GroupWise to Exchange 2007 – Interoperability and Migration (Part 7)

By / October 8, 2017

If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:

 

 

 

About co-author Declan Conroy

 

Declan Conroy is an IT consultant specializing primarily in Microsoft technologies including Exchange and Active Directory. Having previously worked for companies like Hewlett Packard and Compaq both as internal IT support, middle management and as a Professional Services consultant, Declan founded Cheddon Consulting Limited in April 2005. Since then Cheddon Consulting have migrated over 150,000 mailboxes to Exchange Server.

 

You can contact Declan here, or through his blog.

 

Migrating Address Books

 

The Exchange 2003 Migration Wizard does not migrate Address Books. You will notice on the migration progress screen that the options for PABs is grayed out as shown in Figure 1.

 


Figure 1: The PAB options are grayed out

 

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Interoperability and Migration Guide very briefly covers the migration of Address Books on page 103.

 

Not all of the fields or attributes used in a GroupWise address book are used in Outlook, and of the fields that are common, many fields or attribute names differ.

 

The NAB (Novell Address Book) format export from within GroupWise is simply a comma separated value (CSV) file format.

 

The headings used in a GroupWise NAB file are:

 

:::TAGMAP:::0FFE0003:***,3001001E:Name,3A08001E:Office Phone Number,3A18001E:Department,3A23001E:Fax Number,3003001E:E-Mail Address,3A06001E:First Name,3A11001E:Last Name,3A17001E:Title,3A29001E:Address,3A27001E:City,3A28001E:State,3A26001E:Country,3A2A001E:ZIP Code,3002001E:E-Mail Type,3A19001E:Mailstop,3A09001E:Home Phone Number,3A1C001E:Cellular Phone Number,3A21001E:Pager Number,3A1A001E:Phone Number,600B001E:Greeting,600F001E:Owner,3A16001E:Organization,3004001E:Comments,3A00001E:User ID,6604001E:Domain,6609001E:Additional Routing,6605001E:Post Office,6603001E:GUID,6616001E:Preferred E-Mail Address,6607001E:eDirectory Distinguished Name,6608001E:Network ID,660D001E:Internet Domain,660E001E:AIM/IM Screen Name,3A45001E:Prefix,3A44001E:Middle Name,3A05001E:Generation,3A5D001E:Home Address,3A59001E:Home City,3A5C001E:Home State,3A5B001E:Home ZIP,3A5A001E:Home Country,3A50001E:Personal Web Site,3A51001E:Office Web Site,6612001E:Resource Type,6615001E:Primary Contact Name

 

The headers used in Outlook are:

 

“Title”,”First Name”,”Middle Name”,”Last Name”,”Suffix”,”Company”,”Department”,”Job Title”,”Business Street”,”Business Street 2″,”Business Street 3″,”Business City”,”Business State”,”Business Postal Code”,”Business Country”,”Home Street”,”Home Street 2″,”Home Street 3″,”Home City”,”Home State”,”Home Postal Code”,”Home Country”,”Other Street”,”Other Street 2″,”Other Street 3″,”Other City”,”Other State”,”Other Postal Code”,”Other Country”,”Assistant’s Phone”,”Business Fax”,”Business Phone”,”Business Phone 2″,”Callback”,”Car Phone”,”Company Main Phone”,”Home Fax”,”Home Phone”,”Home Phone 2″,”ISDN”,”Mobile Phone”,”Other Fax”,”Other Phone”,”Pager”,”Primary Phone”,”Radio Phone”,”TTY/TDD Phone”,”Telex”,”Account”,”Anniversary”,”Assistant’s Name”,”Billing Information”,”Birthday”,”Business Address PO Box”,”Categories”,”Children”,”Directory Server”,”E-mail Address”,”E-mail Type”,”E-mail Display Name”,”E-mail 2 Address”,”E-mail 2 Type”,”E-mail 2 Display Name”,”E-mail 3 Address”,”E-mail 3 Type”,”E-mail 3 Display Name”,”Gender”,”Government ID Number”,”Hobby”,”Home Address PO Box”,”Initials”,”Internet Free Busy”,”Keywords”,”Language”,”Location”,”Manager’s Name”,”Mileage”,”Notes”,”Office Location”,”Organizational ID Number”,”Other Address PO Box”,”Priority”,”Private”,”Profession”,”Referred By”,”Sensitivity”,”Spouse”,”User 1″,”User 2″,”User 3″,”User 4″,”Web Page”

