What MetaVox is
Section titled “What MetaVox is”MetaVox is a separate Nextcloud app, developed at the University of Amsterdam and published by VoxCloud, that gives Team Folders the same kind of metadata columns a SharePoint library has. Nextcloud keeps no columns on a file of its own; MetaVox does. It is not part of SMART Migration and it is not required: without it, files and folders migrate exactly as they should, only without their SharePoint metadata.
- Install it from Nextcloud's own Apps page; the Settings tab of the app shows whether MetaVox is installed and enabled, and links there. On a Nextcloud hosted by a provider, the provider decides which apps are available — ask them for MetaVox if it is not offered.
- Licence: MetaVox is open source under AGPL-3.0 and free to use, with every feature included and no limit on how much metadata a migration creates. Its free tier is capped on the number of Team Folders it is assigned to; going past that blocks nothing, and MetaVox shows a notice in its own settings until the instance is covered by a commercial licence.
- It needs the Team folders app, which a migration into a Team Folder needs in any case.
When a job maps metadata
Section titled “When a job maps metadata”The metadata settings appear on a job when all four are true: the job is a Migration or Test Migration, its source is a SharePoint library or a OneDrive, its destination is a Nextcloud Team Folder, and MetaVox is installed. A file share has no SharePoint columns, and a user's personal files hold no MetaVox columns.
How the columns get to MetaVox
Section titled “How the columns get to MetaVox”Nothing happens to MetaVox when the job is saved: the work is done by SMART Migration while the job runs, library by library, in this order.
Read the library's columns
SMART Migration reads the SharePoint library's columns and their types — text, choice, date, number and so on — and its views.
Create the missing columns
With Map all and auto create missing columns, every column the destination Team Folder does not have in MetaVox yet is created there, with the same type, together with the SharePoint system columns ticked in the dialog. The other choices create nothing.
Fill them in for every file and folder
As each file and folder is written, its values are written into its MetaVox columns. A file whose values cannot be stored is a metadata warning — see the box at the end.
Recreate the views
With Migrate SharePoint Views on, each view of the library is created in MetaVox with its columns and its default sort order.
The columns belong to the Team Folder, not to the job: a second job into the same Team Folder finds them there, and Map all but only to existing columns fills them without creating any.
SharePoint metadata to MetaVox columns
Section titled “SharePoint metadata to MetaVox columns”The Metadata step of the job dialog decides which SharePoint columns follow the files:
| Choice | What it does |
|---|---|
| Map all and auto create missing columns | Every column of the library is mapped, and a column MetaVox does not have yet is created on the destination Team Folder, with the same type — text, choice, date, number and so on. The default. |
| Map all but only to existing columns | Every column is mapped onto the MetaVox columns the Team Folder already has. Nothing new is created. |
| Do not map columns | No metadata is carried over. |
With Map all and auto create missing columns, these SharePoint system columns can be created and mapped too:
| Column | On by default |
|---|---|
[SP Created By] and [SP Created] | Yes |
[SP Modified By] and [SP Modified] | Yes |
[SP Content-Type] | Yes |
[SP Retention Label] | No |
[SP Sensitivity Label] | No |
Migrate SharePoint views
Section titled “Migrate SharePoint views”Migrate SharePoint Views recreates each view of the library in MetaVox, with its columns and its default sort order. Grouping, filtering, totals, item limits and conditional formatting have no MetaVox equivalent and are dropped.
Map single columns: Metadata Mapping
Section titled “Map single columns: Metadata Mapping”Metadata Mapping, on the Metadata step in Advanced Settings (Metadata defaults on an Import job), fills MetaVox columns one by one. Write one mapping per line, both columns in square brackets:
[DestinationColumn]=[SourceColumn]copies the value of a source column, for example[Client]=[Customer].[DestinationColumn]=valuestores the same constant on every file, for example[Archive]=Yes.
A destination column that does not exist in MetaVox yet is created when the job runs, with the type of the source column it is mapped from.
Migrate Files With Metadata Warnings
On the Source step, in Advanced Settings. Left off — the default — a file whose metadata cannot be carried over cleanly, because the destination has no such column or will not accept the value, is reported as a warning and not written, so nothing arrives claiming to be a complete copy of something it is not. Switched on, the file is migrated anyway, without that metadata.
Files left out this way are listed on the File Issues tab, see File Issues
See also