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 or Alfresco – TSG Contract Management Solution
TSG is pleased to announce our contract management solution for Documentum or Alfresco. Leveraging portions of HPI for Case Management and Active Wizard for Dynamic Form and Workflow, the solution also combines best of breed integration with leading vendors like HotDocs, WorkShare Compare and DocuSign. This post will discuss the issues as well as how the solution was […]
Documentum Application Builder vs. Documentum Composer
First released with Documentum 6, Documentum Composer is a “unified development platform for assembling, configuring, and deploying EMC Documentum applications.” Currently on version 6.5 SP3, Composer is meant to be a Documentum Application Builder replacement. Although Documentum is trying to move away from Application Builder and into Composer, Application Builder is still available for use […]
Documentum – Dell buys EMC – Thoughts as the smoke clears
Announced last Monday October 12th, Dell is buying EMC for 67 billion, the biggest tech merger ever. As we mentioned on Monday, TSG wanted to share some of detailed thoughts with customers and potential customers regarding the merger and the effect on Documentum.
Documentum Midwest User Group Spring Meeting – 2010
TSG is responsible (well, actually just Ellen and Bethany) for coordinating the Midwest Documentum User Group (MWDUG) (http://www.mwdug.com) meeting held on April 9th. In talking with some of the attendees, we all agreed that it was one of our best meetings with over 100 attendees. We even had a big group of 8 fly in […]
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 […]
Amazon S3 – Viewing content fast and securely in-browser with the Alfresco Enterprise Viewer
As organizations move to the cloud, many have a desire to leverage cloud storage, like Amazon S3. Cloud object stores are ideal given their scalability, security and fast performance for finding and retrieving content. As a simple store, S3 does not provide streamlined abilities to view and interact with that content. This post will look […]
InputAccel and Kofax Alternative – Ephesoft Open Source Document Scanning
We have recently been evaluating the document capture capabilities available through the Ephesoft (http://www.ephesoft.com) document capture platform. Typically clients have been tied into the suite approach from a vendor where the vendor already owns a scanning solution or the solution is bundled with the ECM purchase. For those clients looking for alternatives, we would recommend […]
Do More with Your Alfresco Deployment – Working with Document Versions in HPI vs. Share
For many of our clients, having the ability to quickly and clearly see each version of a document is critical. Version viewing is especially important for our clients in regulated industries like our Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing and Nuclear Power clients. In Alfresco, the ability to quickly view a prior version’s rendition is a bit of a […]
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 […]
Document Management – What It Is and Why You Need It
Many people in the world live and breathe document management and they may not even know it. The tools are built into their every day life and ideally make their jobs easier. Unfortunately, a majority of people in enterprises are sometimes leveraging tools that are not true document management solutions. A basic understanding of what true […]
Alfresco’s Transactional Metadata Query System – Mystery Results
With the release of version 5.0, Alfresco officially stopped supporting the Lucene indexing subsystem, leaving Solr as Alfresco’s lone indexing solution. A major benefit of leveraging Lucene was its in-transaction indexing, making content searchable as soon as it was created. Solr, however, utilizes asynchronous indexing which leads to “eventual consistency”, meaning newly created content is not searchable right away. This […]
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 […]
Documentum – Hosting with Amazon Web Services (AWS) – Half the price, twice the capabilities?
With the news that EMC is looking to sell Documentum, clients that used to be looking at Documentum hosting offerings from EMC are now considering other, better, alternatives including Amazon Web Services. This post will describe the reasons for considering Amazon over EMC/VMWare as well as present some of the technical details of an AWS/Documentum […]
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.
CMOD Migration to a Modern Environment
As we have discussed here before, many clients are looking to migrate away from Content Manager on Demand to new modern infrastructures like Alfresco or NoSQL (See our solutions for DynamoDB and Hbase). Whether outdated client/server interfaces, cloud initiatives or just a desire to move away from legacy solutions, TSG has seen multiple clients looking […]
Content Enabling Existing Applications – Connecting to Anything
One common challenges for clients is content enabling existing data driven applications. As we have been posting since 2014 on how to add content capabilities to existing claim and policy systems, many clients have invested considerable time and effort into data management systems that need to link to documents. These systems need access to content […]
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 – Should I stay or should I go? Thoughts on the OpenText Purchase Six Months Later
TSG talked with a 20+ year Documentum client yesterday about the future of Documentum. Like many Documentum customers, the client had postponed any decision about future plans for their system until there was a clear understanding of what OpenText would do with Documentum. With OpenText Enterprise World complete, this post will present our TSG thoughts […]
3 Questions – What is a Consumer Portal?
ECM customers are no strangers to license costs. But year-over-year price increases and per-user licenses for a growing company can put a strain on any budget. In addition, most ECM platforms today come packaged with an “everything and the kitchen sink” user interface. The complex nature of such interfaces requires a large amount of user […]
Build a Consumer Interface for Documentum – Client Case Study
With the recent purchase of Documentum by OpenText, many Documentum customers are concerned about what will happen to the products they have been using over the past decade. Customers should look at reducing their risk and reliance on EMC’s products, prices and services that will soon be under the control of OpenText. One major way to reduce […]
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.
