Technology Services Group

OpenOverlay

Dynamic Overlays – Ensure Your Content is Always Protected OpenOverlay provides the ability to dynamically apply watermarks, headers and footers, and much more when documents are viewed or printed. Environments supported include: Documentum  Alfresco AWS/S3 and AWS/DynamoDB Azure/HDInsight Google/BigTable Hbase/Hadoop  Key Features Overlays added based on document type, attribute, user, group in real time Lightweight, […]

Alfresco Printing – What are the issues and options?

On a call last week with a long-time Alfresco client, much of the discussion was around printing and the different options.  While much of the information for different printing options exist within our products, this post will summarize for Alfresco clients the different issues and how the TSG approaches can provide a variety of different […]

Documentum Upgrade – Understanding all the Pieces

As mentioned in previous posts, many clients are struggling with the upgrade to Documentum 6.5.  Typically, the upgrade of the Documentum components are only one piece of what can be a difficult puzzle.  Upgrading servers, operating systems, databases, and document manipulation services all add a level of complexity and coordination.  This post will highlight typical […]

Documentum – EMC World/Momentum 2013 – TSG Recap

Thanks to all of you that again made our Momentum EMC World our most successful posting days.   This year was an interesting time.  It really made our day to get feedback that many of you look forward to the summaries as well as how the blogs throughout the year have helped with Documentum-related decisions throughout […]

TSG Open Source Product Plans

We just finished up our 3rd Quarter planning in regards to our product solutions.  Some highlights: OpenMigrate continues to be our top downloaded product.  Most of our effort in the 2nd quarter involved taking this enterprise class solution and make it easier to install and configure.  From discussions with users, our efforts have been a […]

Alfresco Consulting – Documentum Disruptor #2

We posted an article last week on how Alfresco and SharePoint were Disrupting Documentum.  The term disruptor is from the Innovators Dilemma business book and it relates to how difficult it is for one company to continue technology innovation over time and newcomers disrupt the industry.  In a phone discussion with one of the responders, […]

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 […]

Documentum to Alfresco Migration – TSG Compliance Solution for Regulated Industries

Last week we posted about solutions  and how Documentum and Alfresco are focused on providing solutions in different ways.  One major solution we see both Alfresco and Documentum targeting is Document Control/Compliance for life sciences, nuclear utilities and other regulated industries.  Typically control requirements affect the creation and changing of SOPs, Policies, Procedures, Test Methods, […]

TSG Announces Creation of Hadoop Practice

Open Source Hadoop becoming increasing popular for ECM customers Chicago, IL. – February 4, 2015 – Technology Services Group, Inc. (TSG), an open-source enterprise content management (ECM) solution provider, today announced the creation of a new practice area specifically focused on Hadoop and related technologies.

Enhancing Alfresco Share with HPI 2.1 – Search and Document Display

TSG will be conducting a Webinar with Alfresco on February 11 (Recording Posted) on how to enhance or extend Alfresco Share with HPI 2.1.  This post is the first in a series of posts on how HPI 2.1 can work with Share and will focus on Search and Document Display.

Alfresco and Change Management

One of the first ECM applications TSG ever developed for a client 15 years ago this month was the “Smart CR” where CR stood for change request.  When it comes to Change Management, we (TSG) have experienced a variety of approaches and best practices.  For this post, we will detail those best practices and how […]

Documentum, Document Control and Alfresco

I was talking to a Life Sciences client that was looking to move away from Documentum for Document Control and they were asking the logical question “Why haven’t more companies moved to Alfresco and Open Source?”  For this post, I will try to address some of the reasons as well as present some background on […]

Documentum Business Continuity – A Cached Content Approach

One of the more successful applications we see long-term Documentum customers implement successfully is a business continuity solution based on caching approved content to a separate “read-only” repositories.  This post will discuss the reasons for business continuity solutions and integration options for Documentum as well as business continuity war-stories from selective clients.

OpenText & Documentum Consulting

OpenText & Documentum Products and Consulting Services TSG has been working with Documentum software has since its infancy in the 1990’s. How many people remember EDMS 98, Accelera, or the first wind-blown Momentum in Miami in 1996? We were there! As Documentum, now part of OpenText, has aged, customers want improved capabilities that are just […]

Documentum Open Source Software

In talking with a new client last week, the client  asked “Why do you do Open Source software for Documentum, a commercial software package?”    As the only long-term Documentum partner to offer all of our software as Open Source, we get that question often.  I thought I would use this entry to explain our strategy […]

Enhancing Alfresco Share with HPI 2.1 – Document Processing

TSG will be conducting a Webinar with Alfresco on February 11 (Recording Posted) on how to enhance or extend Alfresco Share with HPI 2.1.  This post is the third in a series of posts on how HPI 2.1 can work with Share and will focus on Document Processing.