 

The trick here, and it is time consuming and tedious, is to

 

 

  1. Compare the field headers between the two systems,
  2. Decide which fields are populated in the NAB files,
  3. Swap the headers in the NAB file with the corresponding Outlook headers,
  4. Import the CSV file into Outlook.

 

For what it is worth, here is what works for me most often.

 

I open the exported NAB files in Excel as a CSV file, and simply swap the first row with this one.

 

,,Business Phone,,Business Fax,E-mail Address,First Name,Last Name,Job Title,Business Street,Business City,Business State,Business Country,Business Postal Code,,,Home Phone,Mobile Phone,Pager,,,,Company,,,,,,,,,,

 

Open the line above in Excel as a CSV, and then you should be able to cut and paste.

 

I find these are the most frequently used headers in a NAB file. The blanks in the header line will simply render the data in these fields redundant and it will not be imported.

 

One final tip, if you want to import Frequent Contacts, these typically do not contain as much information as a regular contact, and there is a slight problem. There is no Outlook Full name attribute, the full name displayed in Outlook is the First name and the Last name attributes. However in the frequent contacts export from GroupWise the Name attribute is the full name of the contact.

 

I do not normally import frequent contacts, but if you want to, use the following header file.

 

,First Name,,,,E-mail Address,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

 

You will get the entire display name loaded into the First name attribute, and the e-mail address and nothing else, but your users will have the ability to CTRL+K and resolve the e-mail addresses of their frequent contacts.

 

Tip. Import any contacts before frequent contacts, and do not import duplicates!

 

A Recap on What Works!

 

This is probably a good point to restate a fact or two, and clear up some confusion.

 

You do not need the Microsoft Exchange Connector for Novell GroupWise, or the Microsoft Exchange Calendar Connector to use the Quest migration software.

 

You CAN migrate directly from GroupWise to Exchange 2007, without any Exchange 2003 in the organization.

 

The reason you may need or choose to bring Exchange 2003 into the mix, is to co-exist, because in order to co-exist between GroupWise and Exchange 2007, you do need the Microsoft Exchange Connector for Novell GroupWise and possibly the Microsoft Exchange Calendar Connector and these only run on Exchange 2003.

 

The matrix/table we published in Article 6 lists the various components you need, and where, depending on your migration scenario.

 

I cannot over emphasize the point above. The Quest literature states that the product can perform “a direct migration from GroupWise to the new Exchange Server 2007”.  It also states “Users continue to exchange messages and schedule meetings, regardless of whether their mailbox has been migrated. The migration is transparent to external users such as customers and partners”

 

Both of these points may be true, but unless GroupWise co-existence is facilitated via Exchange 2003, users who have been migrated to Exchange 2007 will only be able to send e-mail to GroupWise users using secondary SMTP domain based routing, and will NOT be able to look up or search free-busy information in order to schedule these meetings.

 

Finding out mid-project that Exchange 2003 is required for co-existence poses other problems as Exchange 2003 cannot be installed after Exchange 2007 has been installed. It needs to be done first.

 

Full Exchange 2003 and GroupWise co-existence including directory synchronization, e-mail routing and free-busy should be working and tested before Exchange 2007 is brought online. Once you upgrade your default email address policy to 2007 you have to manage it with 2007 Exchange Management console. The problem with this is that Exchange 2007 has no concept of GroupWise proxy addresses. If you end up in this position, check out Nathan’s blog post here:

 

http://www.mmmug.co.uk/blogs/nweb/archive/2007/05/24/1273.aspx

 

Quest Tools – Installing the Migration Prerequisites

 

The Quest Migration suite is client side driven. Everything you need to use it is installed on a migration workstation.

