Mapping Notes features to Google Apps

Whitepaper: Lotus Notes to Google Apps migrationMapping IBM/Lotus Notes features to Google Apps

Main topics:

● Mapping Notes mail features to Google mail

● Mapping Notes applications to Google Apps

● Mapping Notes development to Apps Script development

For: IT / Business persons who are considering a Lotus Notes migration toGoogle Apps

Author: Richard van Delft

Date:Our reference:

16 December 2012WP2012121610

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Mapping Notes features to Google Apps

ContentIntroductionThe Lotus Notes vendor lock-in mythMapping IBM Notes to Google Apps

Mapping Mail & Calendaring functionalityMapping IBM Notes applications featuresMapping Notes development to Google Development

Application migrationData migration with Notes2Apps migrationAutomated migration with CIMtrekRedesign with OrangeScape

Migration projectGet a deep understanding of your Notes environment

Next stepsQuestions / Feedback / Contact information

For the latest version of this white paper, tools and services visit the website: www.g-workplace.com.

Introduction

Lotus NotesTM have been used in large worldwide enterprises as one of the main applicationlandscapes for years. Moving away from Lotus Notes looks impossible for some organisations as mostLotus Notes environments have grown quite successful in most organisation. This is know as the ‘Lotuslock-in’ myth. Moving to Microsoft ExchangeTM has been done by many organisation, but many of themare still running Notes for the application environment. Moving simple applications to SharePoint hasbeen done, however Notes applications are often more than just simple document repositories. Thiswhite paper is written for everyone who currently uses Lotus Notes and wants to know how GoogleAppsTM can replace the Lotus Notes mail and collaboration platform.

This white paper shows Business managers, IT managers, IT architects and Lotus Notes adapts thatGoogle Apps is a perfect follow up for the Lotus Notes platform. Google Apps is the enterprise versionof the consumer services of Google which are already known to many employees, as they use Gmail intheir private life. The 100% web vision of Google brings all the communication and collaborationpower to your fingertips in any modern web browser. As Notes was in the 90-ties an innovativeplatform for enterprise collaboration, Google Apps is nowadays the most innovative socialcollaboration platform for enterprises. Another reason why Google is getting more attraction in theEnterprise market are the costs. Google Apps is available for 40 euro or 50 US dollar per user per year.This is amazing when you compare this to the IBM/Lotus licence fees and the complementaryhardware and IT maintenance costs.

This white paper is written to give Notes organisations and first view on how Google Apps compares toNotes. Demystifying the argument that Google Apps is too simple to replace the Notes platform.

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Mapping Notes features to Google Apps

The Lotus Notes vendor lock-in myth

Notes has been quite successful in many organisations across the world. Power-users and developersmay have created hundred or thousands of applications in Lotus Notes. Those applications result in tothe myth of the Lotus Notes vendor lock-in.

Vendor lock-in, or just lock-in, is the situation in which customers are dependent on a single manufactureror supplier for some product (i.e., a good or service), or products, and cannot move to another vendor

without substantial costs and/or inconvenience.

Organisations often don’t have a clear picture on how Notes applications are used across theorganisation. The IT department fears the data migration costs and the costs for re-developingapplications. This fear result for many organisation to the statuesque to keep the same situation.

G-workplace has dealt with this lock-in syndrome in several occasions. This white paper is the genericanswer to this. This white paper gives a high level overview of the different components of a IBMNotes environment and maps the IBM Notes feature to the Google Apps equivalent.

Mapping IBM Notes to Google Apps

Mapping Mail & Calendaring functionality

This chapter describes how Google Apps mail and calendaring services compares to a Notesenvironment.

● Lotus Notes mail, calendar, tasks vs Google mail, calendar, tasksThe Google mail, calendar and task features are for every user a good replacement of the Lotus Notesmail, calendar and to do functions. There are some caveats to look for which will be explained below,however most Notes users will like the move to Google mail, the easiness of use is one of the pro’s.

● Lotus Notes ‘Doc links’Lotus Notes existed already before the time of internet mail. Lotus invented doc links, view links anddatabase links for linking to your content. The doclink equivalent on internet is the Notes:// URL (likethe well known HTTP URL) or the *.NDL (Notes Data Link) file. However automated migrating ofdoclinks is hard. As the content that you link to will probably don't exist anymore in Lotus Notes, asyou are decommissioning Lotus Notes.GAMLN (the free mail migration tooling of Google) creates an URL link for every doclink, pointing tothe Notes resource. The same applies for the Notes2Apps application migration (G-workplace tool forNotes application migration). Notes2Apps provides also a list of doc links after migration so that userscan choose the right moment to correct the links (if needed).

