I have several clients who are in the process of moving their existing intranet content to SharePoint. In one case, they are moving html pages and Notes databases and in another, they are moving all html pages. I was asked to provide some recommendations on what should be stored as content (page) vs. what should be turned into a document and stored in a document library in a SharePoint site that whose primary purpose is communications or publishing (as opposed to collaboration). Here are some recommended practices:
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How long is the content? In general, we don’t want users to scroll vertically for more than 2-3 screen’s worth of information. If the content is more than 2-3 screens of vertical scrolling, it’s generally better to create a document available for download rather than a page full of content.
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If content in a collection is “mixed” - some short, some long, the best practice is to use pages and include summaries or abstracts as the text for the longer content and make the full document available as download in a library on the page. (In this scenario, you could use something like the Article template with a doc lib, similar to the Article with Summary Links template that comes out of the box.)
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What do you expect users will do with the content? If the communication is primarily via the web and the content is relatively short, use pages. If the expected behavior is that users will print the content, use documents.
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Is the value of the content enhanced significantly by incorporating links to other online content? This type of content will have very little value in printed form so if the content collection is expected to be used online and includes lots of content links to other content on other pages, then the page template structure is better, even if the documents are pretty long.
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Is the content really a Notes form? Then the answer is neither page nor document – it’s probably InfoPath form.
If you’ve got a lot of content to convert, there are definitely tools that can make this easier. If the content is Notes-based, take a look at the tools at www.casahl.com. They’ve got well tested and well regarded products and the CEO, Harry Wong, is a terrific guy. Tell him I sent you!
What about metalogix?
The Metalogix Migration Manager product is great for importing from any web CMS into sharepoint. check their product out - they impressed me immensly.
Metalogix
I wasn't trying to provide a comprehensive review of migration tools, but yes, Metalogix has some great features. What I like about that particular tool is that it can migrate existing metadata values (such as creation date) into the same field in SharePoint. This is really important for some organizations because without a tool, all documents end up with a creation date of the date you uploaded it to SharePoint, which is not always what you want. I don't know that Metalogix does what Casahl does, which is to facilitate the migration/conversion of Notes applications, not just content. Nevertheless, I agree with you - Metalogix has some impressive capabilities, even if when they were trying to show me a demo a few weeks ago, they couldn't get it to work so I can't say they could prove to me that it does what they say. But I believed them anyway.
Metalogix
Hello All,
First off, Susan I would be happy set up a demo for you at your convenience.
Second, just to clarify I think the posts here reference two of our solutions.
The first is Metalogix Website Migration Manager which enables users to migrate existing intranets and web sites (including static HTML, MCMS 2002, Vignette, Interwoven etc) to the SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management platform. HTML content can be mapped to Pages in a MOSS publishing site with automated link correction and automated upload of related images and documents. You can also set metadata including modified by and created by or custom columns.
The second is Metalogx SharePoint Site Migration Manager which enables users to easily migrate items/lists/ libraries, and sites between WSSv2/SPS 2003 and WSSv3/MOSS 2007 sites and servers with views, versions, user-info (modified/created, custom metadata, permissions and webparts. Users can re-ghost and re-template sites as well as merge or split sites, lists and libraries.
I hope that helps.
Cheers,
Rasool
Metalogix
Great article. We used Metalogix for some Notes and Vignette content migration without any issues. I have some experience with Casahl and they are a little stronger technically IMHO with the Notes portion. Metalogix can provide great support and even a trial to get you started. Licensing can be steep if you have a lot to migrate since their model is based on the quantity of the source content.