actual Dynamic Links in the migrated documents. This most common reason to want to do this is to permanently replace all Dynamic Links with direct links to the last known locations of the target documents. A secondary reason might be to change the location of your Redirector Page.
Finalize/Update links in migrated documents - You can use this tool to update or permanently replace all Dynamic Links in a set of migrated documents. This works for links in SharePoint List Items, SharePoint Pages, InfoPath documents, Word documents or any other SharePoint target you chose to migrate to [link].
First the tool allows you to select the set of documents you want to update. You can choose to update all migrated documents in the Link Tracking Database, or just migrate the documents in a particular site collection or web application.
Next you need to decide what you want to do with Dynamic Links that point to migrated documents. The most common this to do is replace them with direct links to the migrated documents (i.e. their new URLs in SharePoint). Since this is a permanent, irreversible operation, we refer to it as "Finalization".
Of course, you should only perform this operation when you are sure that the documents your links are pointing to you are indeed "final" and that they are not still moving around. If you have moved (or plan to move) this documents or otherwise change their external addresses, be sure to run the "Update links in the Link Tracking Database" tool before you finalize your links. You have been warned!
Finally you need to decide what you want to do with Dynamic Links that point to un-migrated documents. Our recommendation is to leave them the way they are, in case you want to migrate the linked-to documents later. If you are really sure that those documents are going to stay in Notes, you can finalize those links with the original Notes/Domino URLs.
WARNING! As described in yesterday's post [link], notes://... URLs are not allowed in SharePoint Items. So finalizing such links in (for example) rich text fields in List Items renders them completely inoperable. It is safe, however, to finalize notes://... links in library files such as InfoPath or Word documents.
Once you have made the above three selections, you can Preview the operation or press the Update button to make the desired changes.
You can also use the "Finalize/Update links in migrated documents" tool to update the format of the Dynamic links in your migrated documents. To do this you would specify "Replace With An Alternate Url" for both migrated and unmigrated documents. You can then specify a different Redirector Page or to a static URL. Be sure to use the {0} notation to encode the unique identifier of the target document in the link. For example, if you wanted all your Dynamic links to use a Redirector Page that you located at http://www.quest.com, you could specify the Alternate URL http://www.quest.com/QuestLinkTracking.aspx?noteslink={0}.
