Migrating Shortcuts - Why Bother?

Bob Spurzem over at Ferris Research this morning discussed some key issues and points to consider when performing archive migrations. As the leader in the archive migration market, our team has focused a lot of effort into dealing with shortcuts. (http://www.ferris.com/2009/04/03/email-archive-migration-plan-for-stubbing/)

One can argue "You should not use shortcuts anyway"

Sure, but go tell that to your user community that has 1000's if not 10,000's of shortcuts in their Exchange mailbox and tell them that they are going to go away because it is not good practice to have them. That should go over very well. Some of the user archives that we have migrated had over 60,000 shortcuts in a single mailbox. Not exactly the easiest thing to transition users from using.

So this brings up a key point in selecting an archive migration application. Simply being able to move the archived content from one platform to another is not enough. The absolute must is to ensure that all data is migrated and that end users are not impacted. Users typically resist change, even if they are told it will be good change. Making sure how they get access to their data stays consistent is an absolute.

So why bother migrating shortcuts? Well, if you don't, just be ready for the user revolt...