The 2011 Momentum has reached its end. In 12 months from now, we’ll meet again in Vienna.

When we do meet in Vienna, the Documentum world will have changed. Documentum D7 and xCP 2.0 will be generally available. C6’s D2 (maybe even X3) will be the configurable alternative to Webtop. EMC OnDemand will be running for many months all over the world. Developers, partners, deliver vApp solutions to run in both the private and hybrid cloud. Next to it will be SharePoint and Office 2013. Both running on premise and in the cloud (Office 365 or otherwise).

Off course, still a lot can happen in between, but let’s assume that nothing does.

What are partners going to do with this knowledge? What will the customer do with this knowledge?

Will they change their way forward? Will they behave like any mother and father to-be, when they learn that they are pregnant of a beautiful baby in 9 months from now? Will they start preparing for the delivery of this new-born?

I think partners will. For successful partners, adopting to change is part of their DNA.

But what will the customer do? Will she change and if so how?
I believe she will. I believe she has to.

The ECM world is changing rapidly. The business never stopped changing. Competition continues to find ways to close gaps and take leads. Not less important, demands from new joiners in your company are rapidly changing. It’s nearing the point that you want to work with them rather than that they want to work for you.

However, how she’ll change will depend upon her current state related to her ECM vision and ambition.

Several scenarios are possible and include common scenarios like “Continue as is”, or “Technical ‘as-is’ upgrade”.

One particular scenario that could happen is the scenario what I would like to call “re-think & re-do”.

The “re-think & re-do” scenario is an appealing scenario. It can be a game changer. It applies lessons learned, leverages new functionality, and re-implements the requirements in the new target environment.

The soccer analogy of “re-think & re-do”

There is a great analogy to be made with sports. Especially team sports. Let’s take soccer.

Winning the National league, the European Champions League, and the World Cup for Teams are goals for the top teams. Many want it, few get it.

The easy road of buying 25 of the best players doesn’t get you there. Many tried, none succeeded(1).
Building a winning team is a carefully designed growth path that takes effort and time.

On this route, every now and then a player gets injured for a longer time, leading to adjustments in the process. Patches are applied.
Sometimes players get better offers elsewhere and new players have to be bought or incorporated from youth teams, the labs. Sort of a Service Pack is applied.
And then success is there. The team is on a winning streak.

After some time the successes diminish. Competing teams catch up. The common game-play changes. The players on the team are over the hill, nearing their sports technical end of life.
At this point the team manager has to make decisions.

A common decision is that they accept the absence on the prime stage for a year and rebuild the team from scratch.

Where in the previous period, patches and service packs have been used to continue, this time a new major release is needed.

You see this happening in many of the Olympic team-sports (field hockey, volleyball) in the post-Olympic year. The next World Championships are typically 2 years away, the next Olympics 4 years. Enough time to re-do the team and go for success at the next major event.

The good thing about building a new team, a new major release for future success, is that it allows the team manager to apply the lessons learned from the previews period (re-think) as well as to recover from unwanted side effects that come with patches and service packs (re-do).

The lessons learned can be in many different forms. As an example:

• The game-play may have shifted from physical to tactical and thus new requirements apply.
• The common positioning on the midfield may have changed from 3 players on one line to 4 that are positioned in a diamond shape. In essence the functional team design is changed.

Also the side effects come in different forms with examples like:

• Due to the absence of left-footed wingers, a right-footed player has become the left-winger.
• The youngster, replacing a player that has left, is not performing consistently.

Taking these lessons learned as well as side effects into account, a new design is created to succeed in future success and the new journey begins.

The EMC reality

The process illustrated above for soccer, can be applied to Enterprise Content Management solutions like Documentum. There too, patches and service packs are applied until you reach the point where you have to re-think what to do with a next major release.

Given the announced release of Documentum 7 / xCP 2, the adoption of C6’s D2 user interface, the availability of Documentum in the Cloud (OnDemand), and also the omnipresence of SharePoint fits, the point of re-think and re-do has arrived. The time is here and now. Too much is and will change to continue as if it’s still the same.

This is a far from easy task and is highly dependent on the unique settings of the customer.

It takes time. It takes careful considerations. It needs a free spirit to not limit yourself to budget, resource, calendar, or any other constraint yet. It takes guts in a budget constraint business to acknowledge that maybe with the new facilities, something better, cheaper, more flexible, and more future proof is possible and that now is the time to find out. It requires expertise to take it to the extreme on paper and see what it brings, to think out of the box.

Because even finding out requires budget, some arguments to help you build the business case are given below.

