Comparing documents for differences is a common request with our Compliance clients as well as Legal and other customers.  Based on success at one of our clients, TSG has integrated industry leader Workshare Compare with OpenContent to provide document comparison capabilities for HPI or custom built applications on Documentum, Alfresco or Hadoop.  This post will present the integration along with a screencam of the beta implementation for HPI.

WorkShare Compare – Where it is needed?

Workshare Compare makes the process of editing, revising and comparing documents fast and efficient.  WorkShare provides a differences document when comparing two documents or versions to quickly identify changes.  While Microsoft Word can operate in “Track Changes” mode, issues with relying on only Word can include:

• Acceptance – when a change is accepted or the document is edited without Track Changes on, identifying changes can only be accomplished by a manual comparison of the document.
• Multiple Versions – in a redline review, sometimes documents go through significantly more than one revision.  Word does not provide and easy capability to compare between versions and across versions.

For ECM customers, some relevant examples include:

• Legal/Contract Management – to compare contracts including template, initially populated document and final documents.
• Compliance – documents go through many edit cycles between review and approval. Workshare can provide the ability to compare versions to automatically identify changes to speed the approval process.
• Insurance – similar to legal, the ability to compare documents during an editing as well as review/approval cycle.

HPI and OpenContent – Initial Implementation of WorkShare Compare

Workshare Compare provides a server that, when given two files, can return the delta view file.  The delta view provides redlined differences in the file, showing what has been added and removed between each version of the document. Workshare Compare also inserts a legend on the last page of the document so the user can easily reference what each type of markup means.

TSG has built an OpenContent adapter to allow two documents to be compared from the repository (Documentum, Alfresco or Hadoop), initiate the comparison by sending the documents to Workshare Compare, and finally stream back the delta view document.

For HPI, we think the best place to put this capability is within our “View Versions” document action.  The processing can be seen below in this ScreenCam.

Summary

The ability to compare documents between versions is a common request from our clients.  TSG has integrated WorkShare Compare as an industry leading solution for Documentum, Alfresco or Hadoop users.  Let us know your thoughts below.