DEV Community: Mariya Thomas

Things to Keep in Mind while Migrating Lotus Notes Applications to SharePoint

Mariya Thomas — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 11:29:42 +0000

Lotus Notes has been available on the market since 1989, and has stayed until now as a part of the IT ecosystems of many organizations. In the recent years, however, there has been a noteworthy development far from Lotus Notes to modern than IBM's maturing product.

IT STARTS WITH MIGRATING TO MICROSOFT EXCHANGE

The most commonly known reason why organizations migrate away from Lotus Notes is to replace the email infrastructure, which is often not up to the user’s expectations. In the majority of these cases, organizations decide to make the transition to Microsoft Exchange, since it is the market pioneer for corporate users.

Email migrations have a tendency to be only the initial step of what becomes an organization-wide migration to a modern IT software infrastructure. The need to keep up business applications on Lotus Notes inspires companies to put further into the Microsoft stack, which culminates with executing SharePoint development. Whether on-premises or in the cloud, SharePoint intranet gives numerous valuable out-of-the-box features. Of most interest to those migrating are SharePoint Lists, Libraries, pages, and so on fit for supporting most Lotus Notes applications with comparatively little exertion. Third party tools are also available, greatly improving the migration.

THE BIG CHALLENGE: BUSINESS APPLICATION MIGRATION TO SHAREPOINT

Migration of email services and basic features isn't typically the end of the migration. For a long time, Lotus Notes has been enormously used to deliver workflow-based applications for some companies. To avoid a situation where two competing IT ecosystems are set up (Lotus Notes and SharePoint), companies have decided to migrate workflow-based applications to SharePoint also.

Unlike a simple email migration, there is no tool available that is capable to automatically migrate complex applications into SharePoint environment. It is worth remembering that numerous organizations developed modern and complex workflow solutions, making a potential migration much more difficult. In such cases, the main solution is to re-create them from a scratch in the new environment.

To avoid the .NET coding required to widen the initial capacities of SharePoint, third-party solutions are often chosen, giving broad workflow and forms capabilities. This allows users to re-build their business applications in a low-code way, which is essentially quicker and easier compared with custom coding.

MIGRATING LOTUS NOTES APPLICATIONS WITH WEBCON BPS

As a genuine Rapid Application Development (RAD) platform, WEBCON BPS is outfitted with many features that make migrating workflow-based applications from Lotus Notes to SharePoint brisk and easy.

InstantChange™ technology empowers users to change each part of a business application on the fly. The progressions are also applied to running instances, permitting an agile, iterative way to deal with application creation, altogether lessening development time

Rich out-of-the-box features– WEBCON BPS is an exhaustive stage fit for fulfilling an extensive variety of business needs, including BPM, record administration, OCR, Microsoft Outlook Integration etc. Amid the migration of Lotus Notes applications, that makes an interpretation of into the capacity to deliver differing business applications without custom code or workarounds

Smart and reliable forms– WEBCON BPS offers a creative way to deal with forms which give two noteworthy advantages over competing solutions:

WEBCON BPS automatically acquires individual SharePoint styling settings, for example, your organization logo and hues, and insert them into forms and web parts
Forms in WEBCON BPS have structure suggested. This implies an institutionalized look and feels of forms, regardless of whether forms are delivered by autonomous groups. This guarantees speedy delivery, adoption and a reliable User Experience over the entire organization

Highly complex workflow engine – WEBCON BPS utilizes an exclusive motor demonstrated in "fight" by several organizations around the globe, utilizing the most complex business forms possible.

Advantages OF MIGRATING LOTUS NOTES APPLICATIONS WITH WEBCON BPS

• Quick Delivery
• The simplicity of progress and continuous improvement
• Future-proof applications
• Low code and low maintenance
• An agile, SharePoint-based RAD solution without SharePoint's limitations

Hoping to move your current Lotus Notes applications into SharePoint? Get ready with Aufait’s SharePoint experts who give us technical insights into the transition procedure.

How Office 365 Automates Business Processes?

Mariya Thomas — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 09:13:56 +0000

When I talk with clients on customer commitment, I regularly hear the announcement "there must be a superior way… ." Often, these clients are referring to a business procedure that is totally manual. Either there is physical paper being flowed between individuals in the workplace for close down, or there are various messages with connections being sent forward and backward between different groups that are a piece of that manual process.

Step 1 – Get the Process Written Down

The initial step to automating any process is to archive the steps associated with that procedure. While finishing this step, remember to not over complicate this. The simpler this is to comprehend, the less demanding it will be to convert into a automated process, for example, a workflow. It will likewise be easy to recognize, what can be automated versus what must remain a manual activity. I think a second error that numerous associations make with business process computerization is avoiding end the human touch totally. Technology is exceptionally advanced, yet it has its days. In case a system is affected by a type of outage, there is potential for a comment hung up or even missed. It's great to have a type of human check. I read an extraordinary blog entry, about how to report a procedure. He states to simply Spell It Out precisely how it's done – it's that straightforward. As you are working with your group to characterize your procedure, in content sort out each progression that is taken. Utilizing our New Hire Onboarding case, how about we spell out a few stages:

Human Resource Manager gets offer from office head that the potential employee has been employed.
Human Resource Generalist refreshes HR Candidate following application with updated data.
Human Resource generalist makes another employee setup frame.
Human Resource generalist messages the new employee setup shape to the HR Team, IT Team and Payroll Team to finish their individual procedures.
IT Team creates new records and logins, and works out a PC. Gives accounts, logins and PC to HR right hand for first day.
Finance Team makes new accounts and logins.