• EMC OnDemand

• Supported by certified professionals on behalf of EMC; No need to invest in company resources.
• Off premise in the cloud or locked down ‘all-in’ box on premise; No need to purchase hardware.
• Sizing for average load with on demand resource expansion to handle peak loads; no need to invest in hardware that can cope with peak loads that occur only once a week.
• Optimum module architecture through xMS, the requirement-based configuration descriptions that are used to generated the required virtual servers.

• SharePoint

• SharePoint is the users choice for collaboration and “work in progress” content management.
  Leverages the dominance of MS Office on the desktop and the user acceptance that comes with it.
• SharePoint doesn’t (yet) provide the appropriate means to cover all enterprise needs, but SDF⁽²⁾ is there to rescue. SDF, the SharePoint – Documentum Framework provides optimal bi-directional integration with Documentum to cover the enterprise needs.

• C6’s D2

• Reduce cost of customizations of Webtop by leveraging the configurable user interface that D2 delivers.
• Replace Webtop with a much more tailored and applicable interface for those users that need functionality that is not provided through SharePoint or xCP applications.
• Increase user acceptance with the appealing skinnable interface that D2 provides.

• Documentum D7 / xCP2

• Leverage the new deployment model that uses vApps.
• Leverage the ability to reverse patches if the outcome has unwanted side-effects
• Leverage the vast amount of documented functional patterns and solutions to build xCP applications.
• Leverage the growing number of xCelerators to reduce implementation time and effort.

• Non-technical

• Replace old school designs and include lessons learned of the current implementation.
• Start supporting the Knowledge Worker; Make it goal-driven and reduce the rigidness of traditional workflows.
• Prevent the typical chaos that uncontrolled, non-governed SharePoint environments tend to create.
• Take a controlled route towards the cloud by using on premise cloud technology.

Conclusion

I believe it’s here and now that you have the opportunity to re-think what your Documentum centric solutions add to your business and re-do them using Documentum & xCP through EMC OnDemand and integrate them with SharePoint through SDF.

If the signs are right, we’re expecting a beautiful baby somewhere in the late summer of 2012.
But, we have to work for that. It will not come easy.

The above mentioned arguments are not meant to be complete or generically applicable; further discussion is needed to incorporate the specifics of your organisation.
That first step is yours. I’m sure you can do it!

Ed Steenhoek
ECM Solution Principal

1. While writing this post, I was thinking about Manchester City. A soccer team where huge investments have been made in recent years but yet without success. However, after reviewing this post, it dawned to me that it is also applicable to Oracle. Oracle has been purchasing ECM technologies and companies but still doesn’t deliver a clear package that delivers success on its own – that is without cross selling from e.g. Siebel or the Oracle RDBMS – that matches the investments made.
2. Implementing SDF requires a specialism that is provided through EMC Professional Services or directly from selected partners. Informed Consulting is proud to be that partner for EMEA.

New blogpost @ #infcon on what to do with #MMTM11 knowledge on #Documentum, #D2 and #EMCOnDemand the comming 9 months. http://t.co/jJHSlpTp

7 November 2011 10:59 via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@EdSteenhoek

Ed Steenhoek

Retweeted by @sinnema313, @keesvanbemmel, @Insidedctm and @SanderHendriks

RT @EdSteenhoek: New blogpost on what to do with #MMTM11 knowledge on #Documentum #D2 #EMCOnDemand the coming 9 months. http://t.co/e5bG0e7X

7 November 2011 21:16 via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@macgirlsweden

Alexandra Larsson

Like the analogies - RT @EdSteenhoek @ #infcon on what to do with #MMTM11 knowledge on #Documentum, #D2 and #EMCOnDemand the coming 9 months

7 November 2011 23:05 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@ecmguru

Johnny Gee

The Momentum 2011 Perspective on EMC Documentum in Q3/2012 - http://t.co/jFpP1jAU - Nice post from @edsteenhoek. Mind you I hope Citeh fail.

7 November 2011 23:52 via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite

@leecsmith

leecsmith

RT @edsteenhoek. The Momentum 2011 Perspective on EMC Documentum in Q3/2012 http://t.co/6trMmhUx Good abstract of the event

8 November 2011 0:18 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@luisfersang

Luis Fdez-Sanguino

#MMTM11 Perspective on Documentum in Q3/2012 http://t.co/XU3j5As8 Gr8 sports analogy esp. as applies to Oracle (see comments) #ecm

8 November 2011 20:16 via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@JerrySilver

Jerry Silver

Retweeded by @PieWords

@leecsmith @edsteenhoek think you have both forgotten the FA cup. I think that counts as success! Good post otherwise.....

8 November 2011 21:24 via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@mike_woodbridge

Mike Woodbridge

or any other

On a current project we’re integrating Documentum 6.5 and SharePoint 2010 through the EMC product EDRSMS 6.6, which is short for EMC Documentum Repository Services for Microsoft SharePoint. A mouthful, in the project we just call it Repository Services.

