The migration-center WebClient – A first step for our new migration tool generation

Author
Vasile Gavrila
Head of Product Development @ fme SRL

August 9, 2022

A little bit of history

We decided quite a while ago to replace the desktop client with a new and modern user interface – one that’s more intuitive and provides better usability.

For quite some time, we focused on developing new connectors and enhancing the functionality of the existing ones. As a result, migration-center now supports the main ECM platforms in the market. However, in the last two years we also focused on extending migration-center’s core capabilities by developing a brand-new WebUI. We finally released it officially in early July. Contrary to the original announcement, the new release is not named migration-center 4.0, but migration-center 22.1. The reason for this is that, given our goal of periodically releasing new versions and updates, the change from semantic to calendar versioning seemed to be more appropriate to us.

With the introduction of the migration-center WebClient, we want to ensure a smooth transition for our customers from the previous desktop client to the new WebClient. That is why we decided to keep both compatible with the backend in 22.1. In the next major version – when the desktop client will be retired – we will introduce new features focused on simplifying the migration work.

After this short introduction, let me now point out the WebClient’s main advantages and highlight some of the new features and enhancements included within migration-center 22.1.

The long awaited WebClient and its benefits

One of the WebClient’s main benefits is related to the simplification of the deployment. The WebClient no longer requires Oracle Client as a prerequisite because it uses JDBC to connect to the database. It can also be deployed on a single machine and accessed from anywhere by using a secure protocol (HTTPS). Currently Chrome and Edge are supported.

Beside a modern UI and improved usability, the WebClient is designed to be more intuitive for new users. It focuses on the migration flow by having a vertical toolbar that is always at the top, so the users can easily access the main phases of the migration.

01 | Blogpost | The migration-center WebClient - A first step for our new migration tool generation

Migration Sets in migration-center 22.1

Selected migration-center 22.1 features & enhancements

Multi-column mapping list

Mapping the source values to target values is one of the most used features during a migration. To simplify the process of mapping and maintaining mapping lists, we introduced the multi-column mapping list. With this function, up to ten target values can be mapped to a single key value. In the transformation rules the user can decide which column from the mapping list should be returned.

In this way, the errors that occur during transformation will be reduced because the mapping keys will be maintained in a single mapping list instead of multiple ones. Compared with the desktop client, the performance of editing and importing mapping lists is greatly improved in the WebClient.

02 | Blogpost | The migration-center WebClient - A first step for our new migration tool generation

Multi-Column Mapping List

Copy/paste transformation rules

We all know that cross platforms migrations may require complex transformation rules. Beside importing/copying all rules from another migset, the user is now able to copy only a selection of transformation rules from one migset to another.

Export mapping lists and object types

When dealing with multiple environments (Development, QA, Production), moving configurations from one environment to another is a common task. To reduce the effort of duplicating the configurations from one environment to another, the WebClient allows the export of mapping lists and object types in a CSV file, which can then be imported to another instance of migration-center.

Analytics/Insights capabilities

This is an exciting new feature introduced in 22.1 that we will continue to enhance in the next versions by adding new reports and capabilities. In this version, you can get a visual summary of your migration status based on the migration-center data. You can also see the objects distributions per year and month. This may help planning a delta migration.

03 | Blogpost | The migration-center WebClient - A first step for our new migration tool generation

Reports dashboard

What is next?

In upcoming releases, we will keep our focus on adding more features and enhancements to the WebClient in order to help customers handle complex migration projects more efficiently. We plan to provide a global search functionality that will allow users to search and find any piece of data in migration-center. Since some projects require complex transformation rules, we intend to enhance the transformation engine by offering an easy way to test and debug transformations rules. Furthermore, we want to assure our customers more flexibility when organizing migration data by letting them define categories for scanners, migsets, and importers.

Do you have questions regarding migration-center 22.1?

For more information about the changes and enhancements in migration-center 22.1, please take a look at the migration-center online documentation or simply contact us with your custom migration-related questions.