Archiving methods (Videos)

SWING Seascape can export your Notes data to a standalone Web Archive, a Microsoft SharePoint library or list, or to a selected folder on your disk. Below is a description of the three archiving methods.

Web Archive

The Web Archive is a standalone web application which you can open in any web browser. It consists of the the following elements:

• The PDF documents generated from the Notes documents

• JSON files which store the Notes metadata

• Notes attachments (Word, Excel, and similar files)

• HTML, CSS, and other UI files

Here is a quick video showing how to export Notes databases to a Web Archive:

For a complete overview of the files that are generated with the Web Archive please see our article on the Web Archive Structure.

The archive's browser interface is described in the Web Archive Interface article.

The Web Archive is launched by opening the index.html file found in the archive's root folder.

The archive’s interface features all of the application views that you chose to export. This views are fully searchable and sortable. Additionally, the links between documents are preserved and remain functional.

If you have multiple databases then you can export them to a single Web Archive in a batch process. In this case Seascape creates a separate folder for each database and also a Database Catalog page, which shows all of the databases that have been added to the Web Archive.

You can host your Web Archive locally, in a shared network folder, or any web server (eg. IIS, Apache, or other).

The Web Archives do not require Lotus Notes or Domino to run, since they are built entirely on open standard formats such as HTML, PDF, and JS. All that is needed to open a Web Archive is a web browser.

SharePoint Archive

Moving your Notes data to SharePoint is performed in two steps.

First, your Notes documents are exported to PDF and XML files in a local staging folder (including Notes attachments).

Once the export is completed, the SharePoint upload tool is started. The upload tool creates a new SharePoint library for each database automatically. Additionally, it creates a separate SharePoint view and the appropriate columns for each type of Notes record (i.e. the Notes form).

After the SharePoint library is created, the tool uploads the PDF files and attachments to the library, and populates the SharePoint columns with the Notes metadata retrieved from the XML files.

Here is a quick video that shows the data migration process:

The Notes attachments can be embedded in the PDFs or saved in the Attachment subfolder based on your preference.

You can configure Seascape to name the PDF files using a custom naming formula which you can set in the export settings. You can also set up another formula to automatically generate a desired folder structure in the destination folder. The folder structure is then automatically created in the Microsoft SharePoint library as well when the archive gets uploaded.

For more information please see our article on Archiving in SharePoint

Extract to Disk

You can use the "Extract to Disk" option to export your Notes content to a folder on disk.

This type of archive consists of PDF records (which store the content of the Notes form), XML files (which store the Notes metadata), and document attachments.

Here is a quick video showing how to export a Notes database to a disk archive:

While creating your archive you can choose to name the PDF files using configurable naming rules, as well as to generate a custom folder structure to store the files.

The disk archive also retains links between PDF documents, in the same way those documents were linked in Lotus Notes using doclinks.