HPI AdminConfiguring Made EasyAvailable Now Coinciding with the latest release of HPI 1.1.5, TSG is pleased to announce the release of an Administrator tool to aid in configuring HPI, our streamline Documentum and Alfresco interface. This tool, aptly named HPI Administrator, allows an administrator to configure the XML that drives the operation of HPI using […]
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 […]
OpenContent Forms
Making Workflow Work – Dynamic Workflow with Smart/Dynamic Forms Well documented clients recognize the impact of form and workflow on their document management application. Too often workflow doesn’t really work as it is difficult to set up and even harder to maintain. Forms suffer similar issues as building them can be a technical, rather than […]
Documentum and SharePoint Searching – An Integration Approach
We have recently completed a project to create a single search interface to retrieve both Documentum and SharePoint content. This post will present a high-level overview of other SharePoint search interface alternatives and why we chose the integration approach.
Documentum and Alfresco Migrations – Why the Migration Tool is Only Part of the Equation
As the developers of OpenMigrate, we are always amazed by how often a new tool is unveiled that claims to make migrations considerably easier. While we love what we have done with OpenMigrate, we also typically have to educate clients that a migration tool, just like other tools, is only part of the effort. This […]
Alfresco 5 – TSG Products and Solutions Now Available
Since the release of Alfresco 5.0, TSG has been working to validate our products and solutions on the latest 5.x version (as of this post, Alfresco Enterprise 5.0.0.5). We are proud to announce our product offerings that are now Alfresco 5 compatible. Continue reading for the details.
Alfresco Activiti – Overview of BPMN Suite
In December, we highlighted the Alfresco announcement of the new Activiti BPMN Suite, a new web interface that runs on the Activiti engine that allows users to design workflows on the fly and to share them with different users with different levels of permissions. We sampled the BPMN Suite using a 30 day trial at https://activiti.alfresco.com/. […]
Canadian Museum of Human Rights – Opening Weekend
In the fall of 2012, Technology Services Group flew up to Winnipeg, Manitoba with Alfresco to understand CMHR’s vision for their museum. More than a decade in the making, and still under construction, we were able see the vision for the numerous digitally driven exhibits being designed and built, the need for an API to interface with […]
EMC World 2015 – Monday Morning – What’s new and next with xCP #MMTM15
The first session was very well attended (standing room only – about 90 people), presented by Nick King – xCP Product Manager. While the fact that there were few great alternative sessions may have been a factor, to fill the room early in Vegas is fairly impressive. This post will present impressions and thoughts on Documentum xCP.
Documentum and Alfresco – Performance Thoughts for a Hybrid/Rolling Migration
We recently discussed the concept of a rolling migration versus a more traditional big-bang migration approach. See our initial thoughts on development of a rolling migration approach for the eventual retirement of a client’s old system over time. After working through some of the challenges, we now have a system that can quickly move content into the new repository on demand. This post will discuss our results.
Documentum or Alfresco – Claims Processing with HPI
We just finished a prototype for a client with a very interesting “slip and fall” Insurance Claim scenario with our High Performance Interface (HPI). A screencam of the prototype is available within our Learning Zone. This post will discuss some of the components in HPI demonstrated in the video as well as some hints for items […]
Documentum – Momentum – EMC World 2014 – Day 2 – Rick Devenuti Keynote
The keynote is always the most significant event at Momentum. Last year, the significant announcement was EMA – a migration utility – see our write-up on 2014. This year’s presentation did not include any major announcements. Typically the presentation is shared on YouTube – we will add the link once available. Please forgive any typos […]
Documentum Momentum EMC World 2014 Day 1 – Life Sciences Solution Vision and Strategy
To kickoff EMC World (Momentum) 2014, I attended the session “EMC Life Sciences Solution Vision and Strategy” given by Jennifer Wemstrom and Adam Kelch. I was pleasantly surprised with the content – especially the vision that Jennifer and Adam presented for moving forward in the life sciences sector.
