Technology Services Group

Documentum – Understanding DQL’s Performance Limitation with xPlore

Retrieving data from a Documentum Repository using DQL is a common and robust process with Documentum.  With addition of the xPlore search engine, there are some challenges that experienced DQL users may find unique.  This post will discuss our experience with DQL and xPlore.

Documentum xPlore Deployment – Lessons Learned from Pharma Implementaion

We’re working with a large Pharmaceutical company to install Documentum xPlore as a replacement for FAST.  We’ve just finished the QA environment deployment, and we’re planning for the Production deployment in mid-April.  For this post, we are going to discuss the cutover strategy as well as some lessons learned from the project.

Documentum xPlore – Admin Interface Review

We recently installed xPlore 1.0 SP1 in our environment in order to support a client installation, and we thought we’d share our thoughts on the Documentum xPlore Administrator application.

Documentum Upgrade to 6.7 – a simple approach

Back in July, we wrote a lessons learned post regarding upgrading from Documentum 6.5 to Documentum 6.7.   We have a client that recently completed, by himself, a Documentum upgrade from 6.5 SP3 to 6.7 SP1.  While TSG often assists clients in the Documentum upgrade process, some clients are very capable of performing upgrades on their […]

Documentum – Upgrading to Documentum 7 in Three Weeks

Many of our clients have end of year deadlines for projects. One of our newest clients contacted us with an unprecedented challenge – could we upgrade them from 32-bit Documentum 6.5 SP1 to 64-bit Documentum 7.0 Patch 12 by early December given availability of certain funds.  This post will present the project and some best […]

Documentum – Momentum EMC World 2014 – Day 1 – Content Bridge and DEMA

I attended two interesting presentations on this first day.  Chicago Bridge and Iron’s Mark Weaver presented on “Migration and Transformation: Optimizing Complex Migrations at CB & I”.  Later in the day, EMC’s Chris Dyde presented on “Documentum Enterprise Migration Appliance – Deep Dive”.  This post will summarize thoughts on the two presentations but mostly focus […]

Documentum Performance – Search, Retrieval and Inbox

I was talking to a client last week that was struggling with their Documentum system performance.  This client had recently brought in Documentum Consulting, and having been unsuccessful in improving performance, was concerned that there might be nothing left to do.  This post will focus on innovative things TSG has done for clients in regards […]

Alfresco 4.0 – New Feature Comparison to Documentum (Part 1)

The Alfresco 4.0 Community Edition has been out since October, with an upcoming Enterprise release in the next month or so.  Alfresco has dubbed Alfresco 4.0 as  “the most significant release” of Alfresco to date.  Instead of summarizing the major new functionality features and enhancements, below are some new features in the core Alfresco repository […]

Documentum 6.5 to 6.7 Upgrade Lessons Learned

TSG  recently assisted a client with upgrading their Documentum 6.5 environment to 6.7. Products included Content Server, xPlore, Business Process Manager (BPM), Content Transformation Services (ADTS, AVTS, MTS), DA, Webtop, Records Manager, Retention Policy Services (RPS), Archive Services for Reports (ASR), and TaskSpace. The client also runs TSG’s High Performance Interface (HPI) and OpenContent products.

Documentum/Momentum EMC World Prep

The agenda for Momentum, the Documentum portion of EMC World, has recently been posted (http://www.emcworld.com/images/Momentum_2011_Agenda-master4webpage.pdf).  For this post, we thought we would highlight things we (TSG) or our typical clients attend.   Overall, EMC has divided the sessions into “tracks” focused on Architecture/Best Practices, ECM, Software Developer, Information Governance, Case Management, User Group, Capture and Labs.  

Documentum Search – How to get around the user request of “I just want a search like Google”

Often times Documentum users, frustrated with Webtop Search or Advanced Search will request “Can we just have a Google Search?”.   This post will provide input to Documentum developers on how to best address this ongoing request.  While this post is specifically focused on Documentum developers, lessons learned about interface design apply to our Alfresco and […]

Documentum – Webtop and OpenContent Search Comparison

Performance and ease of use in a search interface is often one of the highest concerns our clients have when building an ECM system.  Back in 2012, we did a Search comparison between Webtop and OpenContent Search (then called HPI).  As part of our 2018 Making Documentum Better blog series, we thought we’d update the […]

