Lotus Notes to Documentum

Hi all. I am a developer, who has been hired to convert a set of documents from Lotus Notes/Domino to Documentum. After the conversion, Notes will not be used. I know Notes well, but not Documentum. So my questions...

- I assume I should download the Documentum Developers Edition, so I can start to do some testing here in my lab??

- Should I look into the Lotus Notes Document eConnector? (hope I have the name right) Or is this for realtime back-and-forth conversion? I want to do a one-way conversion, one time.

- Any other tips, from someone who has done this?

TIA,

Chuck

www.chc-3.com

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Comments

bacham2

What you mean by "convert". You mean migrate the documents to Documentum?

If that's the case, the simplest is to write a Java program using DFC (Documentum Foundation Classes). Lotus Notes eConnector will not help you.

ChuckConnell

Yes, I mean migrate. We would stop using Lotus Notes completely, and maintain the documents in Documentum.

I am comfortable with Java, and have used similar APIs, so I'm sure I could learn DFC. The problem though is doing a high-fidelity conversion. I want the rich-text formatting within Notes (font size, color, bolding, tables) to come over to Documentum. I'm sure DFC will help me write that into Documentum, but I also need to read the formatting out of Notes, which is tricky. It is easy to get a plain-text dump of the Notes data, but I want the formatting also.

Let me try out these ideas...

1) Suppose I get the Notes data as Microsoft RTF files, with the full formatting. Could I use DFC to import the RTF to Documentum, with good fidelity?

2) How about PDF? If I get an accurate PDF rendering of the Notes data, could I import that to Documentum? One concern here is that I want to *edit* the data after putting it into Documentum. So a standard read-only PDF approach won't work.

Thank you,

Chuck

www.chc-3.com

bacham2

Documentum will not process the content upon import. So your RTF will be imported as is. PDF is not a good option if you need to modify the documents, as you said. You can however import the PDF as a rendtion to the RTF if that brings any value.

Hicham

ChuckConnell

1) So an RTF import will not look right? I want to see the correct fonts and colors, not the RTF source code....

2) Could you please explain what you mean by "import the PDF as a rendtion to the RTF if that brings any value"? Exactly what would the steps here be? What would I see in the end?

Thanks!

Chuck

bacham2

1/ No, that's not what I meant. What I was trying to explain is that the Documentum Content Server will not perform any processing on your content. It will import your file as is without any transformation. Documentum doesn't care that you RTF file has fonts and colors, etc. For Documentum, it's just a file. However, it does tag the file as rtf so that later on, a client can request the file and will know which application to use to open the file.

2/ A rendition is a feature that allows you to store multipe content file for a single document. Useful in many case. For example, you want to use the HTML rendtion to publish the document on a website, a PDF rendition to mail the document to customers and use the RTF for editing the document.

ChuckConnell

OK. Thank you. Both of those are helpful. The RTF approach could work. A user who wants to edit the document could request it, then edit it with Microsoft Word, which renders the RTF perfectly. Does that sound right?

bacham2

Yes

jochen

It's not necessary to develop anything to achieve what you are looking for. Please have a look at the following discussion: https://community.emc.com/message/285634#285634

Should you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact me (see the above post).

ChuckConnell

Hello jochen,

I am interested in your post, and in reading the link you provided. But I am blocked from reading it. I get an "unauthorized" message.

Sincerely,

Chuck Connell

781-275-0484