HPI Edit Online – Save directly into Documentum or Alfresco Repository from Microsoft Word
We often hear from our clients that the process of changing a document requires too many steps. TSG has added a new feature to the HPI product that allows users to seamlessly edit their documents in one simple step.
Documentum Upgrade – Support Multiple Applications using a single HPI Solr Portal Cache
Recently one of our large pharmaceutical clients replaced a Documentum interface in a .NET application with access to an HPI Portal cache. The HPI Portal cache utilizes Apache Solr to store and serve approved content outside of Documentum for scalability and business continuity. This change resolved a significant maintenance problem for the application team, removed […]
Documentum Discontinues Developer Edition – Documentum to Alfresco Migration – Development Environment and Philosophy
With the recent announcement that the Documentum Developer Edition is being discontinued – Bidding Farewell to Developer Edition, we thought it would be a good time to update our previous post from 2010 in regards to development differences between Documentum and Alfresco. This post will compare and contrast development environments and philosophy with both Alfresco and Documentum.
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.
EMC World 2012 – May 22 – IIG Solutions – Andy Crowne and Dave von Klemperer
Andy is the Senior Director of World Wide Delivery and Dave is Director of Solutions with IIG Consulting. With the overall push theme of user-driven solutions, this session was very interesting given IIG’s overall goals. This post will highlight the presentation.
Alfresco Email and Versioning – Leveraging Alfresco IMAP
One of things ECM clients seem to struggle with is how to manage email integration between email programs and the back-end ECM repository. This post will discuss a recent experience of how one law firm is leveraging Alfresco to manage emails and documents attached to emails while maintaining proper version control on critical documents.
Documentum/IIG Q1 Earnings – Down 4% – Thoughts on potential sale of IIG Division
EMC had a conference call on earnings on April 19th. While overall news for EMC is excellent – (grew revenue 11% year-over-year this quarter with non-GAAP EPS up 19% and free cash flow up 67%) – the news for IIG was something different (revenue down 4%). Previous posts about possible sale of the under-performing IIG […]
Documentum Searching – D2, Webtop, HPI, and xCP
As we have mentioned on this site multiple times, performance and ease of use in regards to searching is one of the most frequent concerns as it relates to use of Documentum. During our review of D2, we thought it would make an interesting blog post as well as video to compare searching across the […]
Alfresco DevCon Wrap Up
DevCon wrapped up at the end of October in sunny San Diego. Conferences are always a great way to get “re-energized”, meeting new users to the Alfresco platform, spending time with existing clients, and getting excited about where the Alfresco platform is headed. This post will discuss the roadmap and other thoughts from the conference.
Documentum – EMC World 2013 Momentum – Day 1 – Rick Devenuti Keynote
Not a ton of information in the Joe Tucci overall EMC Keynote as it relates to the Documentum Community. First major keynote was Rick Devenuti – CEO of Information Intelligence Group – slightly different from last year’s keynote. This post will cover thoughts from this year.
New Dynamsoft Scanning Integration – HPI OpenCapture Now HTML5 Compliant
HPI has just upgraded its ad-hoc scanning feature with the latest HTML5 upgrade from Dynamsoft, users can conveniently scan documents directly into HPI from their desk. In past versions of HPI, the scanning piece of Bulk Upload was a plugin, which modern browsers had stopped supporting. Now, if you choose to scan a document from […]
Web Annotations – Support for Alfresco Share with OpenAnnotate
TSG is excited to announce the general availability of TSG’s Alfresco Share connector for OpenAnnotate to allow replacement of the default Share viewer. Using OpenAnnotate as the Share viewer allows for users to always see any annotations on a document as well as immediately make new annotations. This post will outline the advantages of using […]
FileNet Migration – Best Practices and Client Experience
Whether it is a trend, just coincidence, or the fading of IBM’s influence in content management, recently we have had multiple clients request migration of FileNet images and documents as part of a long term plan to remove the FileNet/IBM solutions from their infrastructure. This post will share our experience and thoughts around migration from […]
Documentum D2 vs. HPI – Document Annotations
Earlier this year, we announced that we now support integrating D2 with OpenAnnotate to provide document annotation capabilities. For this post, we thought we’d dive deeper into the user interface aspect of the integration and compare the D2 approach with HPI.
