Introduction
This article contains information on ways to migrate data across from a Forcefield system to WMS Pro.
Each scenario will have some differences, depending on how the site is set up, and what features they are using in Forcefield, however the fundamental items such as Users, Profiles, and Controller connections are covered in this article, along with some information on other items.
It is important to note that V8 panels cannot be brought across to WMS Pro, so any V8 panels present in a Forcefield system will need to be upgraded to ChallengerPlus or Discovery for use with WMS Pro.
IMPORTANT - WMS Pro Knowledge:
It is important that anyone performing a migration has completed the latest WMS Pro training, and is familiar with WMS Pro operation, especially enrolling controllers, and creation and operation of CAGs and UAGs.
Online training can be found on our website, under Support > Training, or training can also be organised through our Distributors.
Link to the Training Portal-
New user? Signup now using code: WMSP2026
https://learn.aritech.com.au/self-signup/
Aspects of a Migration
There are a few aspects of a migration, and this section covers them in the recommended order.
The aim is getting the data across in the most efficient way possible. Since WMS Pro imports its data from the controllers themselves as the initial form of data import, that will be the place to start.
The process is straightforward, it is just important to ensure it is done in the right order.
1. Enroll the controllers into WMS Pro
Enroll controllers one at a time into WMS Pro, as described in the WMS Pro training, and WMS Pro Quick Start Guide.
Ensure each controller is enrolled, and has finished its initial retrieval from the controller before starting the next.
Enrolling the controllers will bring in all the users, with their credentials and permissions, into WMS Pro, and WMS Pro will automatically create all the CAGs required by these users.
2. Import User names
For most sites, this step will be needed. The scenarios where this is needed are as follows:
- This section is needed if the controllers have memory expanders, as user names are not stored in the controller if they have memory expanders installed, so the users will not have names in WMS Pro either.
- If the controllers don't have memory expanders and have less than 2000 users, then the user names will be stored in the controller, and WMS Pro will be able to bring those in when reading the import from the controller. However name length in the controller is limited, and so if a site still wishes to import the names across from Forcefield, then this step is still needed.
This section contains the process to export usernames from Forcefield, and then import them into WMS Pro.
Firstly the controllers must be enrolled, and all current programming retrieval into WMS Pro completed, as described in step 1 further above. This will ensure that the user's credentials / card data is in WMS Pro, and then we can perform the following to match up usernames to their card data.
Part A - Exporting users from Forcefield:
A user export from Forcefield is required to then be able to do a WMS Pro cardholder names import. This means that the manual user export feature in Forcefield must be both LICENSED and ENABLED in Forcefield.
Their license must have the "USER Imp/Exp MANUAL" as follows:
Then "Export User Data" must be enabled in Forcefield. This can be checked or set here:
- Go to Admin > Configuration > Forcefield Configuration
- Click the "User Settings" button
- Set "Export User Data" to "Manual" and click the save icon at the top
- A Reboot of Forcefield is required before this will work
After rebooting, you can then successfully perform a manual export by going to:
- Users > Transfer User Data > Export User Data
Leave all the fields blank as follows, and just select the "Export to" location for the export file:
And then press the Play button.
Forcefield will then export the users to a CSV file in the location specified.
This is an example of how the CSV file looks when opened in Excel (see example file attached at the end of this article for a full example). The columns that we will require are highlighted in grey here:
This data will then need to be manipulated manually in Excel into the correct columns and data that can be imported into WMS Pro - matching the WMS Pro CSV file import format shown below.
The spreadsheet format required:
WMS Pro requires the CSV file to be formatted in a specific way for the import to work.
An example of the usual WMS Pro cardholder import format is as follows:
However since Forcefield's export does not provide "Sitecode" and "Card number" fields, we can just use the Raw card data column, and leave "Cardformat", "Sitecode", and "Card number" blank.
This way, the users from the example spreadsheet shown above, could instead be just formatted as shown below, as this is enough for WMS Pro to match the card data, find the correct user, and apply the name.
This would then look as follows, with the right hand columns just left blank:
NOTE: All columns and column header names must match the exact column header names shown here, including capital / lowercase letters, and any spaces:
How to manually manipulate the Forcefield spreadsheet into the format for WMS Pro:
To manually manipulate the data from the Forcefield export spreadsheet ready for importing into WMS Pro, you can perform the following steps:
- Delete the entire FIRST row as it just contains "TIME OF EXPORT" information etc.
Then the following columns will be required from the Forcefield export, for the WMS Pro cardholder import, are:
- Column C --> Can be directly used as "Firstname" column
- Column D --> Can be directly used as "Lastname" column
- Column AM and AL --> Need to be combined into one column for Raw card data (see further below)
ALL other columns can now be deleted, leaving JUST these required columns left.
In our example used above, the reduced Forcefield export spreadsheet will now look as follows:
Now we need to combine the remaining columns C and D into the Raw card data.
To do this, in the cell E1, enter the following formula:
=D1 & "." & C1
This should look as follows:
When you hit ENTER, it will then apply, and you should now see:
Now to copy this formula down to all the other rows, select the cell E1 again, and then move to the square in the bottom right corner of the cell, as highlighted in green in the image below. Then drag this down to your very last cell, and it will fill all these cells automatically with the formula:
The spreadsheet should now look something like this:
Now we need to copy and paste this column with the values only, so that we can delete the original columns C and D.
To do this, select your entire column E, right click, and then choose "Copy":
Then select the next column's top cell, F1, and right click, and choose Paste Options: Paste special... Values - as shown here:
You should now have TWO columns with the card data, however the right hand column will contain just the actual card data, and not the formulas now:
Next we need to delete the columns we used to create this, columns C, D and E. Select those columns and delete them. The last column F should be kept, and it will move across into position of column C.
