RTM on Monday. Very exciting!  This release of Notes Migrator for SharePoint includes the following new features:

Generate Word 2007 documents

Notes Migrator for SharePoint now generates Word 2007 (DOCX) documents from Notes Rich Text documents. Notes documents can be formatted as generic Word documents or documents based on custom Word templates. In addition to mapping Note rich text to the document body, you can map various Notes data items to the properties and content controls of your template.

For detailed information on how to use this feature, please see Generating Word 2007 Documents in the User Guide. You can also see a preview of this feature in action on the product manager’s blog here: http://notes2sharepoint.org/archive/2009/04/25/sneak-preview-generating-microsoft-word-documents-from-notes-documents.aspx

Generate InfoPath Form Templates from Notes Forms

This feature takes selected Notes forms from the Design Elements window of the Console and exports them as InfoPath form templates. Most rich text layout elements and controls that you can put on a Notes form are converted with good fidelity, but some elements do not translate and code on form is not converted. Any unmigrated elements will be documented and intervention by developers will often be required to complete the job.

For detailed information on how to use this feature, please see Migrating Notes Forms to InfoPath Form Templates in the User Guide. You can also see a preview of this feature in action on the product manager’s blog here: http://notes2sharepoint.org/archive/2009/05/13/converting-notes-forms-to-infopath-form-templates.aspx

Generate InfoPath Documents from Notes Documents

Notes Migrator for SharePoint has always been able to generate InfoPath data documents (XML files that comply with the schema of your InfoPath templates), but previously this was a challenging process that involved hand-editing XML files and learning a set of Quest XML tags.

In version 5.2 the model has been completely revamped.  This functionality is now located in the Target Data Definition and eliminates the need to hand-edit XML files.  You simply import your XSN file, indicate which Notes fields you want to map to which InfoPath fields, and set the appropriate encoding options.

Even better, if you generated the InfoPath Form Template from a Notes form using Notes Migrator for SharePoint (using the feature described above) your job will be even easier.  The tool will already know which mappings make sense and you can be off and running with a reasonable set of defaults in seconds.

Defining a Web Part Page Template for migrations to Web Part Pages

This release introduces a new improved way to generate web part pages. This feature allows you to generate pages based on predefined web part pages layouts and then override various web part properties using content extracted from Notes documents.

When creating a new target data definition of type PageName, the PageType property now has a third option: "Template". If this PageType is chosen, an additional “PageTemplate” property is available, where you paste complete web part page layout to be used during migration to mass-produce them. Users may then use the WebPartProperty columns to override specific values as needed.

For detailed information on how to use this feature, please see Generating Web Part Pages using PageName in the User Guide.

Mapping ACL Groups to SharePoint Groups

In addition to the two existing group mapping options:

• Map ACL Groups to Domain Groups
• Generate SharePoint Groups from ACL Roles

Notes Migrator for SharePoint now supports a third option…

• Generate SharePoint Groups from ACL Groups

This new option allows you to take what was once a Domino Directory group (scoped to the entire Notes Domain) and convert it to a SharePoint group (scoped to just one Site Collection). As part of this conversion, the tool will query the Domino Directory for any groups listed in the ACL, extract all its members (expanding any sub-groups as needed), and add those members to the new SharePoint group.

Mapping User fields may treated as optional

When mapping a Notes name to a SharePoint User field (for example the “Assigned To” field in a Task item), you may now indicate that the tool should ignore any mapping errors. For optional fields, this may be a better choice than logging exception messages for users that are no longer in your corporate directory.

Field mapping improvements

There are now a number of cases where you can map many source fields to one target fields. Two examples are File and Attachment fields. Previously one would typically create target field called File1, File2, etc. to allow for multiple file mappings. Now you can just create one and set the AllowMultiple property to True.

Multiple mappings is also supported for rich text fields certain targets (Word and InfoPath) to allow for concatenating multiple source fields into one target field. Future release will expand this capability.

New Target Data Definitions

With each new release, Notes Migrator for SharePoint adds more ways to migrate a Notes document to a SharePoint document library. Until recently, it has been necessary to build custom target data definitions in order to access many of these features and it was difficult to realize what the possibilities were.

To address this, version 5.2 contains seven new target data definitions, which should significantly improve the usability of the tool. Now when a user selects a target SharePoint document library, she will be prompted with eight clear choices.

Job validation

Rather than waiting until you run your migration job to display job errors, Notes Migrator for SharePoint now has the ability to validate jobs ahead of time. Each time you save a job or a data definition, a detailed validation will occur and all issues that can be detected without actually connecting to SharePoint will be displayed immediately.

Migration of Attachment Icons

When migrating attachments, Notes Migrator for SharePoint also provides links to the attachments where the occurred in your rich text items. Previously these were text links, but now you have the option to use the original icons you had in Notes instead.

The reason we did not do this previously when generating List Items, ASPX pages, etc., is that we did not feel that the clutter of all those extra image icons was really worth the benefit. But Word documents, InfoPath documents and MIME files store images internally so we enabled the feature for use with those formats.

Manage large attachments as disk files

To improve performance and reduce the memory footprint during migration, a shared folder can be used when transferring data to the Import Service. If the shared folder option is used, attachments are extracted to disk files instead of loading them all into memory during the data transfer. The new feature is configured in the Notes Migrator for SharePoint configuration page in Central Administration.

This is crucial when transferring large files that can take up more memory then what is available. This feature is optional. If no shared folder is defined, the data will be transferred as encrypted bits in memory as before.

Link Tracking Finalizer/Updater

Quest’s Link Tracking Service keeps track of each document as it is migrated and enables automatic redirection when users click on links in migrated documents. But what happens when the migration is over and you no longer need the links to be dynamic?

The Link Tracking Finalizer/Updater can perform the following functions:

• If, after your migration, you move your SharePoint site to another server or location, you can update the links in the Link Tracking Service(LTS) database using the Link Tracking Finalizer/Updater to reflect the new location.

• If you have relocated the LTS redirector page, the Link Tracking Finalizer/Updater can also update all documents that have links to the LTS redirector page in order to look for the page in the new location (perhaps on a different server).

• If you would like to remove the Link Tracking Service completely after the migration is done, the Link Tracking Finalizer/Updater can finalize the links to allow for its removal. To accomplish this, it will edit all known migrated content pages and replace all links to our Link Tracking Service redirector pages with absolute links to the last known document locations.

The feature can be accessed from the NMSP Configuration page on your SharePoint server. For more information on how to use this new feature, please see Link Tracking Finalizer/Updater in the User Guide.

Improved Usage Analysis

The existing Usage Analysis features have been improved with the following enhancements:

· Last used/modified/read dates are now recorded on a per-user / per-database basis

· User interface for managing Excluded User Named has been improved.  This has also been added to the first-time setup wizard.

· Usage information can now be aggregated across all replicas of a database

· New Usage Analysis by User report has been added

Navigation options for provisioned sites

When using the Migration console to provision  new SharePoint sites and sub-sites, you now have the option to automatically add the sub-site to the parent’s QuickLaunch menu or to the TreeView.