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Argos 7 is a completely new platform, with a very different database structure. This means that rather than upgrading Argos in place, the data from Argos 6 will be migrated to Argos 7 after the new installation is complete. The following article explains in detail how to prepare, migrate and configure Argos 6 and Argos 7 during a migration process. Argos 6 data migration is not covered under the Sepialine Support policy, but we do offer migration as a separate professional service. Contact your account rep or Sepialine Support if you would like assistance with this process.

Argos 6 comprises a number of components that may or may not be present in your installation. The relevant components for this discussion are:

  • Argos Manager
  • PIN Manager
  • ADX Manager
  • Walkup Device Tracking Manager

What will be imported

  • Users and groups
  • Devices and groups
  • Media and pricing
  • Activity (billed, unbilled, recycle bin)
  • Billing Codes

What will not be imported

  • Copy tracking settings
  • ADX connectors
  • FM Server settings
  • User permissions

What to do prior to importing data

Clean Up Argos 6

Data migration from Argos 6 to Argos 7 is only supported with Argos 6.6 and the current release of Argos 7. If you are not currently running Argos 6.6, contact Sepialine Support for upgrade instructions.

If you decide to bring Argos 6 activity over to Argos 7, the first thing to do is determine what data you want to import.

If you import an activity record, the following related attributes of that job must be brought into Argos 7:

  • User
  • Device
  • Media
  • Billing Code

The more data you choose to import, the more information you will need to bring into 7. For example, if you choose to bring all print activity since 2008 into Argos 7, all users who are no longer with your company but were employees from 2008-present will be created in Argos 7.

If you replaced your print server sometime after 2008, all print queue names from your old print server will be imported.

If you’ve removed projects since 2008, those projects will be imported.

As you can guess, an Argos 7 database with Argos 6 data can get messy, quick. So the goal of this article is to help you bring the data over gracefully and cleanly.

Purge the activity you don’t need from Argos 6

The first thing to decide is how much historical activity you want to have available in Argos 7. Six months? One year? Ten years? Its up to you. Once you decide how far back you want to go, archive the older data from Argos 6 to keep it from coming across.

  1. Click File>Activity>Archive
  2. Choose “Older than” and enter your date. In this example, we’re archiving everything older then January 1, 2009.
  3. Define an Archive Location. The Argos 6 data will be removed from the system and placed in a Microsoft Access file. This cannot be imported into Argos 7, but can be opened directly in Access for viewing.
  4. Click “OK”
  5. Click “Yes” on the box asking “Archive XXXX activity records?”
Delete Recycle Bin activity

Any devices or users that were set to use “Do Not Bill” have been silently recorded to the Recycle Bin. This is data you likely do not want in Argos 7.

  1. Browse to Activity>Recycle Bin
  2. Make sure you do not have an activity filter set
  3. Select the top record, scroll to the bottom of the list, click “Shift” and select the bottom record to select everything in the Recycle Bin.
  4. Click File>Activity>Archive
  5. Choose “Selected Activity”
  6. Leave Archive location the same
  7. Click “OK:
  8. Click “Yes” on the box asking “Archive XXXX activity records?”
Remove "Do Not Bill" devices

Any devices that are set to “Do Not Bill” and no longer have activity in Argos should be deleted, so they do not come over to Argos 7

  1. Browse to Devices
  2. Look for any devices with Device Billing Settings set to “Don’t bill prints sent to this device”
  3. Right-click and delete each device. In this example, all Do Not Bill devices are set in the same group.
  4. Click “Yes” on the “Would you like to delete selected devices” dialog.
  5. Repeat for each “Do Not Bill” device

Note: if you attempt to delete a device that has activity associated with it in Argos 6, you will receive a dialog stating that it cannot be deleted. If you do want to delete the device, archive any activity for this device first.

Move Argos 6 devices to a new group

Argos 6 and Argos 7 store device names in a different way. Argos 6 stores the standard server name, while Argos 7 stores the fully qualified server name (\\myserver\myprinter vs \\myserver.mysubdomain.mydomain\myprinter). To reduce confusion when importing devices, we recommend creating a new group to house all old device names until they can be merged into the new device names.

  1. Click New>Device Group
  2. Set Group Name as “Argos 6 Devices”
  3. Select at least one allowable media (does not matter which one)
  4. Click “OK”
  5. Click on Default Group
  6. Select the top device scroll to the bottom of the list, click “Shift” and select the bottom device to select all devices.
  7. Right-click and choose Assign to Group> Argos 6 Devices
  8. Repeat for any other device groups
Delete unused device groups

Right-click on any unused device groups and choose “Delete”. Do NOT delete or rename the default device group, even though it is empty.

Clean up Billing Codes

All active and inactive Billing Codes will be brought from Argos 6 to Argos 7. You may have many older codes that you do no want in Argos 7.

  1. Browse to Billing Codes and click the “View All” button
  2. Sort by “Status” column to see Inactive projects together
  3. Right-click any projects that are no longer valid and click “Delete”
  4. A prompt will appear if any projects are referenced by devices, users or activity
Clean up users

Argos 6 allows you to delete users even if they have billed activity in their name. Argos 7 does not. Any Argos 7 users who have been inadvertently deleted should be recreated.

