Clarity was responsible for migrating all corporate records, including all document versions and corresponding metadata, from a legacy document and records management solution into a new SharePoint environment. This migration encompassed 3 separate legacy document and records management databases, which supported the following functional areas:
- Electronic Social Care (14,000 documents, 29,000 versions)
- Building Control (459,000 documents, 468,000 versions)
- Pensions (43,000 documents, 101,000 versions)
Clarity developed a migration toolkit, which is used to automate this process. This toolkit comprises 3 main utilities
- An export utility is used to extract all records, including all distinct document versions and corresponding metadata, and load these files into a Windows folder structure which matches the original document and records management file plan hierarchy.
- A transformation utility is used to manage the modification of metadata in a controlled environment, where all changes are recorded in an audit log (e.g. modifying field values to support a new taxonomy in SharePoint and removing illegal characters from file names and field values).
- An import utility is used to manage the upload of all records and metadata into the new SharePoint environment, creating new file plan structures automatically during the process. This tool creates and configures a range of SharePoint features automatically during an import, including document sets, content types, folder structures and versions. The tool also captures historical audit trails for legacy documents within SharePoint by matching Active Directory user accounts with historical actions on documents that are recorded in the legacy system.
City of London Corporation has derived substantial benefits from this migration, in that it has enabled rapid adoption of SharePoint as a key line of business solution; providing a seamless transition from a legacy EDRMS to a single unified corporate document management platform based on SharePoint, which includes fully managed access to all legacy corporate records with full governance arrangements in place from the point of adoption. This approach has also delivered immediate cost savings, in that City of London Corporation is also now able to eliminate legacy EDRMS licence maintenance overheads overnight.
