Converting Data from Amicus Small Firm Edition to Amicus Cloud

Moving your data to the cloud is a big step. It needs to be done right. You have a significant investment in your practice data. You want to be sure it all comes across cleanly. You are no doubt impatient to get started, but please, it is important that you read through this document and follow the instructions before we get started. When you are ready to proceed just call us at 1-800-472-2289 to schedule your conversion.

Before you Begin

Before you begin converting your data, your Amicus Cloud firm must be created and all your users must be set up, including all their Exchange account information. You should not enter any other data into Amicus Cloud as the conversion will overwrite any data that exists with the data from Small Firm.

As with any conversion of data, it is vital that your Small Firm data be in good condition before you begin. Any incorrect or incomplete information in your Small Firm data will, of course, be carried forward into Amicus Cloud, making your experience less efficient. Once a conversion has been done, it cannot be done a second time. So, after the conversion, the only way to make corrections or add data is manual. This again means it is important to start with clean data and to follow these instructions carefully.

On the day the conversion is going to be run, all users must log into their office, then log out again. Failure to do this may cause Tasks and Appointments to appear with incorrect dates after the conversion.

Where to Begin

The conversion should be run from the computer with the Amicus Attorney Small Firm Administrator installed and must have access to the Shared Documents folder used by Small Firm.

Choices that will need to be made

During the conversion you will be asked to match your existing Users in Small Firm to the Users that have been created in Amicus Cloud. Any Small Firm User who is not matched during the conversion will be treated as inactive. Data for inactive users is not converted.

There are three options for handling Closed Files, they can be ignored during the conversion, the Contact and File information can be converted with no additional information (i.e. appointments, phone calls, etc.), or they can be converted in their entirety using the same criteria as open files. Unless your firm has a strong reason for converting closed Files, we recommend that you use the first option as it will minimize the size of the database and length of time required to convert the data. Please remember that your Amicus Small Firm database will always be available to you as an historic reference.

Please note that this choice only applies to files that have been marked as Closed in Small Firm. If a file is not Closed but is also not marked as Active, it will still be converted no matter which option is chosen.

You can choose to convert all Contacts for the Users that are converted or only those who are assigned to converted Files. Typically, a firm builds up a lot of old contacts on closed Files that are now irrelevant, so this may be a good opportunity to trim your list. You will need to decide as to which approach would be best for your particular firm.

Important Note about Microsoft Exchange

Amicus Cloud uses Exchange as part of its structure. When you set up your Amicus Cloud account, you will have either connected it to your existing Exchange server or subscribed to Amicus Hosted Exchange.

If you are using your own Exchange, please note that any Contacts, Tasks, and Calendar data in the Exchange accounts associated with your Amicus Cloud users will be moved into a backup folder and the main folders will contain only the converted data. You can drag any of the backup folder data back into your main folders if you need to. However, if your Amicus Small Firm was synchronized with Outlook, you probably will not need to.

A Note about Accounting Links

If your Amicus Small Firm is currently linked to an accounting program, this link will be lost in Amicus Cloud. You will need to decide whether to use the Amicus Cloud built-in billing, or whether to continue to use your existing billing or accounting system. Amicus Cloud can export time entries and expenses to any accounting program that accepts imports. Accordingly, this decision does not impact your data conversion. However, if there is any data in your accounting program that you want to migrate to Amicus Cloud, you should ensure it is in Small Firm before beginning the conversion.

What Gets Converted

Firstly, note that after conversion your Small Firm system remains intact and untouched. It is all still there, and you can go back to it at any time. So, any data that is not moved to the Cloud remains accessible to you for archival purposes.

Only data for Active Users will be converted, except for any entries for Inactive Users that are associated with a converted file for an Active User.

Any converted Files which are assigned only to Users who are no longer active (not mapped to a User in Amicus Cloud) will be assigned to the Firm Administrator as Private Files. This will allow the Administrator to reassign or close these Files after the conversion, as appropriate.

All the following Records on Open Client Matter Files will be converted:

• Contacts on Files
• Time Entries
• Phone Calls
• Phone Messages
• Email (see additional notes below)
• Appointments
• To Do’s
• Notes

Please note that stickies when converted will be assigned to the user who sent them, not to the recipient.

