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Most tools will not migrate archived mail, rules, reminders and autoreplies, user settings or preferences, distribution lists, personal address books, bulletin boards, custom forms, mail-enabled applications or calendars. When migrating within same-vendor products, such as from cc:Mail to Lotus Notes or Microsoft Mail to Exchange, more components will be moved over. For example, from Microsoft Mail fo r PC Networks to Exchange, you can migrate messages, shared folders, personal address books and schedule information from Schedule+. Finding third-party tools or creating wor karounds for nonmigratable items and establishing naming conventions and transitioning remote users will need to be tackled by the migration team.

Feel the Burn Scheduling a pilot migration with a selected post office of very tolerant users is a good first step. The rollout of the new system should be thoroughly promoted in all available media--e-mail and voicemail, company newsletters, closed-circuit TV and bulletin boards--to let users know the schedule. Encourage users to clean up their message stores, deleting unnecessary items or archiving them to their local disks. Perform the migration during off-peak network hours to ensure that adequate bandwidth is available.

Where will the migration process take place? It is better to perform the migration from the destination server to improve performance and manageability. It is also better to use an Intel-based Windows NT server (rather than a RISC-based server) because the 16-bit code runs in the X86 penalty box. Be sure to provide more than enough disk space on the destination server to handle the new users.

How long will the migration take? A rule of thumb we found valid in our tests is to double the amount of time it takes to reclaim the cc:Mail post office. For example, you have an active post office with 250 users, and it takes two hours to complete the reclamation process. To migrate those same users to a new system such as Notes or Exchange, you should figure on four hours. You may improve upon this time by using higher performance servers, migrating during off-peak hours or using higher bandwidth networks, for example. No matter what, though, the total migration process, including planning, is usually greatly underestimated, so plug in lots of peak workout time.

Microsoft Exchange's Migration Wizard There seems to be a sorcerer behind the scenes of Microso ft's Migration Wizard for Exchange 5.0, working the magic and skillfully performing the migration virtually unaided by mere mortal intervention. Accessible from the Exchange Server, the tool provides migration capabilities for Lotus cc:Mail, Netscape Collabra Share's forums, Digital All-in-1, Novell GroupWise, IBM PROFS/Office Vision, Microsoft Mail for PC and AppleTalk Networks, Unix mail and Verimation Memo MVS. The Migration Wizard uses a source extractor to copy the information from the cc:Mail post office and creates migration files from them to be used during the process.

Before you begin the migration, perform two complete system backups of each server, so that you can restore should a catastrophe occur. Retain these backups for an extended period.

Both the old and the new systems must be connected and able to exchange files and messages. You can use X.400, the Internet, a gateway or an Exchange connector. Every new Exchange user will need an NT account and password on the destination server. Y ou can create these manually or have the migration wizard do it by creating accounts with random passwords or aliases used as passwords. Create a recipient container on Exchange to hold all the new users. Make sure the old post office is available and log off all users. Also, configure and start all Exchange services and back up the system.

Once you actually press the keys to start the migration, it truly seems like magic. There are very few bits of information to impart to the wizard. Fundamental stuff like the path to the cc:Mail post office, the name and password of the post office, a location for temporary storage of the migration files, the destination server name and the Windows NT domain name are required entries. All other information is gleaned by the system from various choices on subsequent screens.