Elastic Services for ECM – TSG OpenContent Roadmap

Recently, TSG has seen increased interest in our Elasticsearch capabilities, particularly as it related to our 11 Billion Document Benchmark on AWS.  As part of our product roadmap this quarter, TSG is announcing the formalization of our OpenContent Elastic Services as well as some new features that we are adding to our work with the […]

OpenContent Solr Services – New TSG Product Offering

As part of our campaign to make Documentum better, TSG is announcing the formalization of our OpenContent Solr Services as well as some new features that we are adding to our work with Solr.  We have been working with Lucene and later Solr for over 12 years but have recently discovered several client scenarios and […]

Documentum Webtop 5.3 running on Documentum Content Server 6.x

We stumbled across a pretty vague reference in the cross-product dependency guide for Documentum 6.7 SP1 (on page 245) for Webtop (emphasis ours) “Note: Documentum Collaborative Services 5.3 DAR is installed with Content Server 6.7 SP1 repository so Webtop 5.3 & 5.3 SPx will work with Content Server 6.7 SP1.   If Documentum Collaborative Services (formerly […]

Documentum Support Ending in 2018

Support for Documentum Content Server 6.7 and related products (Webtop, TCS, ADTS, DA, etc.) reach end of life on April 30, 2018. Additionally Support for Documentum Compliance Manager (DCM) – all released versions – ends December 31, 2018. This has significant impacts for any clients but particularly regulated clients that have delayed upgrading.  While there […]

Enterprise Search – Content Management Thoughts

Many clients are struggling with the concept of Enterprise Search.  While the last post  discussed ways to improve search results, this post will discuss thoughts and experience with a recent client focused on Enterprise Search.

Documentum Alternatives and Disruptors – Alfresco or SharePoint?

I was at a Documentum client this week that is reviewing their ECM strategy as part of planning for 2012 and 2013.  Given a somewhat difficult relationship with EMC due to a contentious  software audit, the client wanted to review alternatives and consider a Documentum migration to a new ECM system as an alternative to […]

Documentum – Making it Better with an OpenContent Search Consumer Portal

One of our most popular methods to make Documentum better for our clients is to implement a consumer portal application based on Open Content Search.  This consumer portal is typically a simplified search and retrieve interface based on a read-only cache of documents and metadata outside of the Documentum repository.  TSG has implemented multiple consumer portal […]

Alfresco Sales Kick-off Thoughts

TSG just got back from the 2011 Alfresco Sales Kick-off event in Orlando last month.  This post will discuss some of our thoughts in regards to the Alfresco team, product updates and partners.

Momentum 2010 Recap – Virtual Review – Current Priorities for IIG

While TSG didn’t attend Momentum in Lisbon this year, we did try the new “Virtual Momentum” offered to remote workers.  While the interface was sometimes slightly glitchy during normal business hours (viewing over the weekend worked best), the ability to see presentations recorded and synched to slides did work.  For the viewing of Rick Devenuti’s […]

Virtual Momentum Lisbon 2010 and Midwest Documentum User Group

One last reminder – Midwest Documentum User Group (MWDUG) is coming up this Friday, October 29th, in downtown Chicago – presentations will include American Electric Power, United Airlines, Documentum Roadmap as well as others.  There are still spots open if you are interested in attending.  http://www.mwdug.com As we were talking to users outside of the […]

Moving off of Documentum – OpenText Marketing goes on the defensive

Some interesting back and forth on CMSWire over the last two weeks around Documentum and OpenText.  On October 11th, Joe Shepley from Doculabs posted on planning an exit strategy from Documentum.  On October 26th, Stephen Ludlow, Senior Director, Enterprise Product Marketing, OpenText, was interviewed with his thoughts on Joe’s article.  This rather long post will present our […]

Documentum sold to OpenText – Detailed Analysis and Predictions

Since it was announced on Monday, September 12th that OpenText was buying the ECD Division (which includes Documentum) from EMC/Dell, we have conducted multiple conversations with customers as well as current and former employees of both Documentum and OpenText.  This post will present our summarized analysis and predictions on the purchase by OpenText.  Documentum purchase by […]

EMC World 2016 – Vision and Road Maps – EMC Documentum Platform

Began EMC World on Monday morning at 8:30 with Patrick Walsh and Tara Shaw presentation on the Documentum road map.  Had to miss the Documentum 7.3 technical session but hoping to capture that content from one of our clients (very similar – thanks Mark!!).  This post will present thoughts on the session.