As part of the project, we’ve been educating the client project members on how this integration works. In this blog post, we’ll share some of that. That includes thoughts on how to make it work in a global implementation of SharePoint that is connected to a central instance of Documentum.

In itself that is not such a rare situation. Typically, the Documentum content server is implemented after careful considerations in a central location and additional measures can be taken to speed things up on the global hubs. One of them can be using Branch Office Caching Servers (BOCS). The problem is that BOCS can’t be used as part of the Repository Services solution. This doesn’t make sense in the typical usage scenario: SharePoint users work in and with SharePoint and somewhere down deep, data is not stored in a SharePoint Content Database (as part of the SQL server instance or cluster) but cached and partially forwarded into Documentum. More on this later.

With SharePoint the stories varies a little more. Some say it grows organically from a departmental implementation to corporate level. Some start with a central corporate instance and spin out to all regions. The stories about well thought designs on farms, site collections, and content types somehow don’t hit the surface that I see. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong direction. Then again, from talking to colleagues, project members and others in the Documentum-SharePoint playground, it appears as if this is an after-thought that is getting more and more attention. Well the point is that when you start using Repository Services, you better think beforehand!

Why do you have to think carefully about the SharePoint farms when using Repository Services?

Imagine that you need content from SharePoint that has been journaled (meaning: moved) into Documentum and is no longer directly available to SharePoint. Repository Services takes care of retrieving that content from Documentum and making it available to SharePoint. It does so by putting it in a temporary cache. This temporary cache is a location in the file system that only exists at farm level.

Meaning: for the whole farm, there is just one (1).

Now imagine a farm located in New York with also users in Sydney, Bangalore, London and Chicago. They probably don’t care since they’re on the global high performance network between these hubs. Imagine users in Wellington (NZ), Vancouver and Madrid. They might not be such happy users because their content needs to come from down town New York even if that content is only created and used by them.

Of course, more factors apply, but the key is: think about multiple farms when contents needs to travel around the global where users are only working on it in a single country or region.

Why do you have to think carefully about the SharePoint Site Collections when using Repository Services?

There are two simple reasons:

1. The current version of Repository Services is granular up the level of a Site Collection. This means that either a complete Site Collection is under control of Repository Services or not. The effect is that even if you only need the content of one single site to be journaled into Documentum, all content from the Site Collection is moved out of the SharePoint Content Database. The content that you don’t need to be journaled into Documentum is kept in the Performance Cache, a location in the file system.
2. There is only a single Performance Cache for each Site Collection

Again, imagine the global usage scenario as explained before. SharePoint allows you to have multiple Content Databases and with some careful tweaking, you can force a Site Collection to be stored in a particular Content Database. As part of a SQL Server cluster, you could bring the content near the user by creating regional Content Databases.

With Repository Services, the content is not stored in the regional Content Database but in the Performance Cache of the Site Collection, a location in the file system that can be anywhere on the globe.

The key is, that like creating multiple farms, you have to consider using multiple Site Collections and decide which sites – and thus which user population – becomes part of which Site Collection. Creating regional Site Collections, allows you to have a regional Performance Cache and keep the content as close to the user as possible.

Another key consideration: put content that can live on its own, and doesn’t need to be under control of repository Services, in a separate Site Collection.

This may have some implications on the user experience (user have to work with distinct Site Collections) but you also may not be too keen on large volumes of content in the Performance Cache that will never be journaled into Documentum.

It’s not a matter of right or wrong. It’s a matter of taking a well thought decision.

Why do you have to think carefully about the SharePoint content types

By definition (MSDN), a content type is a reusable collection of metadata (columns), workflow, behavior, and other settings for a category of items or documents in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 list or document library. Content types enable you to manage the settings for a category of information in a centralized, reusable way.

When working with Repository Services, the metadata bit is what we’re looking for.

This may sound trivial, but way too often, modifications to a document library in SharePoint, are not based on the definition of content types. As part of good practice in Document Management, you first think about the information (attributes, properties, metadata – you name it) you need to know about content as part of your data model, before you think about how it is presented in your presentation layer, in this case a SharePoint document library.

Key is, to think from a document management mindset.

As said, with Repository Services, content is journaled into Documentum. This is done via Journaling rules. These rules select content based on… metadata values! So, even though all content of a Site Collection, is moved into the Performance Cache, only the content that is selected through a Journaling rule, is moved into Documentum. It goes without saying that the more metadata is available to select from, the more granular content can be selected for journaling.

Next to the actual content, a convenience copy of the metadata in XML format is also stored in Documentum. Although this is just a copy (changes are not propagated back into SharePoint), it can be used for further actions inside Documentum. Think of a scenario where you need to put content under Records Management. The basic metadata that resides as attributes on the Documentum doctype for this journaled content is limited and maybe not enough to make the proper RM decisions.