You should now have just the following columns:
Now we need to create our column headers, as follows:
NOTE: All columns and column header names must match the exact column header names shown here, including capital / lowercase letters, and any spaces:
To do this, insert a row above the first row, and enter the column headers shown, being sure to get them exactly the same as shown above, including the column headers for the columns we're not using.
Your spreadsheet should now look something like this:
This should now be correctly formatted, and can be exported to a CSV file from Excel.
To do this, go to File > Save a Copy
Then select the CSV comma delimited file format:
And click "Save".
Your file will now be saved in a .CSV file format that is ready to import into WMS Pro.
Example files are also attached to this article that can be downloaded for reference and experimentation.
Part B - Importing into WMS Pro
This section describes the process of importing the converted data into WMS Pro
- Log in to WMS Pro.
- Navigate to Cardholders.
- Click on 'Import cardholder names':
- Press the 'Choose file' button, and choose the file you saved in the previous section.
- Click the 'Import' button, and the import will occur.
The process is now complete.
NOTE:
User names will be matched to cardholders by their card data. So only users with card data will have their names matched up to the cardholders in WMS Pro.
Related information: Information on how to export User Names from CTPlus into WMS Pro can also be found here in this separate article:
WMS Pro - Importing CTPlus user names to cardholders
3. User CAG and UAG setup (similar to Forcefield Profiles)
For this section, it will be important to be up to date with your WMS Pro training, in regard to CAGs and UAGs, and be familiar with how these work, and how to create them.
Instead of the "Profiles" that Forcefield had, WMS Pro has CAGs (Controller Access Groups) and UAGs (Unified Access Groups).
The UAGs in particular are somewhat similar to "Profiles" in Forcefield.
When all the controllers were enrolled into WMS Pro, the CAGs will have been automatically created from the imported data from each of the controllers, and will be per controller.
The CAG contains each unique combination of Alarm Group, Door Group, and Floor Group that is assigned to any user on a specific controller (hence being called a "Controller Access Group").
Naming CAGs
By looking at what CAGs were auto created when you imported the controller, and what Alarm Group, Door Group, and Floor Group they have in them, you can now name these CAGs with meaningful names, for example "Management Staff", "Reception Staff", "Cleaners" etc.
To do this, you will likely need to refer back to the Forcefield programming names of these elements to confirm the names of the Alarm Groups, Door Groups and Floor Groups that correspond to the Alarm Group, Door Group, and Floor Group numbers that are referenced in the default created WMS Pro CAGs.
Note that you can use Forcefield's User Profile Report, found under Users > Profiles > User Profile Report, to help document how the Forcefield system was configured. The following report options are available from Forcefield:
Selecting a Report Type (depending on the level of detail you want), and leaving all other fields blank, will report on the entire system.
Once this has been done, and all controllers are enrolled, you can now create the UAGs that the site may need, by selecting the correct CAG for each controller. Follow the procedure described in the WMS Pro training / documentation to create the required UAGs.
IMPORTANT NOTE - UAG creation AFTER all controllerss are enrolled:
Note that UAGs should be created after all controllers are enrolled, as if you enroll more controllers after creating UAGs, for any users on those newly enrolled controllers, if their credentials match with users already in WMS Pro (ie they are the same user), then because WMS Pro needs to add the new CAG for this new controller for that user, WMS Pro will UN-LINK the currently assigned UAG from that user, and you will need to re-link those users to the correct UAG after you have updated the UAG to contain the correct CAG for the newly added controller.
For this reason, we don't recommend creating all your UAGs until all controllers that may have matching cardholders to other controllers are enrolled in WMS Pro. Until then, you can just use CAG assignment to users to control access, and create your UAGs after all controllers are enrolled.
When creating UAGs, the Forcefield User Profile Report, mentioned above, can also be useful at this stage as well.
4. Any Maps, and Automations will need to be manually re-created
WMS Pro has both Maps and Automations features, however the data from Forcefield is not able to be exported and converted directly into WMS Pro Maps or Automations.
However here is the recommended way to re-create these.
Maps:
- You can copy any image files used in the Forcefield maps
- These image files can then be edited if necessary, and imported into WMS Pro to be used in WMS Pro maps
- Then refer to the Forcefield maps, and re-create matching maps in WMS Pro
Automations:
- To re-create automations, you will need to refer to any existing Forcefield automations, and re-create these in WMS Pro.
5. Integrations
WMS Pro has more modern integration methods than Forcefield, with a REST API, and email sending.
These methods can address many integration requirements, for example, many systems that in the past required a serial connection (such as paging systems), also support receiving these same messages via email, and WMS Pro can now send these as emails to those systems.
As a general rule, the following would apply:
- Anything that previously used a serial port output, investigate if that system will accept email messages instead, and configure WMS Pro to send relevant emails to it.
- Other items that may access cardholder information, or other information, can usually be implemented using the WMS Pro API
The WMS Pro API consists of both a Cardholder API, and a Third party API.
WMS Pro API documentation and implementation information can be found by browsing to your WMS Pro server, with /apidoc/ added on the end, as follows:
https://wmspro_server_address/apidoc
Attachments:
Attachments are coming with example files of what Forcefield outputs, and what WMS Pro requires, in both CSV and Excel.
The attachments contain the following, that would be referred to in the following order:
- userexp - Forcefield output example.csv --> Sample of the output file directly from Forcefield
- userexp - Forcefield output in Excel example.xlsx --> Sample of the Forcefield output, in an Excel easily readible form
- Forcefield Users to WMS Pro import - formatted ready.xlsx --> Sample of a completed conversion in Excel, ready to save as a CSV file for WMS Pro
- Forcefield Users to WMS Pro import - formatted ready.csv --> Sample converted CSV file ready to import into WMS Pro
See below for the attached files: