A Custom M-Files Export Solution for our Partner and Their Customer
A purpose-built tool that preserved metadata, versioning, and object relationships on a tight timeline
Highlights
- Designed and built a custom export tool that extracts content along with full metadata, versioning, and object relationships intact.
- Delivered both CSV and database export modes to support flexible downstream system integration.
- Preserved internal and external IDs to ensure clean data continuity in the receiving system.
- Completed design, build, testing, and UAT within a seven week window, ensuring the customer can proceed with migration to the new system.
- Enabled our Partner to execute a phased migration for the Customer, starting with the Land vault and extensible to additional vaults.
Customer Background
Our Partner is a Technology Service Company based across Texas and Louisiana. They provide Managed IT, copier and printer sales and services, document management, and VoIP solutions, and they work with their own customers as an M-Files partner.
Their Customer, headquartered in Detroit, provides integrated natural gas services across the United States. As a customer of the M-Files partner, the organization decided to move its documents into new systems and needed a way to extract the files along with the metadata, versioning, and object relationships that gave the content its meaning in the first place.
Project Details
The Problem To Be Solved
The customer needed to migrate its documents into new systems, and the export had to keep the metadata and object relationships intact along the way. The partner needed a tool that could do that in batches, repeatably, starting with the Land vault and extending to other vaults later.
Why Solving The Problem Was Important
A migration that drops metadata or relationships isn't really a migration. The receiving system ends up with a pile of files and no context, and someone has to spend months putting it back together. The customer was on a tight timeline tied to the rollout of their replacement systems, so the export had to be both accurate and quick. TEAM IM's partner needed something they could trust across multiple vaults and customer scenarios, not a script written for one job.
TEAM IM is an M-Files partner, and we know that platform decisions change as businesses change. When a customer or partner needs to make a transition, our job is to help them do it cleanly, whichever direction they're heading.
How TEAM IM Got Involved
TEAM IM and our partner are both M-Files partners, and TEAM IM already had an Exporter Tool that fit the job. The partner brought us in to extend and harden that tooling for their customer's vault content.
The Method
We built two layers: an export administration piece for setting up and managing the work, and an execution piece that actually pulls the content. The tool outputs in two formats (CSV and direct-to-database), so the partner can match whatever the receiving system expects. It preserves internal and external IDs, object relationships, and full document history, which means the content shows up in its new home with its history attached.
The work ran from design through UAT in seven weeks. The customer's team understood the technical details well enough to shape the design directly, and the partner stayed close to the testing, which kept the build aligned with what the receiving end actually needed.
The End Result
The partner has a working export tool they can use for their customer's full migration, starting with the Land vault and rolling out to additional vaults from there. The customer reported a smooth process and is on track for the broader systems transition.
Conclusion
TEAM IM and the partner will keep working together on M-Files projects. The exporter is now a tool the partner can pull out for future customer migrations, which makes this engagement useful well past the customer's current use case.
Building a tool that can export data in multiple batches has been a fulfilling project. From design through build, testing and UAT, all teams showed consistent attention to detail, strong communication, and a highly productive partnership.
Working with both teams to export the object data and files was a very good experience. From the customer's understanding of the technical details going into the design as well as executing the actual export, the process was very smooth and successful.
Value Added
- Gave the partner an export tool they can rely on, which unblocked the customer's broader systems migration.
- Kept versioning, metadata, and object relationships intact so content arrives in receiving systems with its history.
- Hit a tight seven week timeline without cutting scope.
- Two output formats (CSV and database) so the tool fits whatever receiving system the partner is working with.
- Built a reusable capability the partner can apply to future migration engagements.
Software and Cloud Services Involved
- M-Files
- TEAM IM’s Exporter Tool
- TEAM IM Professional Services