● Lotus Notes formattingThe Lotus Notes client has a Notes rich text editor, creating Notes tables (like tabbed tables) andNotes text sections (to collapse or expand text). Very handy in a Notes client, however thisproprietary format is not supported in web clients. During migration both GAMLN and Notes2Apps use the Lotus Notes ability for HTML migration. WithNotes2Apps migration you even have a HTML customization option during migration time. You get thebest conversion that IBM Notes can deliver.

● Mail stationery

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Mapping Notes features to Google Apps

One mail feature, which is often used in a business environment are mail stationery's. A mailstationery is a mail template with default TO, CC, BCC, Subject, Body text and attachments. There is noreal replacement of this in Google mail. Within Gmail labs you have ‘Canned responses’ however thislab is intended for default replies, not for default new mail messages. So it lacks some main features.G-workplace provides a different approach, based on a Gmail gadget to deliver mail templatesfeatures in Google mail. Have a look on the G-workplace website if you need this feature.

● Moving Mail-in databasesIn most mail environments you have the need to some functional mailboxes. Like the mail address‘support@companyname.com’. In Lotus Notes you created them as a mail-in database. This is usuallyjust a normal Notes mail file and the ACL is adjusted to give multiple people access to the samemailbox. Google is offering Google Groups for Business as the alternative for shared mailboxes. InGoogle Groups you have the setting ‘collaborative inbox’ which add some handy features to yourGoogle Group interface to utilize the interface as a shared mailbox.When you start to use Google Groups as the replacement for mail-in databases there are some issuesto think about. A drawback is that you can not migrate existing mail messages to Google Groups.Another issue is that users may want to switch easily from the team mailbox to the team calendar tothe team procedure or manual guide. Google Sites can bring those items together. In a Sites you caneasily embed the Google Group collaborative inbox, the shared Google Calendar and the Sites pageswhich contain the team’s guidelines and mail stationeries.If the Google Group collaborative inbox isn’t matching to your requirements you can create a normalGoogle Account and add delegates to this gmail account. One item to think about is that the maximumnumber of delegates is 25.

● Resource reservations vs Calendar ResourcesMeeting rooms and other resources can be reserved in Lotus Notes via the resource reservationdatabase. Within Google Apps you have the same function. The Google calendar is a perfectreplacement. Calendar resources in Google can be easily managed. For example, you can setupauthorisation in a way that resources can only booked by one department. You can also controlmoderation. For example you may want to setup automatic approval for a ordinary meeting room, butsetup an approval moderation for the meeting room of the management board.

● DominoTM Address bookAn IBM Notes environment has one or more Address Books. This address book contains theconfiguration of the Domain and all the user accounts and groups documents. Additionaladdressbook(s) contain additional users and groups from other domains. Google offers the sameapproach. All users you create are available in the Domain with a Domain account profile. This meansthat every user can be found in the Domain Direcotry. You can add additional names and mail addressto the domain address list by adding “Shared contacts” to the domain. The shared contact is a mailaddress that can be found in the type ahead in Gmail and can be found in the Directory contact list.Making it easy for the Google users to find the contact.Domino Groups are called in Google also Groups. In Domino you could specify that a Group is onlyused for ACL group. Preventing that users could mail to this specific group of persons. The same applyto Google. In a Google Group you can select if the Group is found in the directory or not. GoogleGroups have many more advanced configuration options. Ask your deployment specialist partner formore information.

● Personal contacts vs Gmail contactsIBM Notes users have their personal contacts stored in their personal address book. Google Apps userscan also store personal contacts in their personal list of contacts.During migration users can convert their personal contacts easily them self by using the self-supportinstructions from Google. Google offers the option to move personal contacts automatically to Googleby using GAMLN, Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes. The drawback for this approach is that usersin Lotus Notes must have their personal contacts available in the Notes mail file. iNotes (web) usershave this by default, but Notes (client) users have the personal contacts usually in the personal names

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Mapping Notes features to Google Apps

address book (pernames.ntf) which is located in the personal data directory of the Notes client on thedesktop. For those users you need to migrate personal contacts from their address book to their mailfiles were GAMLN will move the contacts to Gmail. Note: users are usually okay without migratingtheir Notes contacts. It is the advice of G-workplace for not migrating personal contacts.

● Lotus SameTime vs Google talkSameTimeTM may provide presence and chat (text, audio, video) services to your Notes environment.Google provides the same chat services. In Google you can easily start a text chat, audio chat or a multiperson video chat (called Hangout). In a Hangout you can easily share documents or create meetingnotes. You can also start to broadcast a video meeting where you can invite as many people you want.This online meeting service integrates well within the Google Calendar. You can even invite GoogleTranslate to your meeting, were your text is automatically translated in the desired language,supporting international meetings for improving mutual understanding.Google offers also Google Voice, the service to call landline phones and mobile phones directly fromyour mailbox.As with Sametime also Google talk can be integrated with many PBX manufactures. Offering a unifiedmailbox approach and seamless telecommunication services. Integration services can be provided byyour PBX provider or can be obtained by a Google business partner like G-workplace.