Key is to consider the usage of the content way beyond it has left SharePoint and reflect those requirements in the SharePoint content type.

In summary.

Using Repository Services to bridge the SharePoint and Documentum worlds can give you great user experience (SharePoint) and great document management (Documentum). It can also give you headaches if you forget about document management core values and information architecture design.

And if you have such a headache… there is aspirin available.

or any other

P04 has been released for the stack product versions:

• Documentum 6.6
• Documentum 6.5SP3
• Documentum 6.5SP2
• Documentum 6.5SP4 (For WebPublisher and Digital Asset Manager only)
• xPlore 1.0

This cumulative patch contains all approved Hot Fixes since the last patch release.

In general, patch releases are fully compatible with all other releases within the same version family. All platform combinations certified for base releases will be carried forward to Patch releases.

or any other

First gotcha:

Logon with the account you’ll be running your server with. Preferable not Administrator!

Immediately followed by the second gotcha:

Change the computer name to something unique.

Starting with the same base image results in multiple VMware images using the same computer name in the same network. That does not work.

Next a first tip:

Change the IP address to a fixed address.

Since the starting Windows 2003 server image uses DHCP to always get a free IP address, this needs to be fixed now. Changing the dynamically received IP address into a fixed address has proven to be successful so far.
Having a fixed address saves a lot of headaches afterwards when logging on over an RDP session.

Next double-checked the required software. Is Java installed? Is the .Net framework (version 2+) installed? They should be and are, but it has become a habit.

Next gotcha:

Make sure there are no spaces in the folder that contains the installer

Don’t know why EMC included this restriction in a Windows-only installer but they did.

Time to start the installer documentumSetup.exe. It will ask you for the password of your current account and allows you to specify some custom options or run with all password values in default.

Second tip:

Always go for a custom set of password values.

This allows you to specify custom passwords for many things. Most likely you will never need them.
But if you do, now you know them . Although this is not backed with evidence, there is that generic fear that someday you need it.

About 15 minutes later you’ve installed a developer Content Server, WebTop, DA, Retention Policy Services Admin. And of course, Composer is there as well.

Before doing anything else it is time for disaster prevention: shut-down and backup the image. Since reproducing this image is a matter of minutes rather than days, one zip file stored on the server and one on backup storage will do.
Only when this has been completed successfully, next steps like installing WebPublisher or DAM, can be started.

But before we do, we bookmark two additional URL’s that are part of a default Developer Edition Install.
JBoss comes with an administration console at http://localhost:9080/web-console/ and a JMX management console at http://localhost:9080/jmx-console/.  They both use the default ‘admin’ user to gain access. The password is a little bit more tricky…

A final gotcha:

If you changed the password according to my second tip, the admin password for JBoss is that password.

If you did not use custom passwords, the password is the one documented in the installation guide.

or any other

The platform is a wrapper around a set of existing Documentum modules and used to be called the Case Management Framework. The latter is however ‘just’ a solution build on top of the platform.

One of the ‘assets’ of the platform is a one-click installer for the Windows OS. In this article, I will discuss their asset in more depth because it has potential, lacks still many things but foremost can be a quality impulse to core Documentum.

There is analogy with the Documentum Developer Edition. Also a one-click installer. It delivers a Content Server with Webtop, the Administrator and Retention Policy Services. If you need more, like I needed WebPublisher and PageBuilder, you have to add that yourself  This requires unpacking the wp.war file, changing some properties, copying the unpacked war to the application server (because – according to the documentation – available hot-deployment of the re-packed wp.war just didn’t take off) and restarting the application server.

It also includes the execution of a WebPublisher server components installer.

The configuration of the one-click installer for the developer edition can be enhanced to also install an additional DocApp or DAR, Unfortunately adding an additional war file is not included. Anyway, I had to read to several documents to get to a working development edition including WebPublisher.

The question that comes to mind is: Can the one-click installer be enhanced with out-of-the-box the (optional) installation of modules (like WP, DAM, BPS/TaskSpace or Records Manager) in order to create a win-win situation from development up to production?

The win on Documentum side comes from them being the one to decide on how the modules are to be configured for installation By doing so they create a solid base that will reduce their support effort significantly. If someone should know how the Documentum modules must be installed in order to work together, it’s EMC. Also, from sales perspective this is a benefit.

If you’re in the Documentum business you probably can share horror stories of errors in the base configuration that caused instability and ghost incidents.

This is what can be avoided with a one-click installer.

The win for the customer comes from both reduced maintenance effort as well as increased stability. Also a reduced time to market comes to mind but also reproducibility of the installation over multiple environments.

