Every Notes application encodes years of institutional knowledge — in forms, views, agents, and ACLs. Marcus, Kinetech's AI Mendix developer, reads that design directly and rebuilds each living app as a modern Mendix application: gated by your approvals, proven with published evidence, committed to your own Mendix Team Server.
01 · The clock
Domino isn't going dark tomorrow — that's exactly the trap. HCL keeps selling runway: paid Extended Support for Domino v9/v10 now runs to June 2030, feature-frozen, per HCL's published lifecycle policy. Meanwhile the cost of standing still compounds.
02 · The differentiator
A Notes application's entire design exports to DXL — Domino's own XML format. Forms, views, agents, script libraries, ACLs: all of it machine-readable. Marcus reads that export and derives the full functional specification of each app — no workshops spent asking users to remember how a 2004 form works.
| Notes artifact | What Marcus extracts | Where it lands in Mendix |
|---|---|---|
| Forms & subforms | Field definitions, types, defaults, validation @formulas, computed fields | Entities and attributes; pages; validation microflows |
| Views & folders | Selection formulas, columns, sorting, categorization | Filtered data grids with server-side XPath |
| LotusScript agents & script libraries | Business logic, scheduled jobs, mail handling | Microflows and scheduled events |
| @formula logic | Field defaults, input translation, hide-when rules | Expressions, conditional visibility, validation rules |
| ACLs & roles | Access levels, roles, group usage | Module roles and entity access rules |
| Reader / Author fields | Per-document security — who can see and edit each record | XPath row-level constraints, verified by automated negative tests |
| Response hierarchies | Parent–child document structures | Entity associations |
| Rich text & attachments | Content, embedded files, doclinks | Rich-text fields plus first-class file documents |
Why this matters: assessment tools that inventory Notes estates exist. What has not existed is a developer that reads the design and then does the rebuild — with every migrated app tested per role, documented, and delivered as standard Mendix in your repository. That's Marcus.
03 · How a migration runs
Per Panagenda's migration research, 40% or more of a mature Notes estate is typically inactive. Rebuilding dead apps is waste — so the first deliverable is a scored inventory, not code.
The same four approval gates that govern every Marcus engagement govern each migrated app — held by you:
The extracted specification of each Notes app — what it does, who uses it, what carries forward — approved by you before a line of the model is written.
The translated security model — ACL roles and Reader/Author behavior mapped to Mendix roles and row-level constraints — presented in plain English for sign-off.
Modern, branded design directions presented before pages are generated. Your users finally leave the beige Notes client behind — you pick what they land on.
Each app reaches you only after all quality gates pass; it cuts over only when you accept it, evidence in hand.
04 · The date
Here is the commitment we will put in writing. The assessment does not end with a range — it ends with a date, sized from your actual extracted complexity. Miss that date and the assessment fee comes back. We can promise a date because we never quote a calendar before reading your source.
The assessment names the date. Miss it, and the assessment fee comes back.
That is a real term, not a slide. It is affordable to us for one reason: the clock below starts only when a complete artifact pack is in our hands, and it pauses only for your own approval gates.
| One Notes application and its NSF set | Complete artifact pack → UAT-ready |
|---|---|
| Compact — ≤20 forms, ≤25 views, no agents of consequence | 2–3 weeks |
| Departmental — 20–60 forms, 25–80 views, scheduled agents, 2–4 integrations | 4–6 weeks · ~30 days typical |
| Load-bearing — 60+ forms, multiple NSFs, heavy LotusScript or Java agents, mail-in workflow | 8–12 weeks |
| Each further NSF in the same estate | 30–40% faster |
Sizing model, not a price list — the assessment reads your actual source and returns one date. Bands assume a single rebuild boundary agreed at the scope gate.
The date is only honest if the inputs are complete, so here is the whole list up front. Nothing on it is unusual, and most of it exists already.
Three approval gates are yours: scope, permission ratification, design sign-off. We answer each within three business days. Time beyond that on your side moves the date by exactly that much — and nothing else does.
Production cutover on your change calendar. SSO and network provisioning by your IT. Third-party licenses or vendor contracts we don't control. Remediation of source-data quality problems the assessment flagged. Anything added after the scope gate.
Functional parity against the approved specification, running on your migrated data in a parallel environment, with production security enforced and tested per role, all nine quality gates green, and documentation published. Your users click through it.
DXL is genuinely readable, and that is what makes the date possible. What moves a Domino date is rich text and attachments — volume, and the fidelity you actually need — reader and author-name security that has to be re-expressed as row-level rules rather than copied, and mail-driven workflow conventions that become a real workflow engine. That last one is a better outcome, but it is a design conversation, not a translation.
05 · Why Mendix
Most modernization funnels push Notes estates toward a scatter of forms, flows, and lists. Notes apps deserve a platform that matches their shape: real data models, real workflow, and — critically — real per-record security.
