When a surgeon goes into an operating room, they have a written-down plan that describes exactly what they are going to do.  This plan provides confidence and assurance that the project will be done correctly and ensures that no step can be lost or forgotten.

When you work on a migration, you should have a similar Playbook. This stores information about the backup and restore, client-specific requests, and a record of every SQL script or action taken on the database tables as part of the migration. It ensures consistency, improves traceability, and allows others (or your future self) to understand exactly what was done and why.

When reaching out to Universal Migrator for technical support, a completed Playbook is required. This ensures the support team can quickly review the migration’s details, actions taken, and any custom logic already implemented.

At the top of your playbook you should store information about your migration project in a comment block.  Below is a template we suggest you use for all your playbooks.

1.  /*
2. Migration Path: [SOURCE] => [DESTINATION]
3. Quoted Amount:
4.  
5. Migration Specialist
   
6. (This is your information)
   
7.             Name:             
8.             Email:             
9.             Mobile:           
10.  
11. Firm Point of Contact
    
12. (This is the person at the law firm who can make decisions & answer questions)
    
13.             Name:             
14.             Email:             
15.             Mobile:                       
16.                         Ensure you're in their contacts so they will recognize your call and answer.
17.  
18. Destination Account Manager
    
19. (This is the customer's sales rep/onboarding manager who should be kept in the loop)
    
20.             Name:             
21.             Email:             
22.             Mobile:                       
23.  
24. Source Credentials
    
25. (This is login information into the SOURCE system.  Make sure the customer knows it must have access to everything they want migrated.)
    
26.             URL:  
27.             Username:      
28.             Password:       
29.  
30. Destination Credentials
    
31. (These are the credentials that will be used to push information into the NEW system.)
32.             URL:  
33.             Username:      
34.             Password:       
35.  
36. Document Cache Root
    
37. (This is the root where documents should be saved.  Likely something like C:\__MIGRATIONS\FirmName.com\ )
38.             RAW:             
39.             HUMANIZED:                   
40.  
41. Initial Extract
    
42. (Record when and how long the initial extract takes.  This will be used later for planning purposes.)
43.             Date:               
44.             Duration:        
45.  
    
46. Delta Extract
    
47. (Immediately after completing the initial extract kick off a delta extract and record the timings.  This will be used later for planning purposes.)
48.             Date:               
49.             Duration:        
50.  
51. Data Summary
52.             RUN THIS QUERY
53.            https://help.universalmigrator.com/portal/en/kb/articles/other-obtaining-record-counts-for-all-tables
54.     AND PASTE THE RESULTS HERE        
55.  
56. --Special Requests
57. */