Below are the steps to restore documents into a file folder system.
1. Click 'Restore' either from the left menu, or the button near the center of the Universal Migrator (UM) main window.
2. Find the platform you want to restore into. You can use the search feature to make it easier to find what you're looking for. Click the 'Universal Restore for Folders' restore button.
3. Select your project database. I'm working with data I backed up from FirmCentral for the 'TestFirm.com' firm in this example.
Click Next
4. Select options for how you want to restore data to the Folder System.
- The section in the image below, highlighted by a green box, allows you to choose the following options.
- Documents - Do you want to copy documents to the destination folder? You could (for example) only create a folder structure, but not actually copy the documents.
- Current Version - Do you want to copy the current version of documents?
- Historical Versions - Some source systems maintain save/edit history. You can copy all versions of all documents.
- Empty Folders - If the source system had empty folders, do you want to create those in the file folder? If you leave that option unselected, Universal Migrator (UM) will still create all necessary folders for documents to maintain the same folder structure as the source system, but any folders that have zero documents will not be created.
- Empty Matters - If there are Matters that don't have any documents associated with them, do you want UM to create folders for those matters?
- The section highlighted with the blue box serves two purposes.
- It shows you what tokens can be used to build the Matter Path Template down below in the red section.
- It allows you to define what should be displayed when a token is missing information. For example, if a Matter is missing a description, what should the name of folders be when you use the Mattter_Description token in your Matter Path Template?
- The red section allows you to define three important settings:
- Restore Documents into - This tells UM where the documents should be restored to. This will be the ROOT folder under which it will create a folder structure based on your Matter Path Template. In this example, my ROOT is...
- B:\MIGRATION\firmname.com\HUMAN_READABLE
- Matter Path Template - This is the folder structure that will be created. The default is shown in the image below. With this setting, a structure similar to {ROOT}\Open\{ClientName}\{MatterReference} will be created. For example, for an open matter for client John Smith with reference code ABC-123, the path will be {ROOT}\Open\Smith, John\ABC-123\{Documents}
- To the right of the default Matter Path Template, there is a drop down where you can choose from several predefined template paths.
- You can also define your own. Any of the Matter Path Templates shown below are valid. (For this example, I am using the last option below)
- {Contact_FullName}\{Matter_Status}\{Matter_ReferenceCode}
- {Contact_FullName}\{Matter_Status}\{Matter_ReferenceCode}\{Category_Description}
- {Contact_FullName}\{Matter_ReferenceCode} - {Matter_Subject]
- {Contact_FullName}\{Matter_ReferenceCode} - {Matter_Description}
- Document Name Templates - This will define the name of the documents when restored. Typically, this will be {Document_Name}, but you could (for example) prepend the date/time a document was created to the document name using the template shown below.
- {Document_CreatedAt} - {Document_Name}
Once you've made your desired selections, click 'Next' to begin restoring documents to the selected Folder ROOT.
5. Monitor the progress of the restore. UM will provide detailed logging on the status of your restore.
6. Review results.
My selected Matter Path Template was '{Contact_FullName}\{Matter_ReferenceCode} - {Matter_Description}'.
As you can see below, a folder with the full name of each client was created. There is a sub-folder for each matter a client has that is named {Matter_ReferenceCode} - {Matter_Description}.
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