Copy workspace content

[Denis in Brisbane]

I want to copy a project from an existing database to a new database, with
all its accumulated issues, risks and documents.

I thought I could do it by saving the project from the old DB as a .mpp file
and save the workspace as a template and include the content. Then connect
to the new database, plug in the saved template as the provisioning template,
open the .mpp file and save it to the new DB.

More or less worked but I had to fight through various things to do with
Enterprise resources, outline codes, filters etc. which didn't surprise me.
However, I was expecting the new project workspace to have all the content
from the old one. It had all the formatting wtc. thyat I'd customised but it
appears the only content in the saved template is in custom lists. It
doesn't appear to save Issues and Risks from the old workspace. Should have
checked documents but didn't.

Am I missing something? Is there an easier way?

On a related subject, if I have a really good Issues Register in one
project, can I then use it as a template for other projects of the same type?
Based on my experience above, it would appear not. Do I have to do it by
exporting issues and risks to excel and then importing again?

Suggestions welcome.

Denis

 

[Jonathan Sofer - MCP]

Sadly, when you save a workspace template it will only save your custom
changes and when you save with content, it will only save custom list data
and not Issues, Risks, or Documents. There is no way that I know of to
migrate a single project WSS workspace to a new environment. There are
easier ways to bring over the Issues, Risks and Documents:

For Issues and Risks:
Create a datasheet view that has all the columns of data you need to
transfer. Do not include any columns that are not editable such as Created,
Created By, Modified, Modified By etc. If you create this datasheet view in
both locations you can then switch to that view and copy and paste the
information directly from SharePoint. Be aware that you will lose any
history and that the new Created By and Modified by will be you.

For Documents:
Go to the document library and switch to Explorer view. Then open up your
windows explorer. You will see a mapping to these documents in your windows
explorer and you can drag and copy that to a location on your own machine.

Do the same on the new workspace and drag and drop the folder structure and
content into the new location. In my experience, if you had some custom
data associated to these documents in one workspace, it will retain that
information when you drop it in the new location.

To you other question. I am not sure but I think you are asking if you can
apply a Risk or Issue list template to other workspaces. This is not
possible unless you provision a whole new site that was created from a site
template. You can, however, apply custom list templates to existing sites.

 

[Jonathan Sofer - MCP]

Maybe you can try and test this site restore functionality of the EditSite
Utility and see if that moves you individual site for you.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/office/office2003/maintain/bureswss.mspx#EBAA

 

[Denis in Brisbane]

Thanks, Jonathan. I'd got that far with risks and issues but was hoping
there was an easier way. However, I hadn't played with the documents stuff -
that's a lot easier than I thought.

Denis

 

[Andriy Hrytsenko]

I guess that "stsadmin -o backup ..." and "stsadmin -o restore ...." will
help you

Andriy Hrytsenko