Step 2 – Define What Can Be Automated

Proceeding with the on-boarding case, as a Business Analyst, would dive further into these steps to help characterize what can be automated and what ought to be a manual procedure. To begin with thing to consider is while the owner of on-boarding process is HR, there are different groups included. A second thing to consider, is that these groups may have their own particular procedures required for the means that they are associated with. To keep things basic for the worker on-boarding process that is claimed by HR, keep the other groups' procedure ventures outside of the on-boarding process. For instance, IT might have a few steps that they should take to ask for another user account, those steps ought to stay with the IT group and not fused into the HR worker on-boarding process. Because of that, we would now be able to take what we have above, and begin to make sense of what can be automated.

Human Resource Manager gets offer from office head that the potential representative has been employed.
Human Resource Generalist updates HR Candidate tracking application with uptodate data.
Human Resource generalist makes another employee setup form.

When we make the SharePoint solutions we will have the capacity to make a content for "New Hire Setup Form" and apply it to a rundown on the HR website in SharePoint Online. This progression is as yet manual, yet now the above data will be entered in our list in SharePoint Online rather than a Word Document. We're one step nearer to process automation! This progression will likewise turn into a trigger for our procedure to begin. For instance, when another passage is made in the list, we'll need a comment.

Human Resource generalist messages the new worker setup form to the HR Team, IT Team and Payroll Team to finish their individual procedures.
IT Team makes new records and logins, and works out a PC. Gives accounts, logins and PC to HR assistant for first day.
Finance Team makes new records and logins.
IT Team and Payroll Team impart back to the HR group that their assignments are finished. At the point when HR gets warning that both IT and Payroll have finished their tasks, the new contract demand will be set to be finished.

Step 3 – Design and Build Your Flow

Before you start!

Orchestrate everything from the process automation definition in Step 2. Characterize what will trigger this procedure to begin, what emails get delivered (to who and what ought to be in the messages), what tasks should be assigned and to who. What happens when those tasks are finished or not finished?
Make a process flow diagram. It's imperative for the individual will's identity fabricating your workflow to see every one of the means all the while and recognize what steps will be dealt with by a man versus technology. Once more, Aufait has an awesome article around this. You can utilize an instrument, for example, Microsoft Visio, however in the event that you don't approach this device, don't hesitate to utilize Microsoft PowerPoint.
Once you've characterized the procedure and the parameters around the procedure. A Flow can be made on the Microsoft SharePoint services to automate the process. Make a point to test your stream with its maker to ensure that this procedure works from begin to finish and VIOLA you’ve automated your first process.

In any case, when we find that there are business forms that are less complicated and are all around the point by point, we can utilize the devices in Office 365 and SharePoint consulting to go from messages and Word attachments to Flows and SharePoint lists.

How Do Small Companies Do Contract Management with SharePoint?

Mariya Thomas — Wed, 04 Jul 2018 08:49:33 +0000

Contract administration software gives centralized storage capacity and contracts lifecycle mechanization, which serves to rapidly make, favor, recover and share contracts and related docs. It saves a considerable amount of time, and time is critical to small companies that have a ton of work but not many workers. Additionally, contract management software is an unquestionable requirement for small businesses striving for more, as it makes a good reason for the development of a contract management system and, as a result, for extension of a business itself.

It is intelligent for small businesses to pick contract management solution conveyed in the cloud, as of today, cloud-based contract management software is reasonable to even the smallest of organizations. Their expenses are limited since small companies simply need to pay for a membership without putting into IT foundation.

Office 365 SharePoint Online platform sent in the cloud can turn into a good choice for small businesses contract administration. We should find out the reason why.

Microsoft SharePoint as contract management software

Office 365 gives broad opportunities to inside and outer joint collaboration, undertaking and project management, record stockpiling, messaging, examination, and so forth, which makes it very nearly a universal environment for office tasks. In any case, it can offer solutions particularly for contract management that depend on Microsoft SharePoint consulting. Office 365 SharePoint Online can automate a contract’s lifecycle from creation to ending and maintenance simply like any particular contract management software. It's conceivable in light of the fact that Microsoft SharePoint Online has all the principal components required for contract management:

Contract creation workflow

Microsoft SharePoint Online can give viable association between the contract manager and legitimate and financial staff amid the contract creating through intranet discussion board or remarks. Likewise, it's simple and quick to make and store a contract in SharePoint Online as the platform is as of now incorporated with Word.

