This offering is available for select firms only. Reach out to your Client Success Manager to learn more.
Data Migrations are a complex process that involves coordination between the data migration team at Smokeball and your firm.
The migration process will take anywhere between 6-10 weeks depending on availability and the amount of data presented.
This process will involve some manual entry/cleanup by your firm in order to result in a successful migration. We do our best to coordinate with your schedules and keep you on track!
Data migration with Smokeball is a 5-step process.
Step 1: Migration Welcome Meeting and initial data collection
A data migration specialist will meet with your firm. Here, the migration roadmap will be discussed and your specialist will look to gather as much information about your data as possible.
We will confirm what we will/will not migrate and make sure both sides' expectations are met.
Once the meeting has finished, your data migration specialist will provide you with a housekeeping guide. Your firm will review the housekeeping guide of general clean-up recommendations and generally be given 1 week to clean up as much data as possible in your legacy system. It does not have to be perfect!
Once you let us know that the housekeeping cleanup is complete, your data migration specialist will then commence with the initial data collection.
- Your firm needs to provide us with the login credentials of the practice management system you're moving from, and possibly request a backup if the software is server based.
The data migration specialist will review the data and will commence with Step 2.
Step 2: Data cleanup review and second data collection
We will meet with your firm to showcase the cleanliness of the data after running it through our migration tools.
We will then send a data review with recommended and required clean-up. This clean-up varies based on your firm’s data but can range from 20 minutes of work to multiple hours.
Dependent on the results, we will allow your firm 1 week to adjust duplicate contacts and inconsistent conventions used within data entries. This is very important to ensure a more accurate migration.
When the adjustments made have been confirmed, your data migration specialist will perform a second data collection. This is to ensure we have the most up-to-date data in readiness for Step 3.
Step 3: The Trial Environment
The Trial environment is the most important step of the whole migration process. We will meet with your firm and provide a virtual machine that hosts a practice migration of the firm’s data in a test environment.
We aim to have the trial environment built and ready 2 weeks prior to launch day.
Once the meeting is complete, your firm will be provided with a checklist to confirm data accuracy and to provide feedback to the Smokeball migration technician for any changes over the next 2 weeks.
Don't enter real changes into the trial environment - this environment will be deleted after 2 weeks! If you wish to make changes, record them in your legacy system or let the technician know.
Step 4: Launch day and final data collection
The day before the migration begins, the technician will connect to the firm’s legacy system at the end of the workday and start the final data collection.
There will be one buffer day for the migration process. During this time, we recommend that your firm treat the legacy system as Read Only. Any data entered after the final data collection on Friday will not be migrated.
Your migration specialist will provide your firm with excel spreadsheets that mimic Smokeball's formatting including new matters, contacts and time/fees. Any new information collected on Monday can be entered into these excel files and transitioned into smokeball post-migration.
Here is a breakdown of what will occur the week leading up to the go-live date. As an example, let's say the go-live date is set for Tuesday 27th of September.
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The final data collection will commence on Friday 23rd September.
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The migration process will commence over the weekend
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Monday 26th September will be the firm's buffer day
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Tuesday 27th September your firm will have access to Smokeball and your migrated data.
How are documents migrated?
Your data migration specialist will set up a LogMeIn remote session with your firm so we have access to a PC at the firm which holds the documents. We will download the documents and import them to the associated matters in Smokeball.
Documents migration begins after launch day and typically takes an additional 3 – 5 days on average. Based on the number of documents and the firm's connection speed this time frame can vary.
We prioritise your open matter documents so they are populated first.
Step 5: Migration complete
Once the document import has been completed we will come to the end of your data migration process.
Your data migration specialist will continue to be in contact with you that week to ensure everything is working as planned.
Our service to you does not end there, you will continue your journey with your onboarding specialist/training team to ensure you can easily navigate around Smokeball and we make sure that you are fully supported.
Your Smokeball Onboarding specialist post migration will remain your sole point of contact for all things regarding Smokeball.