• Documents (if they are accessible to the converter)

The following records will be converted, even though they are not associated with a File, if they are assigned to an Active User:

• Appointments – for the past 30 days and all future appointments
• To Do’s – Today and onward
• Phone Calls – for the past 30 days and all future Phone Calls
• Phone Messages – all messages that have not been returned
• Notes – Dated 30 days back and all future notes
• System Lists (e.g. Activity Codes, Types of Law, etc.)

In some cases, additional items may be added to the lists that are required for Amicus Cloud to operate correctly

What does not get converted

Some data that does not have a corresponding field in Amicus Cloud will be included in the notes of the record (e.g. on Files the Lawyer’s Vacation Instructions are appended to the Main Note, for Tasks the Contact name is appended to the Description, etc.)

The following data simply does not have an appropriate field in Amicus Cloud and will be lost during the conversion process:

Files:

• Full Client Name – because of the way Amicus Cloud handles Contacts and Files this information should not be required
• Warnings for the Responsible Lawyer
• Task Based Billing Information
• Some attributes for the roles of People on the File, e.g. for Lawyer the “Representing” field, for Client the “is an Individual / Corporation” selection.

Contacts:

• Remind me to keep in touch (# of Days)

However, that the last contacted date will be converted. This information will be stored in a hidden field in Amicus Cloud – you will see it again when this feature is implemented in the future.

• Salutation
• Initials
• Referrals
• Emails associated to Contacts (but not to Files)

Appointments & To Do’s:

• Adjournment settings
• Linked Events (the Events are converted, but not the linkage)
• Linked Appointments that do not yet have a date will not be converted.
• Linked Tasks that do not yet have a date will be converted with a Start Date / Due Date of none.
• Assistance Setup
• Document and Email associations

Phone Messages:

• Do not Purge flag

Additional Items:

• User Types (e.g. Managing Partner, Associate, etc.)
• Precedents
• Document Templates
• Shared Resources (e.g. Meeting Room)
• Reports
• Client Business Types
• UTBMS Task Codes

Special Handling of Certain Data

Library Pages

The Library structure is not converted. This means the organizational “tree” under which this information is put will not appear in Amicus Cloud. However, the “pages” on the tree in your library – the actual library records – will be converted if they are associated with a client File. Those that point to a document which is accessible to the converter will be added as Document records to the File and will be viewable in Amicus Cloud. Other Library Pages (e.g. Web URL’s, physical notations, etc.) are converted to Research Articles (note these will not be visible in Amicus Cloud but will appear when the feature is implemented). The original Section, Shelf, Book, and Page name will be stored in a text field or the Research Article. Library Pages that are not attached to any client File will not be converted.

Time and Expense Entries

All Time and Expense Entries associated to converted Files will be converted. However, those that have been posted in Small Firm will not be available for billing in Amicus Cloud. Unposted Time Entries will be available for billing in Amicus Cloud. If you need to bill a posted entry, you can first Unpost it either in Small Firm before the conversion or in Amicus Cloud after the conversion.

Email

A copy of Emails that have been attached to Files will be available to view on the File’s Email list, but they cannot be forwarded or replied to, and there will be no access to any attachments on those Emails.

Additionally, all Email in your firm’s Exchange server will appear in Amicus Cloud’s Email module, and can be treated as normal email, but these will not be associated to any File.

Appointments

During the conversion invitations will be sent out to all users on appointments with multiple users and the appointment will show as tentative until each user associated with the appointment runs Amicus Cloud for the first time at which time the invitation emails will be automatically handled. This means that a lot of email traffic will be generated during the conversion and should be ignored. This is of particular importance to users that have automatic notification of their email set up on their smart phone.

Phone Messages

Phone messages will be converted as Phone Calls. Those that are still outstanding in Small Firm will be marked as Callback Required in Amicus Cloud.

Documents

All Documents that are attached to converted Files, and are accessible to the converter, will be uploaded to the Cloud so they can be accessed from anywhere by any Amicus Cloud User with security to view the File. Document Groups will be added as Folders in Amicus Cloud to keep your documents organized. Each Document will only be included once, so if a Document has multiple Document Groups, it will appear in the Folder for its first Document Group.