Top 5 Differences between Records Management and Document Management
Several of our clients have been wrestling with the topic of Information Governance (IG) and the difference between Records Management (RM) and Document Management (DM). We participated in several discussions while at NIRMA where the need to incorporate Electronic Document Management functionality is falling under the Records Management department. Long term, records managers are looking at Records Management solutions […]
Documentum – End of Life for ADTS Dec 31, 2016 – Remove the risk of unreliable content transformation services
Update: Read Adlib’s thoughts on the upcoming EOL of ADTS here. Documentum has announced the end of life for support for the Advanced Document Transformation Services as Dec 31, 2016. One of the little known changes between the Documentum 6.7 and 7.x versions was that Documentum changed the underlying transformation engine. Formerly based on Adlib […]
Alfresco Solr Issues – when does just leveraging the database make sense?
One of the big improvements coming with Alfresco 5.2 has been an update of the Solr integration to Solr 6. Some of our clients leveraging the old version of Solr with 5.1 or 5.0 have sometimes experience Solr inconsistency issues where documents in Alfresco haven’t yet been indexed in Solr for a variety of reasons. […]
Documentum Records Management – It is time to de-risk your RPS implementation
This week we met with a client who has been evaluating Documentum RPS (Retention Policy Services) for about 18 months. The complexity of the product and its impact on database size and the audit trail are primary implementation concerns. Our client has multiple repositories and content storage of well over 700TB. The impact of applying […]
Documentum and Alfresco – Versioning, Security and Relationship Differences
One of the more common requirements we see from our manufacturing and operation clients is tight control around document versioning. In some cases, for example Pharmaceuticals, these systems are tightly regulated (and possibly audited) by a government agency such as the FDA. As we see more and more clients choosing Alfresco over Documentum, this post […]
Building a Services Layer for Alfresco – When CMIS is Not Enough
We’ve had a number of clients, especially those migrating from a legacy ECM platform, ask us about how to go about building a services layer for Alfresco. Typically these clients have existing applications that use either a legacy API or proprietary services layer for the old platform. One question that comes up is: “should we […]
Alfresco Case Study – New York Property Insurance Underwriting Association
NYPIUA was organized in 1968 pursuant to the laws of the State of New York to provide basic property insurance (fire, extended coverage, vandalism and malicious mischief, loss of rents and business interruption) to those consumers who were unable to obtain such coverage in the voluntary market. The Association consists of all insurers authorized under […]
Alfresco & AWS – Modernizing Records Management – Case Study from the Department of the Navy
This week Alfresco released a case study and whitepaper highlighting the process efficiency and cost savings for modernization of the Department of the Navy’s records management program. Using AWS and Alfresco, the DON TRACKER solution retired 20 separate systems and delivered a solutions responding to the Managing Government Records Directive from the Office of Management and Budget […]
OpenAnnotate – Feature Announcement – February 2018
OpenAnnotate continues to be one of our most popular software products with new features being added by multiple clients. This post will highlight the new features including streamline viewing, thumbnail navigation, PDF manipulation, updates to video annotation, redaction updates, localizing and adding the freehand drawing tool.