Today the one-click installer is not at that point but it can get there with some enhancements. The major enhancements that are needed are:

• include all available modules as options
• include the ability to install against an existing RDBMS
• include the ability to install against an existing application server for the clients
• include the ability to install on any supported operating system
• include the ability to install multiple consent servers
• include the ability to re-run the installer to at least add modules in war or dar format.

None of these are impossible. They do take some testing once the brain-work has been done.

It must be understood that this will exclude some rare but possible mixtures. For those manual adoption must be possible against the price of “being on your own” or the price of a consulting effort. Ideally this would show in the maintenance fee.

Once we’ve reached this milestone, it becomes a small step towards a full install of all modules and unlocking functionality by supplying license keys. A model used by Adobe on their LiveCycle platform with success. Those of you familiar with installing new applications into a controlled production environment know that having all modules already installed, saves a huge amount of time. Time that can be used to be faster to market. Combine that with the speed of solution delivery on the xCP platform and the customer will have a noticeable shorter IT cycle compared to traditional Documentum projects.

Bottom line: If only EMC would enhance the one-click installer into a full product installation, it would make customers and partners more than happy!

Today both the one-click installer for developers as well as xCP are good enough for development, PoC’s or demonstrations. For installations into test, acceptance and production environments or on non-Windows, they are not yet suited.

or any other

There was a great keynote from Max Pucher. Very subtly he ends on the ISIS Papyrus platform but the 90 minutes before are about quantum physics, the human brain, the crisis being caused by the media and how we should act counter cyclic. He manages to get his message across in such a way that the audience grasps the relation with business architecture. Knowing Max a little via conversations, previous talks and his blogs it wasn’t a surprise. For some newbies it was. The much needed coffee break learned that the audience loved it.

It was also good to note that the number of analysts that understand that ISIS Papyrus is way more than just Output Management is growing. Strategy Partners and Butler already did. Now Forrester is ‘getting’ it. They do understand that ISIS offers the means to deliver an integrated solution that covers not only output management but the functionality of ECM, BPM. CRM, Event Processing and Analytics.

Also good to see that several customers realized that they have been – let’s be gentle here – not the smartest in the class when they decided to add huge additional silo’s in their IT landscape that offers similar but less integrated functionality. On the road to maturity this awareness is an important step to take.

Where Max reached as high as the Alps, he made it difficult for those that followed him with the down to earth presentations. As slick as the Eye user interface is, some presentations can do with some brushing up. But that is nitpicking. The message was clear, well aligned and had a smooth build up.

For me the presentation on the Case Management framework was relatively new. I’ve read through it before but never had being able to ‘sit in’ and listen. And… it’s again a perfect sample of how well the platform is assembled and frameworks being defined.  We learned that their running a PoC at a financial company against another ECM vendor and were shown some screenshot from what they did in a 400-hour effort. Knowing their competitor well, I can’t imagine them to bring the same to the table with in the same effort. Let alone that I expect it will be way more custom coding by their competitor. I want a framework to cater for that and from what I’ve seen so far from their competitors framework, it is not up to par.

A small sidestep: I do want to understand what frameworks mean for the traditional ECM players like EMC, IBM and so on and to do so, I will be playing with the EMC Case Management framework starting within a few days.

Compared to a year ago, there were changes. A better location (Pulitzer Amsterdam), a better aligned flow of the day, a larger and better educated audience and – of course – new content but this time presented in a better mix between pre-demo knowledge transfer and the actual demo. Timing the presentations – like in many other conferences – remains a challenge. Suggestion: reserve 90 minutes for Max but don’t tell him

Due to Freddie van Rijswijk managing the local Dutch presence the business is starting to move. Because we all know that actions speak louder than words, it’s waiting for the one sheep that leaps over the ditch and all the rest will follow. From all conversations, the feeling remains that it’s only a matter of time.

That’s not what I can say personally. It will take some more ground work to always include ISIS in the short-list of possible solutions for Case Management. Ignorance is bliss.

One final remark before moving on to meet the challenges of today: I’m now struggeling on how to model business processes during requirements phase (that’s when I’m only talking about ‘what’ and don’t care about ‘how’) when I do want to stick to events, actions and states. I’m not yet convinced it needs to be UML diagrams…
Food for thought that I will talk about later this week.

or any other

So, in its most simple form, what needs to be done is to decide which out-of-the-box template will be used and which content needs to be moved into the new templates. Given the state of the as-is, this is not the way to go. Going back to the drawing board is the only option. This was an unstructured discussion broke loose between people that ment well but don’t deal with the problems of unstructured content on a daily basis. My manager called for a break and that’s where I came in and decided to put down my thoughts on paper.

