Whereabouts of the Migration Tool

Hi all,
(ah, first thread in new forum!)

I see from sitefinitymigration.codeplex.com that "The Sitefinity Migration Tool is no longer hosted on CodePlex, but is available as a free product on Sitefinity.com.".
From where I also was fed "Updated Release: Sitefinity Migration Tool 0.7 Beta (Jun 21, 2011) by Lupi.."
Great!

Now, where could it be...
Didn't go to Market, not found in the Forums. A little help, please?

Hi Olav,

The product will be visible from tomorrow on our web site. 
I have attached it now to this thread, so that you do now wait until tomorrow. 

Kind regards,
Georgi
the Telerik team

Where do we find the web page for the Sitefinity Migration tool?  I have looked under Free Products and did not find it there.

I have found this posting for the Sitefinity Migration Tool in the MarketPlace, but the content is extremely outdated and the download link points back to CodePlex:

http://www.sitefinity.com/marketplace/modules/sitefinity-migration-tool.aspx

Please advise.

The page (http://www.sitefinity.com/marketplace/modules/sitefinity-migration-tool.aspx) seems to still point at the code plex location and code plex says that it no longer hosts the code... perhaps I'm missing something here.

At any rate - will the code be production standard soon? The last time I tried using this I came up with a spinning waiting icon and little else...I also thought this was becoming part of the sitefinty site project manager tool?

Cheers,
Steven.

Hello Steven Harrap,

We are starting to work on this tool extensively. Any feedback or ideas you have will be appreciated. 

I was thinking if the tool should be part of the Project Manager application, but there will be prerequisites anyway - like, installing the services in the 3.7 application, that are needed for the migration.

Hi Georgi

In my opinion I think it should be part of the Project Manager App. I don't really want go adding code into my existing 3.7 sites for a one-off use and it seems like extra bloat to have migration tools in 4.0 for one-off use as well. Once you've done the migration of your site the tools would never really be used again.. I guess.

The Project Manager could have a migration section where you specify the location of your 3.x and 4.0 sites (you would need to have a local version of each). It would then present you with a list of content that is in each site (pages, news, generic content etc) and the ability to copy 1 or many items. I would also imagine that there would need to a way to copy the custom list data structures and custom fields in the offical lists (such as special fields in news etc). This would create the correct entries in the 4.0 config files (rather than me guessing at what the new correct way is).

I understand that before I could use such a tool I would have to ensure that I have my page templates and controls ported over and re-writen to suit 4.0

Cheers,
Steven.

Hi Steven,

Thanks for your feedback. How about the content versioning? Would you want to migrate all existing versions of all items and pages, or just the recent ones?

Hi Georgi,

For me - no need to convert history. We would never convert to a new version unless all edit jobs and development tasks are more or less completed.
Concerning the progress of this tool there are other more disturbing issues.

I'm a bit confused from reading Steven's last remark. Do you currently have to convert page templates and controls (into modules) before running the migration? That sounds like a funny way of walking, but it could explain my previous problems with the tool.

Cheers,
Olav.

Hello Olav,

You don't have to convert templates and controls into modules. Here is how the tool works - it migrated data from one website to anther using service which holds different API methods ( from 3.7 and 4.x edition). The tool tries to get all data from 3.7  and transfer it as much as possible to Sitefinity 4.x edition.When there are no equivalent fields we skip them or convert them to another most appropriate field. The same is with controls of a page - if a given control is not presented in Sitefinity 4.x we tries to convert the data to its equivalent.
Out of the box the migration tool does not handle all data stored in custom modules and does not move custom widgets.

All the best,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Thanks Ivan,

Yes, that is pretty much what I found in the doc on the Codeplex site.
I also read that our custom controls were supposed to be replaced with some placeholder graphic or similar, which would be just fine for marking post-edit tasks. But the conversion log emitted errors, complaining about custom controls, while trying to convert each and every page.

I have not yet had time to try the 0.7. Do you know whether or not this version will take notice of custom controls?
(nothing more about this in the current MigrationToolDocumentation.docx)
Replacing controls on 500-1000 pages before conversion is just too much job.

Cheers,
Olav.

Hi Olav,

Most probably there will be a new change set after Q2 release where we will try to fix more bugs and implement some new features.

Kind regards,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Hi Georgi

For my purposes I would not need any previous content versions either. At the time of import I would expect all content to be complete and published. It would seem (to me) to add to much complication to the import to take versioning into the mix as well.

I am expecting that when I import I have to have my templates and custom controls ready to roll in 4.x. By that I mean that I would have to rewrite them where required to suit 4.x architecture. I would have to ensure that any name or name spaces that identify the controls and templates to sitefinity are maintained so that when the pages are imported the import code correctly idenifies control instances on pages with their supporting controls in the installation.

I am also expecting that I will have to rewrite my modules where required to suit 4.x architecture before the import occurs.

Cheers,
Steven.