06 · Straight talk
| Area | The honest position |
|---|---|
| Data & documents | NSF is schemaless — documents in one database can carry different fields. Marcus profiles the data as it actually exists, derives the schema from real usage, and surfaces the exceptions for a decision instead of silently dropping them. |
| Encrypted fields | Field-level encryption needs the key holders involved before migration. We identify encrypted fields in the assessment so this is planned, never discovered. |
| Rich text & doclinks | Conversion to modern rich text is faithful for content and attachments; doclinks and embedded objects are lossy at the margins. The original NSF is archived read-only as the system of record — nothing is destroyed. |
| Replication & offline | Full peer replication has no modern equivalent — and for most estates, always-on connectivity made the need obsolete. Where offline is genuinely required, Mendix offline-first mobile covers structured use cases. We'll tell you which yours is. |
| Mail-in databases | Mail-triggered workflows are redesigned onto modern intake — REST endpoints, email integration, workflow triggers — not auto-converted. Redesign is stated in the spec you approve. |
| The dead 40% | Inactive apps get archived, not rebuilt. You pay to modernize what the business uses — the assessment proves which is which with usage data, not opinions. |
07 · Quality & security
Watch real build evidence land on the live Build Console, and see the delivery lifecycle at our interactive explainer.
08 · Engagement & pricing
DXL export and automated read of your estate: a scored inventory (rebuild / retire / archive), complexity and risk flags (encrypted fields, heavy agents, doclink density), and fixed-bid quotes for the first rebuild wave.
Credited toward onboarding if you proceed.
Each app quoted from its actual extracted complexity — not a day-rate guess. Built, tested per role, documented, and delivered through the approval gates with published evidence.
Best for a first wave of 3–10 apps.
For 20+ live apps: a Marcus instance works your migration backlog continuously. Priced on what the work is, how many lanes run in parallel, and how fast you need it — always with Kinetech engineer review and an escalation SLA.
Bring your own Claude access: roughly 15–25% off the monthly.
Every figure here is an indicative range; your actual range is confirmed in writing before anything is charged. On bundled plans, heavy build months may incur metered usage beyond the included allowance; your quote states the allowance plainly. Your applications, models, and repositories are contractually yours.
09 · The questions you should ask
This is the objection that has killed Notes migrations for twenty years, and it's why we lead with it. Reader and Author fields are readable per document in the DXL and via the Domino API; they map to Mendix XPath row-level constraints enforced at the database-query level. The difference with Marcus: the mapping isn't asserted, it's tested — automated journeys per role including negative tests that prove protected documents stay invisible. You ratify the translated permission model before build, and the test evidence is published with the release.
It can, if done naively — migration specialists have warned about exactly this for years. Marcus profiles the actual documents, not just the form design: which fields exist in practice, where documents diverge from the current form, where types are inconsistent. The derived schema reflects the data as used, and the exceptions come to you as decisions in the spec — mapped, defaulted, or archived — before anything is migrated.
Only if you rebuild everything by hand — the Zurich case study's human team pace was eight complex apps in twelve months. Two things change the math: triage (typically 40%+ of a mature estate is inactive per Panagenda, and a further tranche are simple trackers) and an AI developer that works from the extracted design continuously instead of re-discovering each app in workshops. The assessment gives you a real per-wave timeline based on your actual estate, not an industry average.
Living data migrates into the new app. Historic documents stay in the NSF, archived read-only as the system of record — retrievable, auditable, and no longer maintained as an application. We don't charge you to rebuild history, and we don't pretend deleting it is an option for regulated estates.
That's runway, not a destination — it's paid, feature-frozen, and the CCB/DLAU licensing regime keeps counting your users while the LotusScript talent pool keeps shrinking. Extended support is actually the ideal window: migrate deliberately, wave by wave, with the old estate still safely running — instead of an emergency rebuild in 2029 at whatever it costs then.
Better than the original apps, honestly. Every migrated app carries a hash-chained audit ledger of who approved each permission and scope decision, per-build test and scan evidence, and 100% in-model documentation. When an auditor asks how a Notes ACL became a Mendix access rule, the answer is a report — the extraction, the mapping, your ratification, and the tests — not an archaeology project.
For simple discussion databases and document libraries, honestly, that can be fine — and the assessment will say so where it's true. Where it breaks down is exactly where Notes apps are valuable: per-document security, multi-step approval workflow, and relational structure. Those become a scatter of forms, flows, and lists with security rebuilt by hand in each. Mendix keeps each app a coherent application — data model, workflow, and row-level security in one governed, testable unit.
You do — full stop. Standard Mendix applications in your Team Server, on your Mendix licenses, with documentation and test suites included. Cancel any time and your team or any Mendix partner continues in Studio Pro exactly where Marcus left off. The archived NSFs remain yours too.
10 · Next step
Pick a workflow app, a tracking database, and your hairiest form. We'll run the extraction and return the scored specs — what carries forward, what changes, and a fixed price to rebuild each — inside two weeks. Judge the approach on your own estate, not on a slide.
Marc Lehane · Solutions Architect / CTO, Kinetech · [email protected]
Kinetech Cloud · San Antonio, TX · How we deliver · Live Build Console
You are reading Your platform — deeper detail on step 4, Why now?.
That is the pressure. What it costs to answer it is not one number — three things move it.