Lucene Integration, OpenSearch Compliant & User Interface Enhancements – New HPI Functionality
In addition to the enhancements to HPI disscussed last week, we are also enhancing the search capability in HPI for a large Documentum pharmaceutical client. Features will include: Lucene Integration: enhanced compatibility of HPI and Lucene through TSG’s OpenContent web services layer Save Search: save, recall, run, delete and edit a saved search OpenSearch Integration: […]
Hadoop – Why Hadoop as a Content Store when Caching Content for ECM Consumers
Last week we posted on a publishing approach for enterprise search. Along with enterprise search, we have seen more and more ECM clients look to publish content out of the ECM repository for a variety of business reasons including performance, business continuity and reducing costs. This post will highlight how Hadoop can be used within […]
Alfresco Summit 2014 Recap
This year, for the first time, TSG had a booth at both the San Francisco and London Alfresco Summit events as the 2014 Americas Partner of the Year. The major announcements included the release of Alfresco 5.0 and the standalone Activiti Designer. We will be reviewing the product updates in an upcoming Alfresco user group meetup […]
Alfresco – Content Management Simplified for the Modern User
TSG just hosted a lunch and learn in Boston on May 20th and is hosting one tomorrow, May 22nd in Minneapolis focused on Content Management and the Modern User. There is still room available if you are in the area and interested in attending. This post will highlight our thoughts on the Modern Content Management user […]
Documentum or Alfresco – ECM Audit Trail – thoughts on how to increase user activity
I had a great conversation with a long-time Documentum client in regards to the need for an audit trail and reporting capabilities from his document repository. While it is something we have done in the past, I thought it would make for a good post to share that experience as well as some of the […]
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 […]
Records Management in Alfresco and Documentum
Last month at our client briefing, electronic records management systems were a common point of interest, but interestingly, not a common practice. Even though everyone knew they needed to be smarter about using electronic records management only a few companies had taken the plunge. The others, like many of the companies we talk to every […]
Content Deletion in Alfresco – More than Meets the Eye
An important and often overlooked component of implementing a content management system is the lifecycle of content once it has been deleted in the repository. There are a number of things to consider when coming up with a plan for deleting content, including recoverability, performance, and system resource usage. This article outlines the way that […]
Alfresco Content Accelerator – Collaboration Enhancements
The Alfresco Enterprise Viewer (AEV) has long contained collaboration features that dynamically display the users looking at a document. Recently we’ve updated the interface to include advanced functionality such as starting a Zoom or Microsoft Teams call directly from AEV. The Alfresco Content Accelerator (ACA, formally TSG’s OpenContent Management Suite) has been used for a […]
Do More with Alfresco – Speed and Secure Viewing
One of the unique features of OpenAnnotate (now Alfresco Enterprise Viewer) compared to other products on the market is the ability to quickly and securely view documents. This post will present a background on the speed and security AEV offers compared with typical browser based alternatives or competing products.
Migrating to Veeva – Reduce Risk, Stress and Cost with a Gradual Migration
Too often, migrating to Veeva Vault can be seen as a massive undertaking where the migration effort means moving all the content, integrations and people to the new platform in a migrate all-at-once “Big Bang” approach. Given the effort to move all the different components, along with training the users on a new system, it […]
Combine, Split and Update PDF documents with only a Web Browser
In many of the Case Management scenarios we see at our clients, particularly in the insurance industry, requirements often include functionality that allow the user to easily combine, split or correct PDF documents from within the web browser. Most often, users want the ability to combine multiple documents or selected pages into one document in […]
Migrating to Alfresco – Reducing Risk, Stress and Cost with a Rolling Migration
Too often, migrating to Alfresco can be seen as a massive undertaking where the migration effort means moving all the content, integrations and people to the new platform in a migrate all at once, “Big Bang” approach. Given the effort to move all the different components, along with training the users on a new system, […]
ECM Migrations – 10 Reasons there will never be an “Easy Button” for migrations
Just about every couple of years we will see a campaign from a software vendor or ECM integrator claiming that their new product or approach has made ECM migrations easier. Typically the marketing campaign will focus on a new sales initiative looking to more easily move clients from their old ECM platforms and software to […]
OpenContent Support
TSG works with you to get the most from your ECM investment. OpenContent Management Suite provides users of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems with a highly configurable interface to find and retrieve documents. Leveraging a powerful web services layers, it can easily integrate with Alfresco, Documentum, DynamoDB or Hadoop. Each module of the OCMS has […]
Alfresco Consulting – What makes TSG different?
