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Organization is going to receive a bunch of technical documents from contractor - drawings, procedures, etc. - for the whole plant.

Currently contractor keeps its project documentation in Lotus Domino.

  1. What software you recommend for Document Control?
  2. What is the best way for migration from Lotus?
  3. My organization uses SAP for maintenance, finance; it would be logical to extend SAP to document control as well, but I do not know if there are SAP modules for Document Control?
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    With regard to the Sharepoint options mentioned below: take into account the possible exit costs as well, which I expect are pretty high for Sharepoint, mainly because - afaik - migrating away from Sharepoint is not facilitated. Exit costs are too often ignored when choosing software.
    – wzzrd
    Nov 13, 2009 at 8:01
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    Exit costs from Domino can be quite painful too. :( Nov 13, 2009 at 8:51
  • Can you recommend any tools for data migration?
    – alexm
    Nov 13, 2009 at 14:42
  • For Sharepoint? I don't think there are any, except for a gimmick to move everything to a Google Apps Site. That was my whole point ;-)
    – wzzrd
    Nov 15, 2009 at 17:02

4 Answers 4

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Mike T suggested MOSS, which is a good product.

However, I suspect that the needs are quite basic, so Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) alone might just do the trick. WSS is the backbone of MOSS, but is missing quite a few of the features (including workflow). But for basic document management (security and version control), the document libraries in WSS will do just fine.

And the price is right! It is included (for no additional charge) with Windows Server 2007.


To provide some sort of answer to your other questions ...

2 - Domino migration - Don't let the contractor make it your problem. Ask them to provide the docs in a standard format (i.e. RDF or PDF). Worst case, you will need someone to manually put them into WSS. This isn't nearly as much effort as you think, and clerical help if far less expensive than consulting help.

3 - SAP does indeed have a document management system (SAP DMS), and I imagine it works well, particularly for documents connected to SAP transactions. I have no idea of the license and implementation costs, but I would be shocked if they are less than 100 times the implementation costs of WSS.

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  • Management will like that for sure! Users should be happy as well, since their are familiar already with MS Office and see Sharepoint on the HQ's portal every day... thanks for suggestion!
    – alexm
    Nov 13, 2009 at 8:31
  • +1, a lot of people seem to miss the fact that WSS is quite a capable solution on it's own, that it may be all they need, that it costs nothing, and that it provides an upgrade path to full SharePoint if one outgrows it. Nov 13, 2009 at 8:50
  • Totally agree. Upgrading to Moss is a no brainer if you want to do so later on.
    – Mike T
    Nov 13, 2009 at 23:58
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Try testing out Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS 2007 or the upcoming 2010). It may not be a perfect fit for every occasion. It's main strength is document management and collaboration. Due to it's broad appeal and good underlying structure built upon .NET, it can help solve many other problems if you are willing to put the time into it.

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The easiest way to integrate Domino is to use Lotus Quickr 1. We also have a big Lotus Domino Server farm but we're using sharepoint because of it's office integration and it is really easy to use.

Whatever you're going to use I recommendend you to hire an consultant to get started with such a project. Both solutions are really big and you can waste much time without reaching your goals.

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  • Hmmm the link didnt appear ;-) next try: www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/quickr
    – grub
    Nov 13, 2009 at 10:01
  • Quickr is good and Domino is reliable, but... Being given the chance to build completely new system, I do not want to integrate Domino. Contractor will not be supportive... Their system is old (it is built on Domino 6) and ineffective in terms of synchronization between the servers... I do not want to maintain 2 directories... it will be difficult to find Domino admins and developers... I want to minimize number of systems in use... and so on... anyway, your suggestion is taken as plan B.
    – alexm
    Nov 13, 2009 at 14:41
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Document control in SAP in managed by these services (which one depends on what you want to do):

  • SAP Solution Manager (transaction SOLAR01)
  • SAP Knowledge Management (in association with SAP TREX). SAP KM is integrated into the SAP Portal

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