Outlook – Direct MSG Drag and Drop Support in OCMS
One feature that many clients ask for is the ability to drag and drop email messages directly from Outlook to OpenContent Management Suite in order to upload the email and any attachments to the ECM repository. Without a plugin or Outlook integration product, this is not possible with native HTML5 controls. For this post, we […]
EMC World 2010 – Day 3 – Thoughts on Software Development Kits (SDK) and Documentum
During the EMC Documentum Clients Overview: The New Face of ECM, the presenters (and supporting EMC product managers) were pretty open and honest about what the various “My Documentum” interface tools being configurable but not a development platform. The “My Documentum” suite, for those not familiar, includes solutions for integration with Outlook, Applications (like Word, […]
EMC World 2016- Momentum – ECD Keynote – Rohit Ghai #MMTM16
The Keynote continues to be the real beginning of the Momentum conference. Rohit Ghai is the leader of the Enterprise Content Division that includes Documentum. This post will share our thoughts about the keynote.
Day 2 – EMC World 2010
Case management and xCP is the theme I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I wasn’t quite sure of the theme of this year’s Momentum track at EMC World. As we get into Day 2, most of us here agree that xCP is the dominant theme tied to Case Management. Roadmap Updates and EMC Investments This […]
What’s New and What’s coming in the Documentum Platform
John McCormick gave the initial presentation at EMC World for the IIG (Information Intelligence Group). While the presentation won’t be posted, some highlights on the “unofficial” roadmap included: Q2 ’10 – D6.6 – Will be around Taskspace and Cloud Storage Q3 ’10 – XDB Q4 ’10 – DSS 1.0 – Dynamic Search Services – Built […]
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 […]
Documentum Transformation Services (DTS) – Alternative Approaches with Adobe LiveCycle and OpenOffice
Since the very first Momentum (1996 in a very windy Miami), the Documentum user community has pushed for a more reliable means to convert mostly Microsoft office documents into PDF. Back then, during a wrap-up luncheon, the feedback on AutoRender ( a previous incarnation of DTS) was anything but positive. Similar to some complaints today, […]
Document Control – Common Best Practices
We had an open-forum discussion on Document Control at the most recent Midwest Documentum User Group meeting. The discussion focused on feedback from various members of the group as well our experience over the years. We received positive feedback that the open discussion format, with multiple people participating, was insightful and are planning on using a similar […]
TSG & NYPIUA – A Modern ECM Insurance Solution
“A Promise Delivered” New York Property Insurance Underwriting Association (NYPIUA) shares their success story replacing their legacy mainframe ECM with the help of Technology Services Group. Built on TSG’s HPI interface and backed by the power of Alfresco, NYPIUA’s new ECM is built on modern technology, easily extensible, and easy to integrate with other systems. See […]
EMC World 2016 – Day 2 – ECD Roadmap and Vision
A two hour ECD Roadmap session was the bulk of the second day as the morning was partner meeting and other EMC presentations. This post will present our thoughts on the roadmap.
Documentum – EMC World 2015 – Recap – Cadence Improvements with new repository on the “Horizon”
Last week wrapped up Momentum 2015, the Documentum User Group conference component of EMC World. We have been posting on our attendance throughout the week. This post will present our final thoughts.
FileNet Migration to Alfresco – Best Practices with OpenMigrate
Whether it is a trend, just coincidence, or the fading of IBM’s influence in content management, recently we have had multiple clients request migration of FileNet images and documents to Alfresco as part of a long term plan to remove the FileNet/IBM solutions from their infrastructure. This post will share our experience and thoughts around […]
Alfresco Claims Processing – Product Roadmap and Future Vision
Last week, TSG conducted a product briefing for some select clients. One of our large Alfresco claim processing clients, currently leveraging the TSG Policy and Claim solution for Alfresco, Documentum or Hadoop, was an active participant and brainstormed on their current and future needs. This post will highlight those conversations and vision as well as […]
TSG Anniversary – Thoughts on 20 years of ECM consulting with Alumni Shout-outs
Twenty years ago on January 18th, 1996, Technology Services Group (TSG) was incorporated. This post will share some of my thoughts on 20 years, with some shout-outs to notable alumni that helped make TSG to what it has become today.