Even though this is Intranet, even though the target audience is known, still we need to answer the first and foremost question: WHY?
Why do we need this portal? Just because the technology is offered is not good enough. Like in the real world: you need a business case! In this case there is no commercial interest. So, dig for the non-commercial reasons that makes you say: that is why we need to use this facility. Look for things that should be done but that are not facilitated. Candidates are: knowledge sharing, (management) news channel, extended facebook including current assignments, fixed organization information, supply and demand.

There are also many other ‘sites’ that are available. For projects, for training, from our mother company, from other clusters in our own organisation including HR, fleet management and finance. Overlap with them is not an option. Maybe some effort is needed to extend those but doing them all over again is not the way to go. Alternatively you could think of incorporating them.

So, let’s assume the decision is made: we need one. The arguments for that descision also give you a clue on what content is needed. The easy part is creating this content and making it available.
The hard part is keeping is it current and managing the beast. Let’s address each seperately.

Keeping information current is a generic challenge captured in the beautiful words Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). In it’s purest form you create content ánd tag it with a valid-from and valid-until dates ánd use workflow to either extend the valid-until date just in time or dispose the content at all. Does anyone believe that a skill matrix with a last midification in November 2006 is stil releavant content? No, it’s polution! ILM should also enable workflows that actively prompt people to review their content a pre-defined intervals. And, have someone approving all this.
The question is not: do we need this? The question is: what becomes of our portal if we don’t and can we live with that. If the answer is yes, you’ve missed the boat from an ECM perspective. And to make it easy to answer this: just look at the as-is and you probably know enough.

The other part is managing the beast. MOSS is not a solution. It’s a toolbox. In a no-budget scenario, keep to what comes out-of-the-box in a ‘MOSS as a service’ scenario and only add some extra’s that will benefit all. An example of the latter is blog summary page that shows e.g. 10 blog posts but for each just an abstract of 250 characters followed by a ‘more’ link.
Even in the scenario of Moss as a service, someone is busy helping contributers with permissions, limitations, tip & tricks. Since permissions are inherited by the site agglomerate (MOSS is more or less a collection of sub-sites that each have a dedicated role) you have too many people with too much permissions at too much sites. With a trusted audience and limited exposure risks, this is still preferred over setting the right permissions for the right people at the right pieces. Remember: we’re in a no-budget scenario.

Normally you should never look at the tool before you know what you want. In this scenario, I considder it a valid approach. What does MOSS as a service offer out of the box? In a nutshell it are these site templates:

• Team Site: A site for teams to quickly organize, author, and share information. It provides a document library, and lists for managing announcements, calendar items, tasks, and discussions.
• Documet Workspace: A site for colleagues to work together on a document. It provides a document library for storing the primary document and supporting files, a tasks list for assigning to-do items, and a links list for resources related to the document.
• Wiki: A site for a community to brainstorm and share ideas. It provides Web pages that can be quickly edited to record information and then linked together through keywords.
• Blog: A site for a person or team to post ideas, observations, and expertise that site visitors can comment on.
• Basic Meeting: A site to plan, organize, and capture the results of a meeting. It provides lists for managing the agenda, meeting attendees, and documents.
• Decision Meeting: A site for meetings that track status or make decisions. It provides lists for creating tasks, storing documents, and recording decisions.
• Social Meeting: A site to plan social occasions. It provides lists for tracking attendees, providing directions, and storing pictures of the event.
• Multipage Meeting: A site to plan, organize, and capture the results of a meeting. It provides lists for managing the agenda and meeting attendees in addition to two blank pages for you to customize based on your requirements.
• News Site: A site for publishing news articles and links to news articles. It includes a sample news page and an archive for storing older news items.

So, on top of the ‘why’ question and based upon theses discriptions, you can ask yourself questions like: do we want to facilitate meetings? If so, in which form? Do we want to faciliteit collaboration? If so, in which form?

Is there any thing else that is important? Yes. Because this is a known target audience, too easily it is assumed that the demand is known. Even here I urge to discover the buy-in from them. They’ll always look from a ‘what’s in it for me’ angle.

Alltogether enough food for thought.

or any other

I’ve been reading and following ISIS Papyrus for about the past 2 years and have learned and understand the power and potential of their Papyrus product. It seems that 2009 so far is their year.

Recently ISIS Papyrus Chief Architect Max J. Pucher has been selected by the Xplor International Awards Committee as the winner of the 2009 Brian Platte Lifetime Achievement Award for setting standards within the document management industry. The award also refers to patented innovations such as the Papyrus User-Trained Agent for automatic discovery of complex business process event patterns. A solution that is way more powerfull than regular rigid BPM solutions.

Now the report from Butler Group continues this by expressing the superiority of ISIS Papyrus.
Congratulations to Annemarie, Max, Freddie and their staff!