Documentum – Momentum EMC World 2014 Recap – Some bunts, hits as well as some swings

In talking about our overall thoughts of EMC World and Momentum 2014, I thought I would resurrect our baseball analogy from where we felt Documentum was too often swinging for the fences with grandiose product plans and relationships that were turning into more strikeouts than runs.  As we mentioned in 2013, we were impressed with […]

Documentum purchase by OpenText finalized – Detailed Analysis and Predictions

Two weeks ago on 1/23/17 Documentum officially became part of OpenText.  Most of the analysts, including all of us at TSG, have been recommending clients “wait and see” in regards to how OpenText accommodates their new acquisition.  This post will share our analysis and predictions based on our review of OpenText’s initial statements since the […]

Documentum – What is the business case to replace it?

Last week after meeting with some FileNet customers, we posted on the developing a business case to replace FileNet.  Some of the feedback we got was that the article could be applied to other ECM tools, particularly from Documentum customers.  This post will discuss the development of a business case with both a hard and […]

Documentum D7 – Initial Thoughts

As many Documentum customers know, the end of 2012 saw the initial official release of Documentum D7, something that was announced back at EMC World in May.  We have recently been evaluating the release to determine what’s new, what’s changed, and what the potential impacts could be for our clients as they plan for the […]

Documentum D2 vs. HPI – A Closer Look at Search

Earlier this year, we posted about HPI Search compared to Documentum Webtop and D2 as well as our thoughts around some of the technical issues with D2. For this post, we thought we’d take a closer look at the options for search with D2 as compared to HPI.

ECM Sales Myths for 2019

In the hunt for “what to talk to customers about next”, we often see many of the ECM vendor sales teams get behind a concept, or technology, that can be marketed easily but isn’t always something clients eventually do or are successful implementing.  For this post, we will list some of the myths (including a […]

Documentum, SharePoint, OpenSearch and cross-repository searching

Because clients often leverage SharePoint as their company Intranet, many consider configuring SharePoint as a search portal for external repositories. This approach allows users to use one central interface for searching and retrieving content.  While Documentum provides the MyDocumentum for SharePoint product to provide search access to Documentum, we are seeing more clients wanting a […]

Documentum D2 vs. HPI – Administration

Both TSG’s High Performance Interface (HPI) and Documentum D2 are driven by extensive configurations made in an administration module.  In this post, we will overview the administration components available in HPI and D2 and demo making a search form configuration update in both applications.

Documentum Top Tips for 2012

One of our more popular posts has been our “Top Tips for Documentum” last posted in 2010.  For this post, we will update the tips as well as add some best practices as clients prep for 2012 planning.

Documentum Futures – OpenText versus Doculabs

Some the most popular posts in the ECM/CPS space are typically when an analyst takes a strong stance on a vendor.  Joe Shepley’s post for CMSWire back in November – OpenTextand Documentum – Still not buying it – was one of those posts.  Joe took a pretty aggressive stand on his thoughts on the future […]

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 […]

EMC Documentum Search Services (DSS) Beta Recap

Over the past few months, TSG has been able to sit in on the DSS Beta program as a read only participant.  The DSS beta completed last week, and it’s been valuable to hear how the beta has progressed.  From what we’ve heard, the DSS software was successful for the customers participating in the beta. […]

Documentum Search – Lucene, FAST, Verity, Google and upcoming DSS

Since the new Documentum Search Services beta program just started last week, we thought we would share some of TSG’s thoughts on full-text search and our plans to add Lucene capabilities to our open source offerings. Documentum Search Services (DSS), was tentatively called Enterprise Search Services (ESS) early in the product development.    DSS promises to […]

Documentum Search – Why the Google appliance just doesn’t cut it

Many experienced Documentum customers have attempted to leverage the Google appliance as an alternative to Documentum Search or as part of an Enterprise Search effort.  One of our clients presented their experience at our user group meeting.  This post will discuss their findings.

Documentum Search Services – The Real Deal

Way back at Momentum 2001 in Chicago, I remember having an in-depth conversation with a Documentum architect in integrating Autonomy into the Documentum platform. TSG was implementing Autonomy at the time and Documentum was looking to build a pluggable architecture into Documentum in which any search engine could be integrated. The 5.3 platform helped usher […]