Profile Migrator 2.0 - New and Cool Features

Profile Migrator 2.0, the latest and greatest of our migration products, extends the scope from the server to the client. In addition to handling roaming profiles really well it comes with powerful capabilities for getting user personalities and data off distributed, heterogeneous computers - in other words, typical client PCs. Here is a list of what 2.0 has to offer from a technical point of view.

Architecture

• Data collection on the client with a VB script. No software installation necessary on existing PCs.
• Storage of collected data (user profiles and arbitrary files/folders) basically anywhere: file server, USB flash drive, internal or external hard disk, ...
• Personalization component restores profiles and data to target computers. Again, no software installation necessary.

Efficiency

• Profiles tend to accumulate large amounts of data over time, most of which can be safely classified as junk. Profile Migrator does not bring that junk into the new environment. Instead, it creates clean new profiles and imports only the relevant settings from the old user personality.
• The collection script only copies those bits from the source computer that are actually needed on the target. We do not move entire profiles around needlessly. This greatly speeds up the collection process and reduces bandwith consumption.

Data Collection/Restore

• Filtering of the user profiles to be collected on the source PCs based on group memberships and date of last use.
• Files and folders can be collected from arbitrary paths. Inclusion and exclusion of desired/undesired file types is possible.
• Restore either to a special migration directory (e.g. "C:\Migrated"), or to the original paths. In the latter case mappings can be defined to move data, e.g. from C:\Data on the old PCs to D:\ on the new PCs.

Migration

• Full support for Microsoft Office XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010, cross-version and cross-language.
• Redirected folders are detected automatically. They can be moved to new locations on the network or back into the user profile.
• Automatic detection of special folders inside a user profile. For example, "%USERPROFILE%\Application data" is moved to "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming" without the need for any manual configuration.
• Automatic adjustment of paths stored in the registry. Example: "C:\Program Files\MyApp" becomes "C:\Program Files (x86)\MyApp".
• Creation of local user accounts on the target PCs where necessary.
• Migration between user and profile types possible, e.g. from local user with local profile to domain user with roaming profile.

ACS Technology

• Flexible data format for specifying migration rules and scripts
• Supports migrations between different operating systems, languages, application versions, platforms
• No need to edit ugly XML files: Profile Migrator comes with the graphical ACS Editor
• Not sure where relevant settings are stored in the registry? Our Process Monitor for Dummies, ACS Builder, finds out for you.
• sepago provides new and updated ACS files regularly via an online database free of charge

Scripting and Automation

• Migrations can be fully controlled from the command line
• The data collection process works on Windows PE (3.0 was tested)
• Scripts can be run:
  • Before data is collected on the source PC
  • Before and after each user profile is restored on the target PC
• A verbose logfile can be written. Each record includes source, user ID, timestamp and more.