Belfast City Council

OpenText DOCS ECM Modernization

Client Profile

Belfast City Council is the local authority with responsibility for the city of Belfast, the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland. The Council serves an estimated population of 333,871, the largest of any district council in Northern Ireland, while also being the fourth smallest by area.

As a part of their digital transformation and Cloud adoption initiative, Belfast City Council wanted to migrate their business content stored in their OpenText DOCS Open platform (previously HummingBird DOCS Open) to SharePoint Online.

Our Proventeq migration experts worked closely with Belfast City Council’s IT team to design and implement a best practice solution for their new SharePoint Online environment. We had also smoothly moved content over from the libraries in their existing OpenText Docs Open platform to SharePoint Online.

Proventeq provided an end-to-end migration solution, including design and configuration of SharePoint Online and migration of content from multiple eDOCS Open libraries onto SharePoint online, within the desired timescales.

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Location

UK

Sector

Government Administration

Source

OpenText DOCS

Destination

SharePoint Online

The Complexities of the Project

Library-wide security in DOCS Open needed replicating to the new libraries in the target SharePoint environment.
Large volumes of content present in the libraries within the source system.
The design and implementation of the new SharePoint environment had to match the Information Architecture in the source Docs Open Information Architecture.
Customized views were needed for the new target system so that an equivalent experience could be provided to the users.
User profiles needed organizing, including removing old accounts and deleting duplicated ones.

Belfast City Council’s Unique Challenges

Mapping security models

Library-wide security in DOCS Open needed replicating on to the new libraries in the target SharePoint environment. We had to map the OpenText DOCS Open Security Model onto the SharePoint Security Model, including item-level security.

Large content volume

Based on the large volumes of content present in the libraries within the source system, different libraries were created for this content to be classified and stored appropriately within the new target environment.

Matching the IA

The design and implementation of the new SharePoint environment had to match the Information Architecture in the source Docs Open Information Architecture.

Customization

Customized views were needed for the new target system so that an equivalent experience could be provided to the users. User profiles needed organising, including removing old accounts and deleting duplicated ones.

Proventeq's Solution

Enabling a smooth transition for Belfast City Council to their new SharePoint Online environment.

Discovery and analysis

Using the Content Analyser, our Proventeq Discovery process helped to identify any inconsistencies in content and security. Using this information, it created rules to make the anomalies compatible with the new design in SharePoint.

Design & implementation

Our Proventeq migration experts worked closely with Belfast City Council’s IT team to design and implement a best practice solution for their new SharePoint Online environment. We also carried out a smooth transfer of content from the existing OpenText Docs Open libraries to SharePoint Online.

Custom functionalities

Belfast City Council used features of our Migration Accelerator; this piece of software is customizable to the unique needs of the business. We tailored the functionality of this program to automate content migration into SharePoint which reduced the overall project costs and timescale.

Item level audits

Item level audits during the process ensured completeness of migration and maintained data integrity; pausing, evaluating and rewinding the progression of the migration to correct errors.

Categorization system

The staggered migration processes in the migration engine allowed each library to be migrated individually. A unique categorization system was created in SharePoint to match new document destinations.

Tailored migration solution

We ensured that the user accounts existing within the source system were correctly mapped to new user IDs in the Azure Active Directory; thereby ensuring all users were ready to use the new target system.

The Results

Improved productivity

Large volumes of content assets were uncovered. This included all archived items and their corresponding metadata, which were transformed into the master documentation, ensuring successful classification post-migration. This has helped Belfast City Council vastly improve content availability, and deliverability and fostered innovation within the organization.

Optimal platform functionality

An item level audit ensured that every content item was successfully cleansed, transformed and migrated to comply with the constraints of the new environment.
For Belfast City Council, this meant their assets reached optimal functionality, without impacting the files or the new target environment.

Reduced organizationaldDowntime

With the help of Proventeq’s highly trained team, Belfast City Council completed their migration project with minimal impact on their day-to-day organisational activities.
Additionally, SharePoint’s user-friendly interface meant that minimal staff training was required.