  1. Click File>New>User
  2. Choose “From activity logs”
  3. Any users who have been deleted but have activity in the database will appear. Check the boxes next to their names
  4. Click “OK”

Argos 6 allowed different levels of permission within a user group. For example, you could have users with Administrative access in the Manager and users who cannot open the Manager in the same group. You could also have users set to silently bill and interactively bill in the same group. Argos 7 handles permissions at the group level, so users should be grouped accordingly before importing.

In this example, set all users who are silently billed to an overhead project to the same group.

  1. Click File>New>User Group
  2. Name the group “Silent Users”
  3. Click “Add”
  4. Select all users who are silently billed to the same project
  5. Click “Add members”
  6. Click “Yes” on the “Would you like to keep current user permissions?” dialog
  7. Click the “Billing” tab
  8. Select “Silent, assign to billing code”
  9. Choose a project to silently assign the user activity to
  10. Click “OK”
Media

Argos 6 and Argos 7 handle media in very different ways. If you have old media types that are not actually used by any activity that is being imported, now would be a good time to remove them as it will make the Argos 7 media configuration process simpler.

  1. Right-click on any unused media
  2. Choose “Delete Media...”
  3. Click “Yes” on the dialog that appears

At this point, all Argos 6 activity, users, media, devices and projects have been prepped for migration.

Import to Argos 7

Before you bring your activity from Argos 6 to Argos 7, we recommend that you get Argos 7 fully installed and working. All devices and users should be configured and all interactive users should have the Desktop Client installed.

Depending on the amount of data in your Argos 6 database, the speed of your CPU, and the connection speed between your SQL databases, the migration may take anywhere between 5 minutes to 3 hours.

  1. Browse to C:\Program Files\Sepialine\Argos7\Data Migration on the Argos 7 server
  2. Run ArgosDataMigration.exe
  3. Type the name of your SQL Server and Argos 6 Database
  4. If Argos 6 and Argos 7 are on the same server, check “Integrated Security
  5. If not, uncheck it and enter your Argos 6 SQL credentials. The defaults are username: Argos, password: Sepialine
  6. Click “Test Connection”
  7. Select a default Device Media.
  8. Enter you default domain name for users
  9. Set a default status code
  10. Set “If errors are encountered” to “Stop”
  11. Click “Run”
  12. Wait for import to finish.

What to do after importing data

When the migration completes successfully, there is still a fair amount of cleanup to do in Argos 7.

Consolidate Media

Argos 7 treats color as an attribute of a media, Argos 6 treated color as a separate media. Argos 6 typically has four default media:

  • Small Format B&W
  • Small Format Color
  • Large Format B&W
  • Large Format Color

Argos 7 has two default media:

  • Small
  • Large

After importing Argos 6 media into Argos 7, you will typically have six total media, instead of two:

  • Small Format B&W
  • Small Format Color
  • Large Format B&W
  • Large Format Color
  • Small
  • Large

These need to be merged together. Note that your media names may differ, and you may have more or fewer total media.

Enable Color Pricing for your Argos 7 Media

This may have been configured during your initial Argos 7 installation. If not, and you have both color and BW printers, follow these steps.

  1. Click the “Gear” icon next to the “Large” media and choose “Enable Color Pricing”
  2. Enter the Cost/Charge of your Large Color pricing
  3. Repeat for “Small” media, set prices for all relevant paper sizes
  4. Click “Apply pricing changes”
  5. Choose “Everything”
  6. Click “OK”
Remove Argos 6 media
  1. Click the “Gear” icon next to the “Large Format B&W” media and choose “Remove”
  2. Click “Yes” on the “Are you sure...” dialog
  3. Select “Large” as replacement media
  4. Repeat for Large Format Color
  5. Repeat for Small Format Color and Small Format B&W (set the replacement media as “Small”)
Clean up Argos 7 devices

Any current printers on your network should have been tracked and created in Argos 7. You will notice that Argos 7 device names look slightly different from Argos 6 devices.

Argos 6 printer: \\myserver\myprinter

Argos 7 printer: \\myserver.mysubdomain.mydomain\myprinter

Although these are the same physical device, they have different names in Argos. To have them report as the same, just merge them together.

  1. Select Argos 6 printer from “Argos 6 Devices” group
  2. Drag to relevant group where duplicate name is stored
  3. Drag Argos 6 printer name onto new printer name
  4. Click “Yes” on confirmation box"
  5. The devices have now been merged together to report as one name.
Merge Duplicate printer names

Each instance of a print queue is recorded by Argos. If you have a PCL and PS version of a printer, or have renamed your print queue at some point, chances are that Argos 6 made a record of this. In Argos 7, you can consolidate printers to have them display as one physcial device.

  1. Select all but one duplicate devices
  2. Drag them onto the remaining device
  3. Rename display name if desired

Users

User groups are brought across from Argos 6. All users from Argos 6 will be created and placed in their appropriate group.

Note: the “Unlicensed” group is a feature that did not exist in Argos 6. Consider moving users who are set to “Do Not Bill” into “Unlicensed” so they do not take up a user license. Users in Unlicensed group do not count against your total user licenses.

Argos Data Exchange and Walkup Device Tracking

Argos Data Exchange and Walkup Device Tracking settings are not transferred to Argos 7. Click here for information on setting up Argos 7 adapters for your integration devices.

Once complete, verify that your data has been transferred correctly by running similar reports in Argos 6 and Argos 7.

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