Alfresco / TSG Webinar Wrap Up – Using Alfresco for Controlled Documentation

Thanks for all those that attended the Alfresco Webinar – “Using Alfresco for Controlled Documentation”.  Leveraging our open source solutions (HPI, Active Wizard, OpenAnnotate, and OpenOverlay) continue to be great ways to further extend the capabilities of the Alfresco Platform, and addresses common document management requirements typically seen across a wide range of industries.

Products

TSG Products – “What’s Next for Enterprise Content Management” Has your organization struggled with ECM products that deliver a slightly enhanced “file manager” solution for every scenario? Looking for ways to add modern capabilities to your ECM infrastructure? Tired of paying maintenance and support for ECM interfaces that are “no longer being invested in?” Looking […]

Predictions for EMC Documentum in 2013

EMC made many significant announcements in 2012 (D2, xCP, D7) that has impacted their user base.  Now that the dust has settled, we are making the following predictions as we look forward into 2013:

Documentum Scanning – Trying TWAIN and other approaches

As we have talked about in other posts, sometimes Documentum users can get stuck in a word association game in regards to adding capabilities to Documentum.  Going off the Documentum product pricing sheet revels some common responses: Workflow -> BPM Migration -> Buldoser PDF Overlays -> PDF Aqua or new PDF Stamping Services Annotation -> […]

HPI to Integrate Seamlessly with Active Wizard

As described in a previous post, HPI (TSG’s open source High Performance Interface) is undergoing a facelift to beef up the search interface to allow advanced document processing options right from the search results screen.  Part of this effort will also include new actions to integrate with Active Wizard.

Alfresco versus Documentum for Controlled Documentation

Some of our larger regulated industry (Pharma, Utliity…) clients are looking into Alfresco to see if it could be used to manage their controlled documentation and potentially replace Documentum.  This post will present our most recent in-depth analysis based on common document control requirements.

Alfresco – Working with PDF and Renditions

One of the major recommendations we make for our clients is to leverage PDF as much as possible as both source documents and renditions within Alfresco.  This post will share some of our observations and lessons learned.

TSG Announces Ephesoft support for Documentum and Hadoop

Ephesoft Document Capture capabilities now available for Documentum and Hadoop Chicago, IL. – February 12, 2015 – Technology Services Group, Inc. (TSG), and open-source enterprise content management (ECM) solution provider, and Ephesoft, Inc., the creator of Smart Capture® ,  today announced Ephesoft support for Documentum and Hadoop.   

File Formats Lessons Learned – Legacy ECM Migrations

As we presented yesterday, one of the bigger issues with FileNet Migrations was clients that have leveraged the COLD format and how TSG has come up with our own adapter to help clients move away from FileNet COLD to a less proprietary PDF format.  The discussion got us thinking about what other formats need special […]

OpenContent Corporate Forms

Manage Forms and Approvals throughout the Organization OpenContent Corporate Forms allows organizations to electronically submit and approve any from any device connected to the network.  Rather than rely on out-dated client side components, the Corporate Form solution provides for web-based access and has been used successfully by large companies for all types of forms including […]

Documentum and SharePoint – Key differences for document control applications

We have recently begun working with a couple of clients on potential migration efforts from Documentum to SharePoint for their document control applications.  In preparing for these efforts, we are in the process of upgrading OpenContent, OpenMigrate and even parts of HPI to run on either SharePoint or Documentum.  For this post, we thought it […]

Documentum & Alfresco – Periodic Review And Document Obsoletion – TSG Compliance Solution

We are proud to announce that the TSG Compliance Solution now supports Periodic Reviews and Document Obsoletion. Both of these features are important for managing controlled documents, specifically Policies, Procedures and Forms. This post will provide a short explanation of these feature along with interface examples. Last, this post will also discuss ideas for potential future enhancements.

