My Documentum for SharePoint Web Parts

For a recent client, we installed the latest release of My Documentum for SharePoint (MDSP).  This post will discuss our thoughts on the tool and our implementation experience.

Overall, we thought the latest release of MDSP offered a great deal of flexibility over earlier versions. Whereas the previous release of the web parts really had no configuration capabilities, the 6.6 release provides options for configuring functions and displaying folders and documents.   For our client, we leveraged this flexibility to customize the Library web part to display only folders and documents of a particular type.

Another area we customized was workflow. The Library web part does not provide the capability out of the box to launch a workflow in Documentum but it does provide the ability to launch java script from a new customizable right-click menu. Using this API, we were able to build a connector to ActiveWizard and start a workflow for the document selected in the web part.

Custom Business Logic

Unfortunately, there is still no way to add custom business logic to the functions like in Documentum’s other user interfaces.   As we mentioned at EMC World 2010, the lack of a software development kit for MDSP has proven itself frustrating for typical Webtop users that are used to custom logic for a variety of specific functions including:

• Attribute logic
• Checkin/Checkout logic
• Folder logic
• Security logic

Some of this can be accomplished with the service layer, but this approach only relies on the back-end and does not prompt the user for data inputs.  For Webtop customers looking to move to MDSP, custom logic written into Webtop does not transfer to the Library web part.  For our client, we chose to work around this limitation limiting usage of the web parts to read-only consumer functions.

If you have tried out the 6.6 web parts, the Library, Search, and My Favorites, we’d love to have you post your impressions as well.