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HCL Digital Experience 9.5 [Legacy content]
Migrating
Successful migration requires significant planning and preparation, understanding the tools that are involved, and careful execution of the appropriate steps in the order provided.
Next steps
To complete migration, you must first perform several post-migration steps that depend on how Portal is being used. After completing the post-migration steps, review the Enabling new functionality section to take advantage of the new tools available in HCL Digital Experience 8.5. Enabling new functionality should not be started until all post-migration steps have been completed.
Post-migration activities
After you migrate to HCL Digital Experience 8.5, you need to complete extra tasks depending on how you customized the source portal environment and which components you used. First, complete the Applying the latest Combined Cumulative Fix updates task, then you can begin the post-migration tasks followed by enabling new functionality.
Add-ons, features, and third-party integration tasks
Complete the post-migration tasks that are required based on the way you use your HCL Digital Experience environment.
Migrating PAA content
If you installed a Portal Application Archive (PAA) file on a previous version of HCL Digital Experience, you can migrate the content to the current version of HCL Digital Experience.

HCL Digital Experience 9.5 [Legacy content]
- Overview
  HCL Digital Experience provides a single access point to web content and applications, while it delivers differentiated, personalized experiences for each user across multiple touchpoints, such as web, mobile, hybrid mobile/web applications, and more.
- Supported migration paths
  Migration is supported between equivalent HCL Digital Experience offerings.
- Supported installation and upgrade paths
  Installation and upgrade is supported between equivalent HCL Digital Experience offerings.
- Getting the software
  New and existing users need to register at the HCL Software License Portal and download their entitled HCL Digital Experience package(s).
- Creating your website
  Review the following topics to understand how to create your website using the latest HCL Digital Experience.
- Installing HCL Digital Experience
  Review the planning information on HCL Digital Experience, then select your operating system and installation pattern that most reflects your business needs.
- Configuring
  Run the following tasks after you install and deploy HCL Digital Experience. They address tasks that are typically run one time and have a global effect. Some configuration changes are made more frequently or do not have a global effect. These tasks are addressed in the Administering section.
- Backup and restore
  Backup and recovery of data files and databases is an essential operation for any business system, particularly for data and applications that run in production environments. Create and follow a plan for backing up and recovering data on all tiers of your HCL Digital Experience deployment. IBM Installation Manager must also be included in backup and recovery planning. If you back up the HCL Portal file structure and then install a fix pack, your HCL Digital Experience and IBM Installation Manager become out of sync after you restore the HCL Portal file system. This condition is not recoverable.
- Migrating
  Successful migration requires significant planning and preparation, understanding the tools that are involved, and careful execution of the appropriate steps in the order provided.
  - Overview
    Migration is the process of collecting configuration data and applications from an earlier installed version of HCL Digital Experience and merging them into a newer installed version. So that the new environment is identical to the earlier environment. For the z/OS® platform, the new version must be on the same server as the earlier version. Migration to a different (remote) server is not supported.
  - Planning for migration
    Completing a thorough plan before migrating to the latest version of HCL Digital Experience has a direct impact in the effort invested during the actual migration. Become familiar with the environment you are migrating to (target environment). Also, make sure that the environment you are migrating from (source environment) is up to date with fixes and meets the requirements for migration.
  - Preparing your source environment
    Before you begin the steps for migration, you must perform some critical tasks on your source environment, such as creating back ups, installing the latest cumulative fix and one of the two most recent fix packs, and disabling automatic synchronization if you are migrating a cluster. Review the topics in this section, and perform the required tasks to ensure that your source environment remains functional and the migration completes successfully.
  - Setting up the target environment
    The migration requires you to install the required Portal and WebSphere® binary installations. To prepare your target environment, ensure that you have applied the latest cumulative fix and the most recent fix pack before you start migration. In addition, create new copies of the source databases for the target environment to use, and prepare the target environment for any custom applications that have dependencies or any other tasks that need to be performed for remote or cluster migrations.
  - Migrate data using the configuration wizard
    For Version 8.5, data, applications, databases, property files, security settings, and configuration are migrated using the Configuration Wizard. Use the roadmaps for cluster and stand-alone environments to guide you through the process.
  - Next steps
    To complete migration, you must first perform several post-migration steps that depend on how Portal is being used. After completing the post-migration steps, review the Enabling new functionality section to take advantage of the new tools available in HCL Digital Experience 8.5. Enabling new functionality should not be started until all post-migration steps have been completed.
    - Post-migration activities
      After you migrate to HCL Digital Experience 8.5, you need to complete extra tasks depending on how you customized the source portal environment and which components you used. First, complete the Applying the latest Combined Cumulative Fix updates task, then you can begin the post-migration tasks followed by enabling new functionality.
      - For CF07 and earlier: Applying the latest Combined Cumulative Fix updates
        This task is a required if you are on CF07 or earlier. After you migrate using the Configuration Wizard, you must run two tasks to ensure that all of the Combined Cumulative Fix updates are applied to your system before you complete other post-migration or enablement tasks. If you are on CF08 or later, the Configuration Wizard automatically runs these commands.
      - Administrative tasks
        To ensure that your new environment functions properly, complete administrative tasks such as enabling automatic synchronization, migrating web server configurations, configuring a federated LDAP user registry, and more.
      - Portal tasks
        Complete the post-migration tasks specific to the way that you use HCL Digital Experience.
      - Theme tasks
        To ensure that your new environment functions properly, complete theme tasks such as updating the default theme and skin or applying themes to your pages.
      - Development tasks
        Complete the development tasks that are required after the migration to ensure that your environment functions properly.
      - Database tasks