Alfresco Solutions from TSG

One of the more confusing terms with in the Alfresco ecosystem has always been solution.  Is an Alfresco solution a software product or consulting offering?  Is Case Management a solution or is it more infrastructure?  At TSG, our Alfresco Solutions are represented by business focused applications that are a mix of our enterprise class software, […]

DynamoDB and Hadoop – Why Big Data will disrupt Document Management

Back in the 80’s, the emergence and low cost of PC’s, network and relational databases combined to create the beginnings of modern image management systems.  Solutions and approaches gradually evolved to include documents and the creation of the ECM (enterprise content management/document management) industry.   Back in 2015, TSG began brainstorming about what’s next for the […]

Amazon DynamoDB – Can it do ECM?

In discussing our next steps as part of our Amazon Web Services practice, one exciting item TSG is pursuing this quarter will be focused on Amazon DynamoDB and adding Enterprise Content Management capabilities.  This post will begin a series of posts on our design and development activities to provide an OpenContent connection to Amazon DynamoDB.

Life Sciences Project Sampling

Technology Services Group offers many services and solutions to assist the Life Sciences Community. Consumer Search and Retrieve Application Clients typically spend a lot of money and effort developing a robust interface for their authors and approvers, but often this interface can be “too much” for users just looking to view and print approved documents. […]

Documentum D2 3.1 – What are some of the limitations?

Recently there has been a lot of buzz and marketing surrounding EMC Documentum’s user interface, D2.  Many clients have asked for information on the product, and we’ve spent some time doing our own evaluation and comparisons with other products. When weighing the costs and benefits of implementing D2 versus other available products like Webtop, TSG’s […]

Controlled Printing in Alfresco and Documentum

In recent conversations with many of our manufacturing clients, Controlled Printing has become a frequent topic of  conversation.  We often see controlled print requirements in systems responsible for managing documents and records to prove that goods are being manufactured and processes are being executed in a repeatable, quality manner (i.e. manufacturing of a widget, plant […]

Alfresco 2013 Summit – Recap

TSG attended the Alfresco Summit on November 12-15 as a Silver Sponsor.  This event was formerly known as Alfresco DevCon but has evolved to focus on not just development, but also the experience for end users as well as solutions built on Alfresco. This post will present some of our thoughts on the conference and […]

Documentum Consulting and Open Source

I had a good meeting last week with a potential new partner of TSG in regards to how to work together to offer Open Source solutions across our joint customer base.  While we have had many firms download our Open Source software (Crown Partners, CSC/FCG, IBM, PWC, Cognizant and EMC themselves to name a few), most […]

TSG Learning Zone Updated with HPI 2.1 Demos!

We have updated the TSG Learning Zone with videos showing off the latest HPI 2.1 release.  Click here to access the Learning Zone.  Be sure to view the following short (1-3 minute) videos to see the major functionality the HPI provides.  See the list below for links to the individual demos, as well as a […]

Documentum Upgrades – Handling eSignatures in Documentum 6.6+

Starting in Documentum Content Server 6.6, using the eSignature mechanism uses iText rather than PDF Fusion to create the electronic signature page. Documentum made this move to iText in order to be able to support creating eSignatures when the content server was running on a Unix/Linux environment, which was previously unsupported. Using the eSignature mechanism […]

Implementing a Controlled Documentation and Change Control Solution on Alfresco

TSG has been implementing Controlled Documentation systems since the inception of Document Management in the 1990’s. While the solution is tried and true, so many companies still struggle with how to manage their controlled documentation efficiently.  Our most recent implementation focuses on implementing the solution on the Alfresco platform for a fraction of the typical […]

Third Annual TSG Client Briefing – June 3rd – 2010

TSG will be holding our third annual client briefing on June 3, at the University of Chicago Gleacher Center from 9 to 4:30.  The briefing focuses on TSG facilitation of specific ECM topics with a focus on interaction between clients for experience, lessons learned and best practices.  Last year’s briefing included: Introductions – sharing “What […]

Increase in downloads of Documentum Open Source from TSG

Over the past couple of months we have noticed a marked increase in the number of downloads of our Open Source offerings for Documentum.  Comparing January to June, our downloads have increased 200%.  Without engaging in any scientific studies, we can’t help but wonder whether this increase is due to: Continued evolution of the Open […]

DynamoDB 11 Billion Benchmark Search Index Success!!! – Lessons Learned

TSG initiated our 11 Billion benchmark test on Friday, May 10th.  The first phase of the benchmark was aimed at building a large repository with our OpenMigrate ingestion tool and proving access for OpenContent Search, OpenContent Case and OpenAnnotate.  The initial ingestion phase concluded on May 17th with 11 Billion documents and ingestion speeds of […]