The sepago ACS technology - what's it all about?

The sepago ACS technology - what's it all about?

The ACS files are a key to Profile Migrator's functionality. But what are the ACS files all about, and why do they make profile migration so simple?

ACS stands for “Application Configuration Sets”. This is a standard developed by sepago for the purpose of documenting application and system specific settings that are relevant for the migration to a new user profile. sepago had to develop something new here, as there is no uniform procedure for the treatment of user settings anywhere in the world – even different programs within the Microsoft Office Suite operate differently in this respect.

Each application whose settings are to be migrated with Profile Migrator requires an ACS file. The file contains in open XML format all relevant information on where the application accesses the file system by reading or writing, which keys are used in the registry and which values the respective registry keys have. This lets Profile Migrator read the relevant information for an application from the source system and transfer it to the new profile of the target system.

The specialty of the ACS technology is, however, that it allows not only the migration of settings of individual program versions, but that this is also possible across different program and operating system versions. The ACS file provided by sepago for the Office applications thus not only describe how the settings of an existing Outlook 2007 installation can be transferred to a new Outlook 2007 installation, but also how this can be done from Outlook XP to Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010. As part of the same move, the operating system can be shifted from Windows XP to Windows7 and/or from 32 bit to 64 bit, as dedicated ACS files are used for the operating system settings as well.

A big advantage of this is that the ACS files can be freely edited, such that a migration deliberately migrates only the desired settings of the selected applications and operating system settings. This eliminates the risk that - as in other migration procedures - legacy items from the existing installations are also transferred into the new user profile. After the migration with Profie Migrator, the user has a new user profile which contains only the settings of selected applications and operating system options defined before the migration. Profile Migrator adapts the selected settings to the new target system based on the ACS files. In this context, the operating system versions Windows XP, Vista, 7, as well as Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2003 R2, and 2008 R2 are supported.

sepago provides ACS files for various standard applications, such as, e.g., Microsoft Office. With the ACS Builder and ACS Editor applications bundled with Profile Migrator, it is easy to create and edit ACS files for own applications.

The user obtains a clean new profile but doesn't lose any operating system or program settings he or she would like to keep.