 

It uses a spreadsheet to open selected GroupWise mailboxes using the GroupWise client, extract mailbox objects, and then upload them to Exchange using the Outlook client. Everything that gets migrated from GroupWise to Exchange literally does go via the migration workstation. Where this works to your advantage is that you can build multiple workstations, and run multiple batches in parallel, although there is a limit to how much of an advantage you get here, because you eventually hit a bottleneck on either the GroupWise or Exchange servers, with NIC or CPU performance.

 

The prerequisites for the Migration Suite are pretty involved. You need to set up a migration workstation with some specific software components, and some of them need to be installed in a specific order so that everything works.

 

The prerequisites differ depending on the version of Exchange you intend to migrate to, but in a very understandable way.

 

If you intend to migrate to Exchange 2003, and then use the native Exchange move mailbox feature in Exchange 2007 you have a simpler setup on the migration workstation, but this will place more load on the Exchange 2003 bridgehead server.

 

You can also leave Exchange 2003 running the connectors and migrate mailboxes directly to Exchange 2007. To do this you need to install some additional components on the migration workstation, such as .Net 2.0, PowerShell, MMC 3.0 and the Exchange 2007 Management Console.

 

The step by step installation of all of the components is too much to cover in a series of articles like this, and the administration of the Quest product suite for GroupWise migration is well detailed in the documentation that accompanies the product.

 

It is not our intention to re-produce or replace any exiting installation or administration documentation, merely to walk thru a migration hopefully giving some useful tips and clarifying some steps along the way.

 

Table 1 lists the typical installation requirements on the migration workstation depending on the target version of Exchange.

 

The OS on the migration workstation can be Windows 2003 Server SP1, but we have gone for XP SP2. It has to be a 32bit operating system, as firstly there is not a 64 bit Novell client at the time of this writing, and the GroupWise Migrator for Exchange doesn’t support a 64-bit OS either.

 

 

 

Software Component

  

Target Exchange Server
 

 

  

Exchange 2003

  

Exchange 2007
 

Windows XP SP2

  

Yes

  

Yes
 

Novell Client 32 V4.91

 

Yes

  

Yes
 

Windows Messaging

  

Yes

  

Yes
 

GW client

  

Yes

  

Yes
 

Outlook

  

Yes

  

Yes
 

IIS Manager Snap-in

  

Yes

  

No
 

IIS Common Files

  

Yes

  

Yes
 

AdminPak.msi

  

Yes

  

No
 

Exchange System Manager

  

Yes

  

No
 

DOT.NET 2.0 SP1

  

No

  

Yes
 

Windows PowerShell

  

No

  

Yes
 

MMC 3.0

  

No

  

Yes
 

Exchange Management Console

  

No

  

Yes

 

Table 1: The various prerequisites needed for the Quest migration workstation

 

The Quest literature recommends Novell Client 4.91 SP2. This is because it supports 2000/2003 and XP, where 4.91 SP3 upwards won’t support 2000 and pre-SP2 will not support 2003. I have used 4.91 SP4 on my XP migration workstation because it is a complete install so you get the full client and the SP in a single go. I just select Typical Installation, press Install > and then Reboot when it is installed.

 

After the reboot, log in to Netware AND Windows as the respective accounts with full admin privilege. You can’t install Outlook without admin rights on the local workstation.

 

The Novell client is required so that the GroupWise client can connect to the GroupWise Post Office.

 

The Windows Messaging Subsystem is required for Outlook, but GroupWise modifies the subsystem in such a way as to render Outlook unusable, so you have to install components in the following order.

 

 

  • GroupWise first

     

  • Outlook last

 

I have installed the GroupWise 6.5 client and selected Standard Install as shown in Figure 2.

 


Figure 2: Installing the GroupWise client

 

I have installed GroupWise only, and un-ticked the boxes for Internet Browser Mail Integration, Tip of the Day, and GroupWise Notify as shown in Figures 3 and 4.

