Alpesh Nakar – SharePoint Consultant's Blog

If your organization is into Lotus Notes, Microsoft has announced new tools that will help IBM Lotus Notes/Domino customers make that transition to the new unified communication and collaboration innovations that are being delivered as part of the 2007 suite of applications – namely Microsoft Exchange 2007, 2007 Microsoft Office System and Microsoft Office SharePoint.

New Suite of Tools and Templates Ease Transition

Microsoft continues its commitment to help customers transition from Lotus Notes/Domino in a manageable fashion to Microsoft’s unified communications and collaboration platform. This year’s release of tools and templates focuses on providing a simpler user experience and increased automation for IT administrators. These tools and templates include the following:

Microsoft Transporter Suite for Lotus Notes. This new suite leverages a simple, unified interface, allowing customers to plan, prepare and transition their messaging and directory services as well analyze their Notes application infrastructure, determine the best course of action for applications, and move data from template-based applications to Windows^® SharePoint Services 3.0. These tools ease the migration process, even for applications, and provide a great opportunity for partners to extend the tools for advanced migration needs of customers.

Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites. Drawing on SharePoint Server’s rich personalization capabilities and integration with line-of-business data, a set of new Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites provide a quick and cost-effective starting point to create customized portals where different employees can go to find the information and tools they need to do their jobs. They include templates for the following roles: sales account manager, financial analyst, staffing specialist, administrative assistant, customer services representative, IT engineer and marketing manager.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Application Templates. To provide organizations with a starting point for creating their own custom applications, Microsoft has developed a set of 40 templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. The templates make it easier for IT personnel to roll out customized applications for common business workgroup processes, allowing them to focus on more mission-critical tasks. The templates include scenarios for sales and marketing tasks, HR and finance processes, business and IT operations, project management needs, and vertical applications for education, healthcare, professional services, retail and financial organizations. In addition, organizations can use the Microsoft Transporter Suite to migrate data from template-based Notes applications to these Windows SharePoint Services application templates.

In the next 30 days, customers will be able to download these tools and templates (FREE!) from here.

Don’t miss out the demonstrations of the transporter suite and the templates on Channel 9.

Source: Microsoft PressPass