Migrating eRooms to SharePoint is the key function of SharePoint Migration Manager for eRoom (SMM). There are two logical ways to represent eRooms in SharePoint, and SMM supports both. The most logical way for SharePoint to represent eRoom deployments that contain all types of eRoom content, such as documents, calendars, discussion lists, and databases, is to use SharePoint sites. SharePoint sites are the only containers that can contain all other types of SharePoint content, including other sites and all SharePoint list types. For eRoom deployments that almost exclusively contain documents, the logical SharePoint equivalent is a Document Library. While Document Libraries cannot contain other sites or list types, they are the simplest user construct for document management.
In general, SMM is able to migrate facilities, rooms, and folders as sites and sub-sites (or as document libraries if that option is chosen), and lists can only be migrated as a list of similar type.
eRoom hierarchy structure can become very complicated, and the main reason for this is because a list can have any number of sub-elements, including other lists, folders, or items, and these items can also contain lists, folders, or items, and so on. Because of this kind of potential behavior, nested content can become an issue when migrating to SharePoint. Nested content is some content that is within other content, for one or more levels lower in the hierarchy.
SMM does have some limitations when it comes to migrating nested content, and the main limitation is encountered when migrating eRoom list content. When migrating eRoom lists, SMM can only migrate nested documents, if the documents are at the first level under the list. This means that if migrating an eRoom lists that contains another list, folder, and a document, then only the document can be migrated with the top level list. SharePoint hierarchal structure cannot place a list or site inside a list, so in order to migrate this type of structure from eRoom, the nested eRoom list must be either promoted to a folder/room and placed higher in the hierarchy structure, or it must be moved out to the same level as the top level list.
When facilities, rooms, and folders are migrated with SMM they are migrated as SharePoint sites and sub-sites, and nested content only becomes and issue when it encounters lists with nested content. If an eRoom room is migrated, and it contains a list, folder, and a document, then all three types will be migrated. The list will be migrated as it's SharePoint equivalent type list, the documents will be migrated into a document library, and the folder will be migrated as a sub-site.
SMM's Explorer view will only display content that it can migrate, and this applies to Nested content as well. Below is a basic example of nested content, and how SMM will deal with it.
Lets say we have an eRoom folder that contains two database lists. SMM will only be able to view the folder and the databases inside, but not the other items inside the database lists.
In the first database lists there are other (nested) lists, such as a calendar, and a discussion, as well as a folder.
In the second database list there are some documents and attachments.
When the list with the nested items (the first database list) is migrated, only the list itself will migrate, the other lists and folder will not be migrated. In order for SMM to migrate these other lists (the calendar, discussion, links, and folder) they would have to be moved up to the same level as the database list, or moved to this same level and placed in a folder. However, the second list (with only documents and attachments) would be migrated with the documents migrating as attachments.
© 2009 Metalogix Corporation. All rights reserved.
