Best Practices, Migrating from Meeting Maker to Exchange
From Provider Notes
For more information about ISC's Exchange Service, visit the Provider Web at [1].
Best Practices: Migrating from Meeting Maker to Exchange
Step 1. Read background documentation
It is important to read supporting documentation, including the high level Exchange Migration Action Plan and Networking and Telecommunications' ISC Exchange Service [2] documentation prior to migrating users' calendar.
Most users are moving from a situation where calendar and email operate very independently. It is important to understand how the Exchange environment integrates these tools together. Reading as much background information as possible will help both in planning for the transition and completing it.
Microsoft has a "Help and How-to" section on Calendar and Scheduling for both Outlook 2003 and 2007. At this point the Outlook 2003 section has the most content, but both are worth reading to get familiar with the new functionality.
Step 2. Determine Strategy and Timing
Unlike email, where moving individual users to Exchange over a prolonged period of time will not disrupt most work flows, it is imperative that calendar migration occur in a systematic, coordinated way. Having some users on Exchange and others remaining on Meeting Maker for any extended length of time will result in confusion, missed meetings, and frustration.
It is important to structure the migration in your area to happen as quickly as possible. This is the reason ISC's recommendation is to migrate everyone's email first followed by calendar to allow providers to move from user to user swiftly during calendar migration. Secondly, if your users rely on scheduling with other organizations, it is important to schedule your migration in roughly the same time frame as the other groups. View information about other units who are considering migration. Please add your own information as it becomes available.
Here are some important questions to ask your users; the answers to which will help you plan.
- What is the calendar-use like? Mostly internal? Across units?
- With what other divisions do you regularly schedule in Meeting Maker?
- What are their migration plans?
- How much calendar history do your users need/want to retain?
There are a couple of strategies recommended to migrate users' calendar information; one includes using a Palm OS device as an intermediary step.
Another recommended alternative is for users/groups to "start fresh" by recreating their calendars in Exchange effective a predetermined cutover date, but the timing of this would need to be as compressed as possible both within and across departments to minimize the confusion and possible double-booking that would result during the migration period. Even with tight coordination and a relatively short window some level of confusion will result.
For the Palm migration, calendar data will be moved to the Palm and then exported to Exchange using the Palm HotSync manager. Just like the email migration, this will need to be done on a user by user basis; however, since all the data is stored on the MM server, this migration can happen away from the user's local machine. (See Step 5 below).
Most of the meeting intelligence will be successfully migrated, however there are some pieces that will be lost. They are summarized below, but please read Meeting Maker to Exchange for a complete discussion. It is estimated to take 1 hour per user, when using a migration station.
- Meeting invitees and attendees. Unfortunately, this data is lost in the translation between platforms. It is recommended that users keep an html export copy of Meeting Maker data after the transition for reference. (See Step 6 below).
- Labels. This data is lost in the migration.
- Repeating banner events. These may be broken into individual, non-repeating events.
- Reoccurring meetings will be broken into individual, non-repeating events.
ISC did do additional testing using the Meeting Maker Connector for Outlook (MMCO) client. Although data was successfully brought in, the migration took considerably longer than with the Palm method and data was not any cleaner (i.e. invitees info still missing); therefore, the Palm method is recommended over the MMCO method.
Step 3. Test Strategy
Before migrating, support providers should test their planned migration paths thoroughly. It is not only possible, but likely that support providers will discover specific use cases for email and calendaring that are not covered in ISC's documentation. In particular, support providers should make note of users that are likely to involve “exception processing” (such as those with smartphones) and attempt to test those types of configurations.
Side Note: Support Providers are strongly encouraged to update documentation on this wiki with information, tips, tricks and gotcha's discovered during their testing and migration. Your lessons learned could greatly help other Penn staff who are working towards the same end--you're not only being a good colleague, but saving valuable university time and resources! To get an account on the Wiki, please contact the Provider Desk, 3-4017.
