Maybe you are considering moving from OpenTextTM MediaBin to OpenTextTM Media Management (OTMM) but you’re not sure where to start? My recommendation would be to firstly understand the potential benefits to your organization of migrating to OpenText Media Management. Understanding the benefits OTMM provides will allow you to provide justification for the migration effort and also help you to explain to your MediaBin users why they should be excited about the change. Once you are familiar with the benefits, let’s review how you should approach this migration. In this blog I will be focusing on the activities required to migrate your MediaBin data and configuration to OTMM. Planning your OTMM environment architecture and performing the installation will be covered in the next blog coming soon.
Step 1 – Mapping
First and foremost, you will need to familiarize yourself with your current MediaBin configuration and customizations. This information will make you better prepared to map your existing configuration and functionality to the new system. Key areas of focus should be:
- Metadata definitions
- Metadata groups
- Search configuration
- Folder based security model and collection plus saved search security policies
- Associations
- Tasks
- Deployment agent schedules
- LiquidOffice workflows
- UI customizations
Armed with the details of your MediaBin setup then you will need to think about how to map your existing configurations and customizations to OTMM. This is also a good time to identify any no-longer required metadata fields or customizations, new fields you’d like to implement, or new customizations or integrations with external tools like Sprinklr and Salsify.
To assist with the mapping exercise, I would recommend setting up a sandbox instance of OTMM to familiarize yourself with the new functionality that’s available. Please speak with your OpenText Account Executive for how to get one set up for you. Alternatively, you can take one of the OTMM courses provided by OpenText Learning Services. Relevant courses would be Implementing OpenText Media Management or Media Management System Administration
When working on mapping your existing metadata to OTMM, it’s important to note that there is additional functionality available in OTMM that wasn’t available in out-of-the-box MediaBin such as Cascading Fields, Tabular Fields and Asset Models. This functionality allows you to develop a more flexible and streamlined metadata schema than was possible with standard MediaBin metadata types.
Step 2 – Create configurations and customizations
Now that you know how you would like to map your existing configurations and customizations as well as identified any additional customizations or integrations you would like to implement, it is time to start the heavy lifting of creating your configurations and customizations! You can of course perform this activity yourself or you can leverage OpenText Professional Services – we have the experience and tools to quickly implement your desired setup.
Step 3 – User acceptance and training
After the OTMM instance is configured the way you want it, the next step is to perform user acceptance testing to ensure that everything works as required. I would recommend taking some existing MediaBin users and ask them to perform their day-to-day activities in the new system and provide feedback. This also has the added benefit of generating buy-in from the existing user base.
While users are putting your OTMM instance through its paces I would recommend taking time to generate training materials for the rest of the user base so that when the cutover occurs everyone has the information they need to begin working in the new system.
Step 4 – Migrate
Once your users have completed their testing and you have created your training documentation you are now ready to cutover usage from MediaBin to OTMM, but you will still need to migrate your existing MediaBin assets and data to OTMM. Retrieving this information can be done using the MediaBin Deployment Agent tool to extract all assets and data or you can write a script against the COM Model API or Web Services API. You will then need to perform a clean-up of the data so that it maps to your desired OTMM configuration. There are many tools for importing assets and data into OTMM including the Asset Importer and Bulk Import command line utility as well as REST API calls.
With all the configurations, customizations, integrations, assets and data in place your OTMM system is now ready for your users! While this may seem like a lot of effort, the benefits of moving to OTMM greatly outweigh the short-term challenges required to make the move.
The OpenText Professional Services team have the tools, knowledge and expertise to make this move as seamless as possible for you and your organization. If you would like assistance with your migration, please contact us.
Author: Roger Kapul, Principal Consultant
