IT Tips & Tricks

City Budget Data Migration: A LinkFixer Advanced Case Study

By Ed Clark

Published 22 September 2025

Data migrations often result in data loss, cause downtime and disruption, and can create costly setbacks for organizations. In Brentwood, Tennessee, the Assistant City Administrator, Jay Evans, successfully migrates critical budget documents while avoiding data loss from broken links — year after year. He kindly agreed to sit down with us and share his experience.

LinkTek: Jay, can you describe the specific steps of your migration process that were simplified by LinkFixer Advanced?

LinkFixer avoids the step of us having to go into every file and reestablish those links or have someone create a macro within each one of those files.

Jay Evans, Assistant City Administrator, Brentwood, Tennessee.

Jay: Sure. Once a year, for our city and our budget process, we have to migrate a lot of files over to a new folder for the new fiscal year. So, going from 2025 to 2026, for example. All of those documents have to be moved over to the new folder. With the old ones, obviously, the links have to be maintained. With the new documents, the links now have to point to the new folder because many of our documents are interlinked.

LinkFixer will go in and help us do that migration, and it avoids the step of us having to go into every file and reestablish those links or have someone create a macro within each one of those files. Try and do that every year. LinkFixer just does it automatically for us.

LinkTek: What impact did LinkFixer Advanced have on reducing broken links during your migration?

Jay: LinkFixer has saved me hours of work in migrating data over to the new folder. I was probably the only person in the city who had this task to do, and it was a burden every year. I had to make sure that I got each one of these files correct, and I didn’t miss any. When you use LinkFixer, it’ll do everything in the folder for you. You can run it once, spend a few minutes with the product, and then you’re moving on to the rest of your work. It saves me a lot of time — hours of work — every year.

It saves me a lot of time — hours of work — every year.

LinkTek: What was the situation like before using LinkFixer Advanced and how did it change after?

Jay: I may not be one of your more robust customers, where we’re using it all the time, and we have thousands of documents that we transition with links. We don’t use it that way.

There are hundreds or potentially thousands of links that are within these documents, and it avoids us having to manually do that work.

We go to it once a year when we migrate a specific set of documents for our budget process. But there are hundreds or potentially thousands of links that are within these documents, and it avoids us having to manually do that work. That’s what you’ll hear me talk about: this one time a year, it saves us a lot of time.

And the accuracy of your product is exceptional, so I can typically run it one time, and it does what it needs to do, and then I’m moving on. It really improves our process.

LinkTek: What features of LinkFixer Advanced did you find most beneficial for your organization?

Jay: I think Modify Links has been the one that we’ve gone to. It’s been sort of the easiest to navigate and the one that I queued in on. It was the easiest to use. So, I simply go and use the Modify Links feature every year.

I’m able to look and see how the program is going to run with the sample set, and if it looks like it’s doing what it needs to do, then I have it execute.

You have the opportunity to do a backup, you know, if you are using the Inoculate and Cure and all that. You can create backups before you do it, but for the most part, I’ve been able to rely on LinkFixer to just do it right the first time.

LinkTek: How has your team’s workload changed, and have there been any notable improvements in project turnaround times?

Jay: Our team largely relies upon me to do the migration, but now, when they open some of the documents within our folders that get migrated, they don’t have to worry about those links not being there or stumbling upon data that’s inaccurate because the links weren’t migrated and they’re still pointing back to the old data set.

For my staff, the reliability that they have — the trust factor they have, and everything being accurate — went up tremendously.

So, for me, my workload decreased greatly. For my staff, the reliability that they have — the trust factor they have, and everything being accurate — went up tremendously.

LinkTek: Thanks for sharing your experience, Jay.

Jay: I’m happy to help and glad you reached out, because, again, LinkFixer Advanced has been very helpful to us. I know that for people who have a similar need — knowing about your product and simply making their lives easier — hey, I’m happy to help do that.

LinkTek: Thank you so much for your time, Jay, and have a wonderful day!