Step 4. Execute communication plan
Developing a communication plan is part of the high level planning that needs to be completed prior to migrating users' calendar. Users should understand that this is a significant transition, both in the clients they use and (probably) in the way they work at Penn. In particular, they should not be transitioned when there are major other work-related stressors, such as when they are out of town on University business, making other major technology changes, etc. Communication should set reasonable expectations and time lines. It should make clear that the transition is not a one day process and that not all users will be making the transition at the same time.
A recommended communications plan for this effort could be in the form of a table, where each row is a communication event. The rows should give information about date, audience, communicator, vehicle (email, newsletter, etc.) and message. Using this type of tool will make it easy to implement as the process goes along. Here are three sample entries to a communications plan about email migration. This plan is just an example (not in anyway complete...)
| Date | Audience | Communicator | Vehicle | Summary of Message Content | Status |
| August 15, 2007 | Staff in "x" unit | IT Director | Email staff@xxx.upenn.edu | Exchange is coming (benefits for users...) | Completed |
| September 5, 2007 | Staff in "x" unit | LSP Manager | Email staff@xxx.upenn.edu | Upgrade to Outlook 2007, timeline, suggested training | |
| September 10, 2007 | Staff in "x" unit | LSP Manager | Department newsletter | Tidy up your calendar, how to prepare for migration |
Step 5. Set up an LSP "Migration Station"
Unless you are migrating a very small number of users, the easiest way to migrate multiple users' calendars is to set up a computer that providers can use to migrate each person's calendar and Meeting Maker's contacts. In addition, providers will need a Palm OS hand held device.
The migration station's computer will need to have installed on it:
- Outlook or Entourage client
- Palm Desktop
- A version of Meeting Maker with Palm conduits (Detailed instructions on configuring the Meeting Maker HotSync are available here)
Step 6. Backup data
At a minimum, users should have one full backup of their calendar files. The full back up is a disaster recovery precaution and could also be used to view the calendar in the future if necessary. There is also an option in Meeting Maker to export the calendar to HTML. The HTML export is limited in scope, covering at most 11 months before and 9 months after the current date , but it will allow users to have access to their historical calendar information without needing the Meeting Maker client installed on their desktops. See Making_Local_Backups for instructions.
Step 7. Install new software as needed
Most users will already have the Outlook or Entourage client installed, if their email was migrated earlier; however, if not, they will need the client software installed.
Outlook and Entourage configuration instructions are available here.
Step 8. Create Exchange account (if needed)
Most users will already have an ISC Exchange account, if their email was migrated earlier; however, if they need an account, create one by following the instructions on Networking and Telecommunications' ISC Exchange Service site.
Step 9. Prepare calendar for migration
Because of the migration issues related to reoccurring meetings, users should take some steps to prepare their calendar for the migration, which will allow for a smoother transition to Exchange. See Meeting Maker to Exchange for a more detailed discussion.
These will need to be clearly communicated to users and all users will need to comply; otherwise, there will be high levels of confusion and frustration.
- Immediately prior to transition (after making the backup), users should reject all meetings that were proposed by someone else.
- After the transition, users should re-propose, using their new Exchange calendar, all the meetings which included others.
Step 10. Migrate calendar
The document Meeting Maker to Exchange outlines the steps to migrating calendar data to Exchange. As noted above, the recommended process uses a Palm OS device.
Step 11. Migrate contacts
Meeting Maker contacts should be migrated at the same time as the calendar data, through the Palm HotSync Manager. See Meeting Maker Contact Migration for more information.
Step 12. Test Functionality
Testing functionality for each user is an important step in the migration.
- Send a meeting proposal from the user's account.
- Invite the person to a meeting from a different Exchange Account.
Step 13. Point users to documentation
As referenced above, Microsoft has Help and How-to documentation which users may find helpful when learning how to use the calendaring functionality of Exchange.
Step 14. Help users merge contacts
Users may need assistance merging contacts, if they already had contacts in their mail and now they are adding Meeting Maker contacts as well. Read the "Removing Duplicates" section of Contact Migration Strategies for instructions.