● Lotus TravelerTM vs Google mobile supportWith Lotus Notes Traveler Lotus Notes users had the ability to take some of their Notes mail functionson their mobile with them. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the Google Apps mobile featuresoutstand the function of Traveler. The effort of Google in the consumer space has made Google Apps awonderful piece of software for mobile users. Going mobile with Google Apps is easy for anyend-user. Most phones and tablets already comes default with a Google Account setup instruction.Also when you look at configuration and device support, from an admin point of perspective, GoogleApps is offering Google Mobile Device Management (MDM), which has the ability to control thedevices which connect to your Google Apps environment. Keeping you secure and in control. Thisenables organisations to stop the company phone policy on Blackberry and adopt an approach asBring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) or Choose-Your-Own-Device (CYOD) strategy.

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Mapping Notes features to Google Apps

Mapping applications features

● IBM/Lotus Notes applications vs Google Sites / DocsLotus Notes is an Rapid Application Development (RAD) platform for developing collaborativeapplications. Lotus Notes developers have been using the platform for all kind of applications. Mostapplications are form oriented and offers different views to the data. Development is done in@formula language, LotusScript or java.Google Apps offers Google Sites, Google Drive, Gmail, Groups and Google+ as components forbuilding collaborative applications. Developers can use Google Apps Script or choose between Java,.Net or Phyton API’s for building applications. This section will focus on Google Apps Script capabilitiesas this scripting language is like LotusScript which is often used in Lotus Notes applications.Developers can build standalone applications in Apps Script or add custom features to Google Apps.Google developers can add custom forms to Google Drive or to Google Sites. Apps Script can be usedto build basic workflow capabilities in Google Apps.Notes2Apps is the migration tool of G-workplace to move content from Lotus Notes applications toGoogle Apps. Notes2Apps comes with templates for many Lotus templates like Teamrooms, documentlibraries, and discussion databases. Notes2Apps support any Notes database and the most complexdata structures. Notes databases which are attachment centric are usually good candidates formigration to Google Drive. Form centric applications are mostly candidates for Google Sites. Workfloworiented applications are candidates for a combined migration. Workflow meta data is stored inGoogle Spreadsheet or Google Script dB (object-oriented database) and the user interaction is donevia a Google Apps Script application. G-workplace and Notes2Apps also provides design patterns tomove application logic to Google Apps logic.

● LEI (of DECS) vs GSD | RDBMS integrationLotus has the ability to integrate with data from other database resources via Lotus EnterpriseIntegrator (LEI), or via Domino Enterprise Connections Services (DECS), or via a ODBC call withincoding. With LEI licence costs are involved, the other two options are free. Google provides for freethe Google Secure Data (GSD) connector. This connector is software which you can download for freeand needs to be installed in the DMZ of your network. GSD makes a secure connection from yourlocation to your Google Apps environment and starts to listen for requests. Giving you the ability todisplay your on-premise data for example in a Google Spreadsheet. GSD a easy to setup, and keeps your data save. In example, per connection you can specify to use ageneric logon account on your database or use the Google user account credentials, preventing yourGoogle users to see too much data.

● Lotus QuickPlace/ IBM Quickr vs Google SitesFor basic collaboration Lotus is offering Lotus Quickr (formerly known as Lotus QuickPlace). Quickr isseparately sold. Lotus Quickr functionality can be replaced by Google Sites. Sites even have themobile support option to be available on tablets which are now often used within companies. Quickrcould be integrated with your ECM (Enterprise Content Management) system like Documentum or IBMFileNet. This kind of integration is also offered by Google via the Google Secure Data (GSD) connector.

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Mapping Notes features to Google Apps

Mapping Notes development to Google Development

● LotusScript toward Google Apps ScriptLotusScript is a scripting language which is widely used within Notes applications. Google Apps Script isalso a scripting language, used to automate or customize features within Google Apps. Google AppsScript is easy to learn for LotusScript developers, especially if the developer already knows JavaScript,as Google Apps Script follows the syntac of JavaScript.

● Domino workflow vs visual PaaSFor building complex workflows, Lotus offers Domino Workflow (separate license), a visual workfloweditor on top of your Domino Designer. Google doesn't provide the same ability, however in theGoogle Apps marketplace KISSflow is offered as a simpel workflow designer and OrangeScape VisualStudio as an option for more complex designs. Domino designers can easily switch to the IDE ofOrangeScape to develop an enterprise workflow, which may connect to other web services you have inyour enterprise.For more information see, www.orangescape.com or contact info@g-workplace.com

Application migration

Your IBM/Lotus Notes environment probably consist of more then mail and calendar. Lotus Notes hasbeen often used to support Rapid Application Development (RAD) within organisation. Lotus Notesapplications are often used for collaboration in departments or projects. Google Apps is all aboutcollaboration and sharing information and is typical a good replacement for your collaborationapplication in Lotus Notes. However you may also have build (complex) business application withinLotus Notes. They typically don’t migrate to Google Apps, but to other enterprise wide platforms or toa Commercial of-the Selve (COTS) solution.