Next, I hope, will be that more and more companies come to understand the weaknesses in isolated ECM, BPM, CRM and ERP silos compared to the power of ISIS Papyrus.
Want to know more? Read: Butler Group Technology Audit Recognizes ISIS Papyrus Superiority In Streamlining Process.

or any other

Before going there I must admit that there is Room for Improvement on my side when it comes to “SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe” (Interactive Forms). In a months time I will take care of this by attending my first ever SAP event. Today my knowledge of SAP doesn’t go further then knowing how to spell it.   Until then I will only focus on here LiveCycle with the forms module as the centre of their universe.

First, my definition of what I mean by forms:

A form is a means to capture data in a structured way in an a-synchronous interaction between the human data provider and the receiver.

A client-server application for data entry is thus not using forms to collect the data. The data entry is done via a graphical UI that may look like a form though.

When do I consider the usage of forms over that of a plain old web application with data entry screens? By definition this would be the case when there is the requirement to support a-synchronous data capture. Requirements that are closely related are: local storage, off-line usage, on-demand processing (instead of batch processing), event driven processes, multi channel, ad-hoc and tailored capture as well as casual and untrained users.

Other considerations would be: extending an existing CRM, ERP of ECM environment, interaction inside the forms and leverage the existing desktop footprint.

When I refer to multi channel, I’m thinking of a mixture of keywords like: print, bar code, scanner, email, attachment, http(s), browser, web service, (s)ftp, upload, file share, webdav, mobile phone, pda, phone, call script.

Most of these I have seen in relation to LiveCycle Forms. The call script may seem an outsider. Most (if not all) forms can however be fully supported by a call centre agent calling the person that needs to provide the data.

Along these lines I have been thinking on where LiveCycle is heading wrong, is missing something or needs improvement. Needless to say however that LiveCycle is a good product when you e.g. want to extend your existing ECM implementation.

Let’s first address the going wrong bit. The current pitch is the Engagement Platform. A 100% bling-bling approach. It’s superficial. It’s all about the outside, the looks. The truth is, that it hurts the average business user at the weakest spot and thus is/can be successful. So, why blame Adobe for this? Because long-term it fits into the category “Shareholders Value” rather than “Customer Satisfaction”. Does it make the business process better? No, there is no increase in key factors for sustainable business. Or does America’s Next Top Model do a better job than Uggly Betty?

The last thing I will mention about this is that I personally find an approach that has its focus on the looks rather than the content questionable. My no.1 question becomes: what are they hiding?

Next: what is missing? The short and easy answer is: context and form generation.

Let’s look at context first.

For me this is important because we don’t live in the dark ages of forms any more. A from is not created because we want to digitize a paper form. The sole reason should be because somewhere in a business process there is a need for structured data capture. That is: IN A CONTEXT.

How do LiveCycle Forms support context? They don’t. This touches on the disconnect for the LiveCycle platform with how core systems (BPM, CRM, ERP, ECM etc.) become more and more interdependent. That’s why I do expect more from the Interactive Forms. These forms already understand SAP data models. At least that is my understanding today. Aside from this SAP integration all others need to be developed. Nothing strange for an add-on product but it is more convenient if Microsoft would offer the product “Microsoft Dynamics Interactive Forms by Adobe” and Oracle “Siebel Interactive Forms by Adobe”.
Another angle would be to become a provider of ECM, BPM, CRM and ERP altogether. That is however a direction that doesn’t fit in the strategic directions of Adobe (at least those that I’m aware of).

The second is Form Generation.

Form generation is a way to make the creation of forms a true business user activity. I can’t help but laughing out loud when the Designer is positioned for business users. It does require an IT background in order to do data binding and script simple business logic behind the fields. Business users won’t do. But then, who will be designing the forms anyway? I think there are largely 2 kind of forms: standard often used forms and ad-hoc forms. The first group is worth while to design up front and spend some design time on. Business users will be involved during requirements specification and user acceptance. No involvement in building the form technically.
The other group of forms are those that are created because the need arises suddenly. Almost for sure the content of these forms do change from case to case. The easy way out here is to ignore forms and just send a letter to te customer to provide the missing information one way or the other. Unstructured. The easy way out is appealing because creating a form is a burden. It takes days in stead of hours/minutes. Automated form generation will do the trick. And not only for the add hoc forms. Also for the main stream forms. There the development cycle will be dramatically reduced.

Room for improvement.

There are some area’s where I want to see improvement. These are: Recipient routing, Rules management, Secure attachment, Security at field level, Versioning at field level and pricing.

Let’s start with the last one. Pricing is a commercial aspect that I don’t want to discuss. Often there is more possible then pricing lists show. Still, I get the feeling that the list price is Enterprise Class only.

