Planning

Planning is an important phase of migration. Before migrating your projects, you need to:

Determine what projects and which entities you want to migrate because not all ALM data can be migrated to Zephyr (see below).
Review hardware and network configurations.
Check memory allocation.
Optimize staging environments, if needed.

Perform a dry run

We recommend that you first perform a dry run in a staging environment before migrating your projects. Migrate a small project to see that everything runs smoothly and the migrated project meets your expectations. To perform this test migration, use the latest versions of Zephyr Enterprise and ALM Migration Wizard.

Tip

Run the migration wizard on the same network where Zephyr Enterprise and HP ALM are used to avoid network delays.

Do not run the migration wizard on the same computer where Zephyr is running to avoid performance issues.

Schedule migration

You can migrate projects either over a weekend when both HP ALM and Zephyr are shut down for users, or you may take an incremental approach by having both HP ALM and Zephyr available in parallel during the weeks or months, and moving projects from HP ALM to Zephyr based on your business needs.

Entity names

When preparing for migration, keep in mind that some ALM and Zephyr entities have different names. The table below compares the names of the main entities:

Entity name in Zephyr	Entity name in HP ALM
Requirements	Requirements
Test Repository	Test Plan
Test Planning	Test Lab
Test Execution	Test Runs

Migration specifics and limitations

Not all ALM data can be migrated to Zephyr Enterprise. Also, the migrated data should comply with certain Zephyr requirements. The table below provides detailed information on the migration specifics and limitations you need to keep in mind when planning migration of your projects:

Component	Migration specifics & limitations
Domain	Since Zephyr does not have the domain concept, no domains are created in Zephyr. To differentiate the domains, the name of each migrated project is preceded by the domain name in Zephyr: `<domain name> <project name>`.
Users	A user name must have at least two characters. Users whose name has only one character will not be migrated. If only the first name of a user is specified in ALM (for example, `John`), the user will be migrated with the `John.John` user name. A user name without a proper email ID (for example, `user.1089`) will get a dummy email ID after the migration: `[email protected]`. All the users migrated to Zephyr will have the Lead role. You can change the role later. If a user was deleted in HP ALM, after the migration, all the data created by the user will be assigned to test.manager in Zephyr.
Releases	ALM folders containing releases will be discarded. Only the releases will be migrated. For example, if you have the `Sample1` release in the `MyReleases` folder in HP ALM, you will have only the `Sample1` release in Zephyr. If the release name or description is too long, it will be truncated to meet Zephyr requirements. Releases that have attachments will be ignored. Release descriptions in the rich text format will be converted to plain text. Releases that have only one character in their name will not be migrated. Release folders containing special or international characters in their name will be ignored.
Requirements	ALM requirements of the Folder type will become both requirements and requirement folders in Zephyr. For example, if the requirement type of the `NewReq1` requirement is Folder, you will see both the `NewReq1` folder and the `NewReq1` requirement in Zephyr. Requirements that are not associated with any release or cycle in ALM will be shown in project requirements in Zephyr.
Test cases	Test cases that are not associated with any release or cycle in ALM will migrated to the project test repository and will not be assigned to any release. Test cases that have a priority in HP ALM will not be migrated. Test cases that do not belong to a test set, but are mapped to a requirement, will be added to the same release as a requirement.
Cycles	Cycles whose name has only one character will be ignored. If a test set is not associated with any cycle in ALM, the test set will be migrated to the Default ALM Release folder created in Zephyr.
Cycle phases	A cycle phase that is not associated with any release will be migrated to the Default ALM Cycle folder created in Zephyr. A cycle phase will not be migrated if its name contains only one character. If the dates of cycle phases are not within the cycle’s range of dates, they will be changed to the cycle dates.
Executions	If an execution has child items in ALM, it will not have them in Zephyr. All the executions will be individual. In the execution history, the assignment date of executions will be the same as the cycle phase start date. If no Open Date is specified in ALM, the migration date and time will be specified in the Changed On column of Zephyr’s execution history.
Custom fields	Fields of the Lookup List type with child items will not be migrated. Custom fields of the User List type will not be migrated. Custom fields of the Float type will not be migrated. Custom fields of requirements and test cases are migrated. Custom fields of other entities are not migrated. Pick list custom field values inserted dynamically in ALM are not migrated. The following error is posted to the log upon an attempt to migrate such a value: `Invalid option for list xxx custom field.` If the data type of an ALM custom field differs from that in Zephyr, a new custom field with the same name postfixed with `ALM` will be created in Zephyr.
Attachments	Test Step attachments of testcase level will be migrated at Attachments section in Zephyr. Test Step attachments of execution level will be migrated in Test-Step section at Test Execution level in Zephyr. Files attached to releases are not migrated.
Defects	HP ALM defects are not migrated.
Accounts	To perform migration, you must be logged in to Zephyr as test.manager.
Indexing	After each migration session, you need to perform full reindexing in Zephyr. If you want to migrate a project that already exists in Zephyr (for example, your project was not migrated completely and you want to migrate it again), you need to either delete or rename the project in Zephyr before starting the migration. If the HP ALM and Zephyr servers are in different time zones, the Created On and Executed On dates you have in HP ALM will differ from those in Zephyr.
Authentication	Only basic authentication is supported for both HP ALM and Zephyr. SSL is supported. You can use HTTPS in the ALM URL.

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Preliminary steps