Before you start you may want to conduct a scan on your Lotus Notes application to get an insight onyour Notes migration scenario. The Notes2Apps Scan provides this function. Notes2Apps scanexamines every Notes database on database information, database design, content, Access ControlList (ACL) and user activity of every database. The scan results in a report with information for yourmigration planning and migration effort. This information is then used during application migration.

Data migration with Notes2Apps migration

Notes2Apps Migrator focus on the content migration of your Notes databases to Google Apps. Thevalueble content within Notes applications are converted to Google Sites or to Google Docs(conversion to PDF, Text documents or Spreadsheets). Notes2Apps also supports to export data fromNotes to a (local) archive location. Data may then be used to import in a new application platform likeSalesforce (CRM) or to an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system.G-workplace delivers the tooling Notes2Apps which can be obtained by end-users organisations to runthe migration them self. G-workplace also provides a fixed price migration per database, independentof database size or complexity.

Automated migration with CIMtrek

CIMtrek automatically converts all Lotus Notes application logic (forms, views, agents, etc) to JAVA.The converted applications runs on a java platform like Google App Engine. The resulting applicationmimicks the same Lotus Notes user interface that users already know. So there are no re-trainingcosts. Cimtrek also moves the Lotus Notes propriety data format to a relational database like MySQL.From a maintenance perspective the developers need to maintain java libraries instead of the LotusNotes RAD. This makes CIMtrek useful for complex Lotus Notes applications that don’t need a lot of

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Mapping Notes features to Google Apps

change management anymore.

Redesign with OrangeScape

OrangeScape delivers a visual web based development platform. OrangeScape delivers a RADenvironment for the data model, business rules, forms / user interface, workflow and integration.Applications can be deployed to Google Apps Engine, Microsoft Azure or Amazon.

OrangeScape delivers a Lotus Notes conversion utility to import the current Lotus Notes data modelinto the OrangeScape development studio.

OrangeScape studio is a replacement for the Domino Designer, delivering a RAD environment forre-designing complex Lotus Notes (workflow) applications.

Migration project

Get a deep understanding of your Notes environment

Before you start anything, you have to know the ins and out of your current Notes environment. I haveseen organisation who just introduced a new platform and hoped that Lotus Notes would vanish. Wellthat is not happening. If you want to replace a mail and collaboration platform you have to know whatyou want to replace. This simple question is not that easy to answer. The Notes platform usage variesby organisation. Some organisation may have used Notes just for basic mail and document sharingoptions via Document libaries running. Other organisation may run all kind of add-ons like Sametime,Quickr and Traveler, use advanced mail features like archiving, roaming features and mail rules andhave many, many custom Notes applications running their daily business.The Notes2Apps Scan gives an in-depth overview of the total Notes/Domino domain. It collectsdetailed information of the Notes features used in the domain, the mail usage in the domain and theapplications in the domain. It provides insight in the migration effort and a recommended planning forthe Notes environment. The Notes2Apps Scan is special designed to answer the migration questionsthat Notes admins, Notes developers, IT managers and business managers have. Therefor werecommand every organisation to run the Notes2Apps Scan at the start of the project. The Scan is eveninterested for organisation who didn’t decide yet to stay on Notes or to move to another platform likeGoogle Apps, Office 365 or IBM Smartcloud (LotusLive). As the Scan can generated different reportsbased on the collected information. So Notes2Apps Scan can also create a report to show the TCOestimations for Lotus, Office 365 and Google Apps. This based on your actually Lotus Notes usage inyour organisation.

Next steps

This white paper has given a broad overview on how IBM/Lotus Notes features can be mapped toGoogle Apps. The next steps are now:

1. investigate how your environment can be mapped to Google Apps services, and whichbenefits, costs savings and migration effort you have to do. The G-workplace Notes2Apps Scancan support this process.

2. Start a Google Apps pilot with a Google Apps business partner.3. Request a (free) trial migration with Notes2Apps Migrator.

You can find a Google Apps business partners in the Google Apps marketplace, or you can contact usvia mail (info@G-workplace.com) or via our website, www.g-workplace.com.

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Mapping Notes features to Google Apps

Questions / Feedback / Contact information

In case of any remarks or comments on this white paper contact the author, Richard van Delft onrichard.van.delft@g-workplace.com.

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