Many people use the feature in Small Firm that allows you to attach a document folder to a matter File, and thereby allows you to see all documents within that folder in Amicus. If you have used this feature, during conversion you will be asked if you want all documents within that folder (including any subfolders) to be copied to the cloud. The way most people use this feature, the normal answer would be yes. However, if you have created a separate Amicus record for each document in the folder, as well as attaching the folder, then you should say no, as otherwise you will get duplicates.

The Status Report on each converted File will be turned into a text file and attached to the File as a Document so that this information is preserved. Additionally if the Main Note field on any file exceeds 4,000 characters, only the first 4,000 will be converted into the Main Note field in Amicus Cloud, but the full text will be turned into a text file and attached to the File as a Document for future reference.

Data Converted for Future Use

Some data will be converted but not immediately visible in Amicus Cloud. As new features are added to Amicus Cloud this data will automatically become visible:

• Notes – will not appear at first in Amicus Cloud, but can be seen if you use Outlook
• Research Articles (Library Items and Documents of type Other associated with Files)
• Categories on Appointments, Tasks, Contacts (these will be available if you use Outlook, but you will need to manually add the categories from Small Firm into Exchange, which will allow for color-coding of converted appointments when viewed in Outlook. But these will not be visible in Amicus Cloud.)

Procedure

To prepare Amicus Attorney Small Firm Edition for database conversion:

• Please ensure all Users are running online. Really important!
• Please ensure all Users have logged in on the day of conversion and are now logged out.
• Open Amicus Administrator.
• We recommend you do a Backup before proceeding. To do so, please click on the Database menu and select the Backup option. Once completed, you will see a message stating the Backup Operation was completed successfully.
• We recommend you run through the following Database Maintenance processes to ensure your Amicus Attorney Small Firm Edition database is ready for a successful conversion.

1

First, go to the Database menu, mouse-over Utilities, and click on Scan Database. On the prompt that appears, please click Yes to proceed with the Scan Database process. Once completed, a prompt will appear advising that the Scan Database has completed successfully, please click OK on this.

2

Now, go to the Users menu, mouse-over Recovery Functions, and click on Unlock All Data. On the prompt that appears, please click Yes to proceed with the Unlock All Data process. Once completed, a prompt will appear advising that the Unlock All Data has completed successfully, please click OK on this.

• We recommend you do another Backup once the Database Maintenance steps (above) have been completed. To do so, please follow the same steps outlined above in Step 4.
• Once you have completed the Database Maintenance, and have backed up your database, you are now ready to proceed with the Small Firm database conversion, which will migrate your data to your Amicus Cloud.
• Contact a member of our Professional Services team to begin the conversion process.
• During the conversion process you will be required to enter your login information for Amicus Cloud. This must be the login for the user who is designated as the Firm Administrator (the user who created the Firm to begin with).
• You will also need to choose which method you want to use for Converting Contacts
• Map each Active User in Small Firm to one of the Users created in Amicus Cloud
• Your Professional Services Representative will run a program on your computer which will extract the data from your Small Firm database and upload it to our secure website for processing in the Cloud. The length of time it takes to upload your data will depend on the size of your database and speed of your connection to the Internet.
• When the upload completes, your conversion will be placed in a queue and will begin at approximately 10:00 pm EST. You will be notified by your Professional Services Representative once the conversion process is complete. Please do not attempt to log into Amicus Cloud until you have received confirmation that the conversion is complete.
• If you have a large database the processing of your data may take several hours, and if your Exchange Provider implements data throttling (e.g. Office365) your conversion may still be running the following morning. Unfortunately, it is impossible for your Professional Services Representative to estimate how long the conversion process will take.

To begin your conversion:

Lastly, thank you! Thank you for being an Amicus Attorney by CARET customer and thank you for taking the time to follow these instructions to convert your data into Amicus Cloud. We are delighted that you are going to be using this product and look forward to your suggestions on how to make it even better.

If you encounter any problems or have any questions regarding the conversion of your data, please do not hesitate to contact our support department at 800-472-2289.