System Switchover

[Jerremy]

Hi all,

I have been working on a new FileMaker system for our company for quite a while now. We've done some initial testing and it's going well. We have decided on a day in October that we will make the switch - from the old system to the new.

The old system was made up of around 95 totally independent flat-file / repeating fields everywhere databases.

The new system has 70 files and is very integrated with a common interface.

There will be around 30 full time users. The system includes cost and time tracking, invoicing, estimates, shipping, inventories, administration, work requests, calendars, scheduling and contacts.

Just looking for general advice from others who have made - or have been part of a similar switch from an existing system to a new one.

Please post good and bad experiences, things to avoid - things that are a must - from a user and administrator point of view.

I'm very interested to hear some stories and experiences...

Thanks,

Jerremy

[Kurt Knippel]

You know it really depends upon the system.

In general, I have found that repeating fields tend to be transactions and can pretty easily be imported in transaction or join DBs, by having the imported split repeating fields into seperate records.

If you have multiple field sets (i.e. Address1, City1, Address2, City2, etc) in you old system and have a single set in a new Address DB, you will need to do multiple imports into that new DB with each set of fields.

What I would highly suggest is that you practice importing from an offline backup of your existing system, tweaking as you go and SAVE the imports into scripts. Once you have successfully been able to import/convert all data into your new system from the backup and have save all the scripts that you used to import or convert the data, then you can clear out the new system (making a backup, archive to CD if possible) and do the final import off the old live system.

[Anatoli]

Good is also running both systems in parallel for some time with the best and worst users.

That way you'll get feedback before you implement new system.

Make also budget how much will the switchover cost. So management will be not surprised about the costs.

[Jerremy]

Hi all,

Thanks guys - that's the kind of info I was looking for.

I'm having meetings with the departments to focus in on their 'sections' of the new system - and I've got it up on a secondary server that I will let them hammer away at it until the switch.

We've already had a beta round with the department managers - so now after the into / training meetings, the rest of the company can have at it.

If anyone else has any stories or experiences with a switchover like this - please share.

Thanks!

- Jerremy