        There are different post-migration tasks that are required depending on the type of database that is used.
      - Add-ons, features, and third-party integration tasks
        Complete the post-migration tasks that are required based on the way you use your HCL Digital Experience environment.
        Content Template
        Content Template versions 3.x, 4.0.x, and 4.1.x are migrated along with all Web Content Manager data. These are additional migration steps that are required for Content Template after data migration is complete.
        Migrating Security Access Manager
        The HCL Digital Experience migration process migrates the security configurations. However, there is no provision for the automatic migration of any junction definitions that exist for the previous version of HCL Digital Experience in WebSEAL. You must replace the old junction definitions with the new virtual host junction definitions.
        Migrating PAA content
        If you installed a Portal Application Archive (PAA) file on a previous version of HCL Digital Experience, you can migrate the content to the current version of HCL Digital Experience.
        Creating the analytics tag root label
        If you use site analytics on your migrated HCL Digital Experience, you need to create the analytics tag root label.
        Updating the Web Application Bridge
        After you migrated to the latest version of HCL Digital Experience and successfully tested it, update your migrated Web Application Bridge content.
        Running post migration steps for the multilingual solution
        When you migrate the multilingual solution, you need to merge your configuration settings.
        Social Media Publisher
        The Social Media Publisher for Web Content Manager is an extension to Web Content Manager that allows businesses to promote their web content on social networks, and provide some basic statistics about the promoted content. When migrating the Social Media Publisher, you need to merge your configuration settings.
        Social Lists
        After you migrate from a previous Portal Version to HCL Digital Experience 8.5, you must run a configuration task. The configuration task is run to deploy the new web content library and templates before you can use the Social Lists features. If you already used the social rendering feature from 8.0.0.1, your existing web content libraries and all portlet clones that were created during the enablement on Portal 8.0.0.1 is not changed.
        Deploying and updating sample web content template items
        The sample web content template items are not installed or updated during migration. This sample content includes examples of web content template pages and predefined content items that you can add to pages to render content. You can add or update these items manually after migration.
        JavaServer Faces implementation
        The default JavaServer Faces (JSF) implementation has changed starting in WebSphere Application Server 8.
        Portlets no longer available
        Some portlets that were available on previous releases of HCL Portal are no longer including in Version 8.5. These portlets are not migrated as part of the HCL Portal migration process.
        Mashup integration
        The mashup integration feature was removed in Portal Version 8.0 and is not included in later releases. If you used this feature in a previous release and you want to continue using it in HCL Digital Experience 8.5, you need to manually enable mashup integration after migration.
        Navigation with consecutive labels is dynamic
        The secondary navigation is dynamic, and shows only two levels of navigation at a time. When a page on the last level of navigation is selected, only that level of navigation is displayed. It is possible to select a page where both the parent level of navigation and the grandparent level of navigation are both labels. In this case, the sibling navigation for the parent level is not accessible.
    - Enabling new functionality in a migrated portal
      The migration process collects configuration data and applications from an earlier installed version of HCL Digital Experience and merges them into the newer installed version so that the new environment is identical to the earlier environment. Taking advantage of new functionality that was not available in the earlier portal requires additional attention after migration is complete.
- Integrating
  Integrate HCL Digital Experience with software such as HCL Sametime to enable your users to collaborate more easily. You can also use the unified task list portlet to integrate HCL with your backend business process software, such as IBM Process Server.
- Administering
  Use the administration tools that are provided with the HCL Digital Experience to do various day-to-day administration tasks.
- Securing
  Security tasks include setting up property extension databases and custom user repositories, configuring and activating SSL, and configuring authentication. In addition, tasks such as activating Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) and NIST SP800-131a security modules and configuring external security managers such as Security Access Manager might be required to secure your portal environment.
- Monitoring
  HCL Portal includes tools and features to help you monitor the portal site.
- Setting up a website
  Setting up a website includes, creating pages, adding navigation, setting up search, and adding content to the site. Themes are used to customize the portal's look-and-feel. Out-of-the-box templates and the site wizard can help you set up your portal site faster. You can add wikis and blogs to your site and let users tag and rate content on your site.
- Staging to production
  During portal solution development, the solution is initially developed, tested, and refined on one server or a limited number of servers. The solution is deployed later on live systems, referred to as the production environment. The process of moving the solution from the development environment to the production environment is called staging.
- Developing
  This section includes developer documentation on extending applications and development assets for HCL Portal and HCL Web Content Manager.
- Docker and Containerization
  Find topic information about Docker and Containerization for HCL Digital Experience.
- Practitioner Studio
  Practitioner Studio is a newly designed user experience for HCL Digital Experience. Please see the following pages to understand how the new navigation is organized.
- HCL Experience API
  This shows developers how to provision, configure, and use the HCL Experience API with the HCL Digital Experience 9.5 platform.
- HCL Content Composer
  The HCL Content Composer delivers simplified processes for creating and managing Digital Experience site content.
- HCL Digital Asset Management
  HCL Digital Asset Management (DAM) adds a central platform to store and include rich media assets in Digital Experience site content to present engaging, consistently branded experiences across digital channels.
- The Woodburn Studio demo site
  The Woodburn Studio is a website that demonstrates the use of some of the popular HCL Digital Experience features.
- Reference
  View information that can help you use our product documentation including terms of use, trademarks, and more.

Migrating PAA content | HCL Digital Experience

If you installed a Portal Application Archive (PAA) file on a previous version of HCL Digital Experience, you can migrate the content to the current version of HCL Digital Experience.

About this task

Migration is supported from Portal Version 7.0 to HCL Digital Experience 8.5 and from Version 8.0 to HCL Digital Experience 8.5.