Affinity

This means Affinity typically runs as desktop software within the firm's office on employee PCs, however, some firms may use an IT provider that hosts Affinity on a remote server in a remote datacenter. In this scenario, firm members may RDP, TeamViewer, RemoteApp, or Screen Connect to a remote PC where they access Affinity. In this scenario, some people may say that Affinity runs 'in the cloud', however, it is really just a desktop application running on someone else's equipment.

General practice management systems store a wide variety of data instrumental to running many kinds of law firms.

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The Migration Specialist will need an Administrator username and password into Affinity in order to extract your data.

The Migration Specialist will need the Administrator username and password into the Affinity database server in order to extract your data.
This should be the Administrator account and not another account that has administrative access.

The Migration Specialist will need the Administrator username and password into the Affinity file server in order to extract your documents.
This should be the Administrator account and not another account that has administrative access.

Because data is extracted from the Affinity database, the migration can be run from anywhere with access to a backup of the database.

Because Affinity is a desktop-based application, if documents are being transferred, the computer used for the migration should be near the same device that stores the documents.

A member of the firm will need to complete a small spreadsheet mapping users from Affinity to users in the new system.

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The Migration Specialist is the person who will be performing this migration. They may be a member of Universal Migrator's own Internal Migration Team or any IT professional who has completed the Universal Consultant training program.

The Firm Administrator is a member of the law firm who can serve as a dedicated point of contact, make decisions, and answer any questions the Migration Consultant may have. This person should be readily available and is typically the managing partner or office manager of the firm.

The Firm IT Administrator is the person responsible for setting up and managing the firm's IT equipment. Sometimes this is an employee of the firm but usually this is an employee of a third-party IT services provider.

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With certain vendors, submitting a Notice of Termination/Non-Renewal can prompt a shift in cooperation: some will restrict or revoke export and backup capabilities, or limit the volume of data you're able to download, making migration more difficult.
To guard against this, best practice with any vendor, including Affinity, is to withhold notice until you've been fully live on your new system for at least 30 days. In practice, this means your migration should be complete approximately 45 days before your notice deadline.

In Affinity, some contacts have only a "Full Name" field, with nothing that definitively identifies the entry as a person or a company. Universal Migrator will attempt to determine whether each name resembles a person's name or a company name. The Migration Specialist and Firm Administrator should review these results and make adjustments as needed.