 


Figure 3: Selecting installation options

 


Figure 4: More installation options

 

Once the GroupWise client is installed and tested (which can be done by logging onto any mailbox), install Outlook 2003.

 

Note: If you are using GroupWise 5.5, then Outlook 2003 isn’t supported, so use 2000 or 2002 instead

 

After Outlook is installed, open Control Panel. You should now have a Mail icon as shown in Figure 5.

 


Figure 5: The Mail control panel

 

Double click the Mail icon and select Show Profiles… as shown in Figure 6.

 


Figure 6: Editing mail profiles

 

There should be two; Novell Default Settings, and Outlook as shown in Figure 7. Where it says When starting Microsoft Office Outlook, use this profile: you can select Prompt for a profile to be used. GroupWise will still work, but now you can at least choose the Outlook profile if you want to use Outlook.

 


Figure 7: The two profiles

 

Whilst still on the window shown in Figure 7, highlight Outlook and select Properties. I’m not going to walk thru the creation of an Outlook profile (you should simply set one up to connect to any mailbox as a test), but what we do need to change is under More Settings…, Security, and we need to tick the box to Always prompt for username and password under User Identification as shown in Figure 8.

 


Figure 8: Ensuring the user is always prompted for a password

 

Migrating Mailboxes to Exchange 2003

 

For migration to a target Exchange 2003 server we need Windows XP SP2 with the IIS Snap-in. XP SP2 removes the need to install the SMTP and WWW services. We then need the Windows Server 2003 AdminPak before we install the Exchange 2003 System Manager.

 

The Windows Server 2003 AdminPak can be downloaded from the Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack.

 

Migrating Mailboxes to Exchange 2007

 

For migration to a target Exchange 2007 server, we need the following components.

 

From Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel select Add/Remove Windows Components.  Select Common Files which are a subcomponent of Internet Information Services (IIS)

 

Next, download and install x86 .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1.

 

Download Windows PowerShell for XP.

 

Finally download MMC 3.0 for Windows XP.

 

We then need the 32bit version of the Exchange Management Console, which you get from the evaluation version of Exchange 2007.

 

It is big, over 800MB just to download, and even bigger to extract before you install just the EMC!

 

On the Setup Splash screen for Exchange 2007 shown in Figure 9, Step1 thru 3 should be grayed out, so click Step 4: Install Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1

 


Figure 9: Installing the Exchange 2007 Admin tools

 

On the Exchange Server 2007 Setup Introduction page, press Next >. On the License Agreement page select I accept the terms in the license agreement and press Next >.

 

On the Error Reporting page, accept the default and press Next >.

 

On the Installation Type page select Custom Exchange Server Installation and press Next >.

 

On the Server Role Selection page shown in Figure 10, choose Management Tools and press Next >.

 


Figure 10: Selecting to install the management tools only

 

Once the Readiness Check completes, press Install >.

 

When the installation has finished, clear the tick box to Finalize Installation and press Finish.

 

You can install the prerequisites for both Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 if you need or want to.

 

Installing the Quest GroupWise Migrator for Exchange

 

Once GroupWise and Outlook can both be used to connect to GroupWise and Exchange respectively, we can install the Quest GroupWise Migrator for Exchange.

 

The latest version can be downloaded from the Quest website.

 

The installation is very straightforward, and aside from a customer ID and license key it is simply a case of pressing Next > until it says Finish.

 

You may notice I have not actually installed either NWAdmin or ConsoleOne on my migration workstation, even though they are listed as prerequisite in the Quest literature.

 

They may be useful to have installed, but the Quest Migration suite runs fine without them. There are many pieces of useful information that you can use ConsoleOne to look for, such as Domain Path or GWIA LDAP context, but to do this ConsoleOne does not actually need to be installed on the Migration workstation.

 

Now that we have everything installed, and running in the next article we will walk thru the actual migration.

 

Summary

 

In this article we have completed the installation of all prerequisites for the Quest tools. We are now nearing the end of the series! The next article will be the last, and will deal with the actual migration using the Quest tools.

 

If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:

 

 

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