Many users rely on PDF viewing, annotation, and manipulation tools when working with documents, especially in case management scenarios such as policy and claim document management within the Insurance industry. In many of these systems, users are forced to download PDFs to the local machine in order to work with the document within Adobe Acrobat. However, with modern browser technologies, it is possible to streamline this process by doing more in the web browser, side-stepping the need to ... [Continue Reading]
Migrating FileNet with Daeja Annotations to AWS S3
Currently TSG is working with several clients who are looking to move away from FileNet to AWS S3 and/or a modern ECM. A unique requirements is that the migration includes both documents and annotations. In a previous post, we wrote about migrating from FileNet to AWS S3 and focused on how to move the documents with conversion of proprietary TIFF to PDF. For this post we will address moving the annotations for those clients with a Daeja viewer annotations to a more standard, non-proprietary ... [Continue Reading]
Adobe Form Integration – Now Available from Active Wizard
We've recently added the ability for an Active Wizard form to use an Adobe Form as a template for PDF output. ... [Continue Reading]
Gartner ECM Magic Quadrant – Thoughts for 2014
We last posted our thoughts about the Gartner review of the ECM industry back in 2011. With the updated report released (EMC offers a download here), we thought we would share our thoughts for clients evaluating ECM tools. As we did back in 2011, we will not try to cover all of the ECM vendors but focus on certain ones based on our experience. ... [Continue Reading]
Documentum and Alfresco – Electronic Forms and Workflow User Requirements
We met with a client this week that is evaluating the Active Wizard for an electronic forms infrastructure to replace many paper, Word and PDF forms within the organization. The Active Wizard is TSG’s most popular Open Source offering (currently on version 4.0). This post will present the “high priority” requirements along with our thoughts and capabilities of the Active Wizard. ... [Continue Reading]
Digital Asset Management using CMIS – Adobe Drive and Alfresco
TSG recently worked with a client with requirements to store Adobe InDesign files within Alfresco. Adobe InDesign allows for the design and creation of various page layouts for print or digital distribution. Pages may be comprised of various components, including fonts, images, videos, and audio. Hence, a single InDesign file may be contain a single page layout, with pointers to multiple source files from various locations. ... [Continue Reading]
Adobe Livecycle and ActiveWizard Comparison
Similar to our Open Source efforts, most of our ideas for posts come from clients. For this post, we will address a question from a client evaluating Adobe LiveCycle ES2 and TSG’s Active Wizard as part of a forms effort. “In a nutshell, what are the differences between Adobe LiveCycle and Active Wizard?” This is a difficult question for a few reasons: ... [Continue Reading]
Flex Applications and Security Constraints
To give an update on the Active Wizard Enhancements we were working on last month, we recently finished up all development and testing of the Flex-based checkin/checkout interface against Documentum. We delivered to our client this week, but I wanted to share some of the challenges we ran into, specifically related to running an application using Flash. ... [Continue Reading]
Active Wizard Flex Interface – Upcoming Enhancements
One of our current Active Wizard clients is making the move from the classic ActiveFlow component of the Active Wizard to the new Flex-based ActiveFlow component, for filling out their forms. The Flex ActiveFlow is based on our AWLite product and as mentioned in a previous post, allows for a streamlined interface that is more user-friendly and intuitive. ... [Continue Reading]
Documentum Transformation Services (DTS) – Alternative Approaches with Adobe LiveCycle and OpenOffice
Since the very first Momentum (1996 in a very windy Miami), the Documentum user community has pushed for a more reliable means to convert mostly Microsoft office documents into PDF. Back then, during a wrap-up luncheon, the feedback on AutoRender ( a previous incarnation of DTS) was anything but positive. Similar to some complaints today, some of the main complaints included: Having to monitor/reboot the AutoRender Server throughout the day Unreliable PDF Transformation ... [Continue Reading]
Documentum Annotation – OpenAnnotate
Clients often struggle with adding simple annotation capabilities to Documentum or Alfresco. Brava, PDF Annotation Services, Snowbound and Annodoc are all solutions we see regularly at clients. Issues with these solutions include: Price – per user licensing can be difficult to justify for casual or external users. Support – most tools require a client side component that can be difficult to deploy or support. Based on client requests, TSG has developed a dramatically different solution.. ... [Continue Reading]
Documentum – What’s Next Updated for 2010
Back in 2007, we started offering a presentation for clients, “What’s Next for Documentum?” The presentation focused on what mature Documentum clients are doing “next”. Typically, mature customers: have an existing production install of Documentum have implemented tools “out of the box” with some or extensive customizations have had some success ….and are looking for “What do I do Next?” This post will share new, innovative or just different items we see our clients doing or considering ... [Continue Reading]
Creating Active Wizard Forms Outside Documentum – AWLite
Clients who use the Active Wizard for forms and workflow systems often wonder if third party users or other users outside Documentum can participate in the form creation process. With our new Active Wizard Lite (AWLite) product, it is now possible for non-Documentum users can easily fill out dynamic Active Wizard forms! We've seen the following scenarios over the past few months: Anonymous External Users One of our current Active Wizard clients is now using AWLite for filling out building ... [Continue Reading]
PDF Annotation Tools That Work Beyond Documentum 5.3
Over the years, a variety of software tools have become available for integrating PDF annotation functionality into the Documentum client suite. Some of these tools include Brava!, AnnoDoc, Snowbound, and Documentum PDF Annotation Services. Each product has its own feature set, but all provide the ability to mark up PDF documents and store the annotations alongside the document in the Documentum repository. Each product has a client component that integrates with Documentum Webtop to provide ... [Continue Reading]
Working with Adobe Flex and iframes
As part of the upcoming Active Wizard 4.0 release, and as a result of a client's requirement, we recently added a new input type: WYSIWYG. The WYSIWYG input type allows users to style and format text just like in a word processing application. After evaluating some of the popular HTML/JavaScript based editors we finally decided on FCKEditor (now CKEditor.) Another new feature of Active Wizard 4.0 is an Adobe Flex based Active Form component. Integrating these two new features proved to be quite ... [Continue Reading]
Adobe Livecycle PDF Workflow Automation
We recently had a client ask us to automate the conversion of PDF to PNG images as part of their business process. Working with PDF files usually involves the time-intensive manual process of opening the PDF with Adobe Acrobat to make changes. Their process involved converting hundreds of PDF files into individual PNG images for each page, all within a few seconds of upload. With Adobe Livecycle this entire process was automated without writing a single line of code. Leveraging the Adobe ... [Continue Reading]