Contract templates

There's no need in making contracts from scratch in Office 365 environment. SharePoint Online permits making, storing and reusing templates for different kinds of contracts. Subsequently, standard contracts, for example, non-disclosure agreements can be made in seconds as they don't require numerous modifications from a relevant format. Microsoft SharePoint likewise makes it possible to store and reuse contract fields (e.g. lawful locations) and provisos (e.g. drive majeure). This keeps up business consistency and enhances risk management because of utilizing the same already approved legal terms in all agreements and related docs.

Approval workflow

Microsoft SharePoint Online backs vertical and even approval workflows of any complexity and number of stages. As some other Microsoft SharePoint built-in kinds of workflows, approval workflows are generally rule-based. For instance, a domestic contract can have a more straightforward approval workflow with fewer members when compared with a contract with different states. The workflow automatically routes a contract to relevant people (a legal advisor, CFO, CEO) for approval and special dashboards mirror the agreement's present status: new, pending or affirmed. At the point when the endorsement procedure is settled, the agreement director gets a robotized warning that the agreement is affirmed.

E-signature integration

Microsoft SharePoint Online can be incorporated with e-signature software, for example, DocuSign. Such coordination takes out the requirement for wet signatures or in-person gatherings. In this manner, the contract lifecycle turns out to be completely computerized, however; the contract itself remains lawfully official. Therefore, settling negotiations turns out to be significantly quicker.

Contract search

Because of its great search engine,Microsoft SharePoint Online gives an intelligent search by keywords, metadata or full text. Microsoft SharePoint likewise supports searching contracts through numerous resources, for example, portals, other document management systems, CRM, BI frameworks, and so on. Indexed lists in Microsoft SharePoint Online are returned in one positioned list with connections to the thing and metadata.

Alarms and updates

Microsoft SharePoint Online empowers clients to preschedule automatic alarms and updates about a contract's status and its turning points, for instance, payment or termination dates. Hence, when a specific vital date approaches, clients will get an email warning. This component additionally permits maintaining a strategic distance from undesirable programmed restoration, which is very basic for obtaining contracts.

Microsoft SharePoint Online contract administration: benefits for small businesses

Presently we see that Microsoft Office 365 SharePoint Online has fundamental contract management features. Yet, does it make Microsoft SharePoint Online suitable for small companies? Are there any advantages over other cloud-based solutions planned particularly for contract management (Gatekeeper, Contract Advantage, and so on.) that influence this platform to captivate everyone? It is found there are:

Comfort. If a business as of now utilizes Office 365 and Microsoft SharePoint Online for project management or collaboration, picking a contract management solution in view of a similar platform is very intelligent. In this manner, organizations can accomplish more noteworthy cost-effectiveness than spending on another third-party platform.

Ease of use. Microsoft SharePoint Online has intuitive and simple to-utilize interface. It requires least preparing and there are numerous training tools and guides provides for users. Thus, small organizations may concentrate more on the business and invest less energy in acing new software.

Scalability. SharePoint Online platform has high adaptability. It makes a positive environment for developing a contract management system and, thusly, to grow of a business itself. It's essential for small companies that are intending to extend.

Integration. SharePoint Online is perfect and backs out-of-the-box integrations with whole MS Office including Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Likewise, SharePoint Online can be effortlessly integrated with CRM. It's a critical advantage for small businesses, as their most noteworthy need is to expand sales and they generally utilize CRM frameworks, for example, Salesforce, Dynamics 365 and Zoho CRM. This sort of combination guarantees that information in contract records and CRM frameworks are dependable in a state of harmony and can be effortlessly found.

Security. Office 365 and SharePoint online have a propelled security display. Such features as multifaceted authentication, encryption of information very still and in travel, information misfortune avoidance, programmed against malware insurance and more make an agreement administration arrangement in light of SharePoint Online a solid device to deal with delicate contract data. SharePoint Online additionally gives a full review trail indicating who saw, changed, erased or shared contracts, which encourages holding fast to government and state compliance regulations.

Cost. Office 365 keeps to a subscription pricing model, which enables independent companies to plan their costs. In addition, there are no hidden costs in Office 365 and SharePoint Online, as all updates are given free of charge. The cost for SharePoint Online begins from just $5.00 users/month and $12.50 users/month for the entire Office 365 suite, which is moderate for small businesses. In examination, Contract Advantage costs about $100.00 user/month.

Afterthought

The significance of contract management for small businesses can't be exaggerated. Persistent and intelligent contract management guarantees legal obligation management, which adds to the expansion in deals, pick up of more productive contract terms and better consistency, and in addition the change of client merchant connections. Contract management in view of Office 365 SharePoint Online is economical, simple to-utilize and incorporating great with another programming, which is significant for small businesses. Likewise, the stage guarantees viable contract administration because of inherent devices for contract composing, evaluating and arranging, top-notch security and protection controls, and in addition, adaptability, making it an ideal answer for small businesses.