Migrator for Notes to Exchange 4.15.2 - Pre-Migration Planning Guide

Migrating calendar ACLs and delegation rights

Migrator for Notes to Exchange's Data Migration Wizard offers an assortment of options for mapping some Notes access levels to Exchange, for calendar and to-do items. Specifically, the No Access and the Depositor access levels are mapped as shown in the following table, for selected Read Public and Write Public Notes permissions. Mapping depends on values set for NME Parameters [Notes] MapDefaultAclToReviewer and [Notes] ElevateCalendarAuthorACLtoEditor.

The Data Migration Wizard can also migrate Notes' "send on behalf of" delegation rights. Delegation rights are useful when one user wants to let another user have access to his or her Outlook Calendar, to generate meeting invitations and accept/decline invitations from others, as is common in a boss-secretary relationship. Notes delegation rights correspond to the publicDelegates property in Active Directory. Migration of delegation rights is enabled by default, but can be disabled by setting PublicDelegates=0 in the [General] section of the Global Defaults or Task Parameters.

Migrating DocLinks

Notes DocLinks can be migrated in any of four forms:

NOTE: This Domino webserver option is incompatible with an Offline migration, since Migrator for Notes to Exchange cannot connect to an offline Domino server to perform the DocLink translation.

Your Migration Plan should specify the destination format for your migrated Notes DocLinks. The choice of destination format is controlled by a selection on the Specify How To Migrate Notes DocLinks screen, within the Data Migration Wizard. By default, DocLinks will migrate to Exchange as NOTES links.

Migrating Notes "Active Mail"

Migrator for Notes to Exchange can detect and convert Notes rich-content features whereby messages carry "live" or "active" functional content, for things such as:

These features, which we collectively call "Active Mail," are normally lost or degraded when migrated to Exchange, due to differences between the mail platforms. However, Migrator for Notes to Exchange—both the Data Migration Wizard and the SSDM—can detect and process Active Mail content to preserve its functionality.

Migrator for Notes to Exchange encapsulates Active Mail functionality within an NSF file attachment. Assuming a Notes client is still installed on the migrated user's Outlook computer, and the NSF file type is associated (in Windows) with the Notes client application, the Outlook user can simply double-click the icon to open the attached NSF file into Notes, with the fully functional Active Mail content in view.

Active Mail processing is an optional feature that is disabled by default, but can be enabled by a checkbox on the Data Migration Wizard's Specify Data to Migrate screen:

In the SSDM, the feature can be enabled only by program parameters in the notesdtapp.ini file. These settings are described in chapter 4 of the Migrator for Notes to Exchange Scenarios Guide — see the topic How to customize the SSDM.

In the wizard’s Specify Data to Migrate screen, the Configure button (next to the checkbox field, as shown above) opens a pop-up dialog box in which you can specify your preferences for the Active Mail features. (The dialog box options are described in the Migrator for Notes to Exchange Administration Guide, chapter 10, for the Specify Data to Migrate screen, and also in the wizard’s online Help file).

Part of the configuration requires that you specify a filename and location for a Notification message — a file containing a text string that Migrator for Notes to Exchange inserts at the top of the body of any migrated message containing Active Mail. Migrator for Notes to Exchange installs a default file, ActiveMailNotificationMessage.txt, to the Migrator for Notes to Exchange installation directory, but you can specify a different filename and/or folder. The Notification message text file must be UTF-8 encoded and must contain a placeholder, called $ActiveMailAttachment$, that Migrator for Notes to Exchange will replace with the Active Mail NSF attachment when the message is migrated. Since the contents of this file become part of an RTF body, characters like "\", "{", and "}" must be escaped with a leading "\" (so they become, respectively, "\\", "\{", and "\}").

Migrating encrypted data

Notes encrypted mail can be migrated by either MNE's Data Migration Wizard or the Self-Service Desktop Migrator (SSDM), but each method has its own advantages and disadvantages. The Data Migration Wizard (batch migrator) usually cannot decrypt messages because decryption requires per-user access credentials that usually are unavailable to the wizard. The wizard can migrate encrypted mail as Active Mail (see Migrating Notes “Active Mail” above), but in that case the messages are simply encapsulated and migrated in their encrypted state, and on the Exchange side the user must use a local copy of Notes to decrypt the message contents.

The SSDM, meanwhile, can apply individual users' credentials to decrypt Notes messages as they are migrated, but this method leaves the migrated messages unencrypted in the Exchange mailboxes.

So the batch-migrating Data Migration Wizard can migrate encrypted messages as Active Mail for collections of users, but the messages can be decrypted on the Exchange side only by users running their local copies of Notes. Whereas the SSDM can decrypt Notes messages and migrate them unencrypted to Exchange, but can only be applied to a single user's mail at a time, and the migrated messages remain unencrypted on the Exchange side.

NOTE: Encrypted mail in Notes is not decrypted by the SSDM before it is migrated to Exchange. Encrypted mail in Notes is kept in an encrypted state and then decrypted as it is migrated. At no time is encrypted mail left in a decrypted state in Notes. Even after the mail is migrated the encrypted email left in Notes remains in an encrypted state.

Alternatively, the Data Migration Wizard can be configured to not migrate encrypted messages as Active Mail (as described in Migrating Notes “Active Mail” above), and in that case will migrate an encrypted message’s unencrypted portions, and skip the encrypted portions, inserting a text notice in the message body to explain that the encrypted portions could not be migrated.

In most organizations, only the sender or recipient of an encrypted message is authorized to access the encrypted portion, and the wizard will not know those credentials unless the admin account running the wizard happens to be the sender or recipient of the encrypted message. It is possible, but uncommon, for an environment to be configured with broader or even universal access to the encrypted portions of encrypted messages, and in that case the wizard can freely migrate encrypted messages in their entirety, without using the Active Mail features. But in the more likely case where access credentials are much more restrictive, the wizard will be able to migrate the encrypted portions of encrypted messages only by Active Mail processing.

Organizations that opt to use the SSDM to migrate encrypted messages, typically do so after batch-migrating most everything else with the Data Migration Wizard. In any case, two related Migrator for Notes to Exchange program parameters let you tell the wizard how to handle encrypted messages:

These options are set independently for server and archive data, by different combinations of the MigrateEncryptedMessages and SkipEntireEncryptedMessage parameters, in the [ServerData] and [ArchiveData] sections (respectively) of Migrator for Notes to Exchange’s Task Parameters and Global Defaults. For more information these parameters, see the associated entries in the Migrator for Notes to Exchange Program Parameters Reference.

The Quest Message Stats Lotus Notes Migration Report Pack report Migration Status by User can help you determine who has encrypted data. Use the filters in this report to narrow your search to users that have been migrated by the bulk migrator and who have Encrypted Data either skipped or migrated. Those users should run the Self-Service Desktop Migrator to migrate their own encrypted data. Since the Data Migration Wizard does not migrate encrypted messages, it will substitute placeholder messages for encrypted messages in your users’ Exchange mailboxes. The Self-Service Desktop Migrator will then replace the placeholder messages with the real messages as it decrypts and migrates them. (SSDM can do the same thing for encrypted messages that the Data Migration Wizard has processed as Active Mail, replacing the encapsulated-encrypted messages with the real messages as it decrypts and migrates them.)

The placeholder message content is configurable. If you set up a share for your users with an SSDM configured to just migrate the Mail file for your users, you can add the location to this package along with instructions for migrating encrypted messages. For more information see How Do I Customize the Placeholder Message ... for Encrypted Messages? in Appendix A of the Migrator for Notes to Exchange Administration Guide.