Over the last two quarters, TSG has acquired multiple Alfresco clients that had initially purchased both Alfresco software and services from a different Alfresco consulting firm. With Alfresco turning 10 years old, we predict that more and more mature Alfresco customers will be looking “What’s Next” and may consider switching their Alfresco consulting partner. One of the […]
Active Wizard 4.0 Preview – OpenContent & Active Wizard Lite
Our next release of the Active Wizard will be 4.0, and it will mark the beginning of some big changes for the Active Wizard. Our overall architecture direction is to move to a web services model based on OpenContent. While this change is more of a back-end update that regular users won’t notice, it will […]
Documentum D2 4.0 – Initial TSG Review
At EMC World and in subsequent marketing efforts, Documentum has created quite a buzz around the D2 v4.0 release. Documentum is promoting that D2’s powerful configuration services can deliver a modern client interface while simplifying the application implementation via configuration rather than code. Many Documentum users struggle with any new Documentum release in regards to […]
Documentum or Alfresco – Use of Related Folders
One of the items our Documentum and Alfresco customers constantly struggle with is setting up their folder taxonomy in such a way that the taxonomy minimizes the requirement to jump between folders or open up search screens when performing a specific task within a folder. One of the very successful additions to our High Performance […]
Documentum Mobile Approval – Screencam and Demo Published
As we discussed in a previous post on mobile and third party approval, TSG is currently in the development process for our mobile approval interface for the Active Wizard. One of the early deliverables of the effort is a standalone demonstration of inbox/approve/reject functionality working on a variety of mobile platforms. A screencam of the […]
EMC World 2012– Momentum – Monday Morning Sessions – D2
Attended two D2 sessions to kick off the day before the Joe Tucci Keynote. Sessions included: The New EMC. Documentum D2: A Demonstration of How to Deliver Superior User Experiences – Boris Carbonneil and Brian Roche Spice up your ECM Applications with the new EMC D2 – Peggy Ringhausen This post will discuss the sessions […]
TSG "Hack" Day – June 29th – 2011
On Wednesday, June 29th, TSG held its first ever Hack Day! The idea of a Hack Day originated at Yahoo! (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_Day), and similar ideas arose at companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter. This post will detail our experience.
MyDocumentum for SharePoint Part II
We (TSG) just finished an evaluation for one of our clients of MyDocumentum for SharePoint. Initially, the client wanted to leverage the MyDocumentum for SharePoint product as part of their effort to have SharePoint users contribute content to Documentum. The client had unused licenses to the product as part of their enterprise purchase agreement. As […]
Documentum Migration to Alfresco – Summary of Series Postings
While TSG will continue posting our experience on clients that are moving from Documentum to Alfresco, this will be our last posting for our series over the summer of 2010. Summaries of the articles are presented below: Documentum Migration to Alfresco – in our first post, we discussed the reasons why clients are choosing to […]
TSG HPI Search Alfresco Webinar
TSG and Alfresco co-hosted another successful webinar discussing the simplication of search on ECM platforms using our HPI Search Interface. HPI Search is a great way for consumers to find content quickly in a streamlined search interface that is easy to use and configurable. HPI Search Interface on Alfresco utilizes our OpenContent web services using […]
Documentum – Replacing External SharePoint Sites with a Simple Cached Approach
Many clients struggle with providing Documentum access to external users. Often times, access to “full featured” interfaces like D2 or Webtop can overwhelm simple retrieval of limited content. This post will discuss a simple solution developed for one of our clients.
Documentum WebPublisher Custom Navigation Tool
I am working with a large manufacturing client that manages multiple websites with deep levels of navigation. With a site as large and complex as theirs, it causes a struggle to organize and maintain the content through site updates. While some clients have opted for solutions using meta tags to drive the creation of site […]
Alfresco – Do More with Your Alfresco Deployment – Adding Documents in HPI vs. Share
Most of the ECM systems we implement have some sort of document upload interface to allow users to add documents to the system. For this post, we will take a look at the common requirements for adding documents and will compare differences between HPI vs. Alfresco Share.