Next is recipient routing. What I mean by this is the ability to extend the routing of the form into the organisation of the data provider.

Imagine account opening where a company wants to open an account with some bank. Several forms need to be submitted. There is a single contact that deals with the bank within that company. But is this contact the one that retrieves all data? No! So the form is routed to other employees in the company. One by one. Most likely by email. Without tracking. Without control for the contact employee. Wouldn’t it be nice if the form could be put in a digital envelope that sends a copy of the form to all employees, have them completing their part and upon return merge the responses back into one form. Wouldn’t it be nice if the envelope knows which employees have returned there form and those that didn’t.

Rules management is an obvious one. Simply: how do I know which rules are used in this form and vica versa in which forms is this rule included. I don’t know. But I need to! Oh, and searching some database that holds the sources of the forms isn’t going to do. Let’s go a step further. What is the impact of changing a rule? Not just which forms are impacted but also which instances are in process and do need to be reconsidered before taking a decision.

Off course: I can built it…

Secure attachment is a less obvious one. In some cases the submitted form needs an attachment. A copy of an ID, another document. By default the returned form is now a high threat. I need to isolate the attachments, check them and continue only of the threat is gone. Basically this is so common – or at least should be – that this can be its own product or module in the LiveCycle platform.

Security at field level and versioning at field level. Two of the same. I want to be able to set security (who can do or see what) at one or more fields in order to protect their content. Also, I want to be able to track who changed the content of which fields. And in both cases I don’t want the coding option. I do want tick boxes to configure it.

As said, in no way I want to say that LiveCycle Forms are bad. I do say that there is room for improvement. There things that you can do but shouldn’t and it’s up to you to decide whether or not you do. There are may cases where they can be a valuable add-on. Taskspace within EMC Documentum is e.g. a useful solution for a Documentum implementation but it has its shortcomings that Adobe LiveCycle Form overcome. However, when there is a greenfield situation I would rather look at other options in the first place in order to avoid the need for an eForms add-on.

or any other

What I will share with you, is the way I deal with my email and how that allows me to keep my Inbox empty! The empty Inbox might surprise you as much as I’m surprised by people that have an Inbox full of read and unread, flagged and un-flagged messages
I used to be that way too, That was until I ran into GTD, Getting Things Done. Google a bit if you want to know more about GTD and its creator, David Allen. Up front I must say that I’m not a purist but have adopted GTD and tweaked it to suit my needs. From what I read, this is what every GTD user does.

Email is disturbing you and me in whatever we are doing but we are also disturbing others with our emails as well. And since it is a reality that we can’t ignore, we’ll participate and are left behind with the task to take care of it in the most efficient way. This is where GTD offers us tremendous help.

I’ll give you the basics as shown on the reference card with some narration on how I use it.

Key in processing the input in your inbox, is this: I read an email once – directly when it arrives or on a later moment that suits me better – but no matter which way, I do decide what to do that same moment I read the email. And trust me, it never happens to me that I don’t know what to decide.

So let’s start with the easy options: those email that carry no action for me. This gives me a few options:

• Delete. Both mine and your email store is not a Records Management System so it is save to delete emails. It takes some time to dare so, but you’ll get used to it. It did.
• File. If I need to keep the email but there is no action, I file it immediately. For this I have a created a successful file plan. I’ll share the concept in a minute or two.
• Defer. Once in a while I get this email that typically is unimportant for now but that I maybe do want to act on someday. Like a newsletter from a vendor talking about a new software release that I want to play around with. Deferring this email is ok. If I never do anything with it, still no harm is done. In stead of filing them in a folder, I convert the email into a task with a due date that is somewhere in the future but before it no longer make sense to act on the email. In the given sample this might be a month from now.

What remains are the options where I do need to act. Sorry for that. Can’t promise you that incoming email leads to no work at all…

• Projects. There is a grey area between action-less and actionable: projects. Projects are things you need to do but involve planning and multiple actions. I convert these emails into tasks and assign them to the category “Projects”. During conversion into a task, I copy the email body as well as the complete email into the task body, include the first action I need to take and set the due date for that first action. I have a macro that does most of the work for me.

Next is the key decision moment: do I have to do it and if so, what is the effort?

• Delegate. If something needs to be done but not by me, I can delegate it. Delegation does not mean: throw over the wall and forget. It remains my responsibility that the action will be executed. So in my forwarding email I add a little key that can be picked up by one of three rules. I add @WF24, @WF48 or @WF. This triggers a rule to create a copy of the email after sending that is filed into the “@Waiting For” folder (again underneath the Inbox). It also sets a due date that is a day, 2 days or a week from now.
• DO IT. If after reading the action is to do something that takes less than 2 minutes, just do it. Re-reading the email later to make the same judgement also takes 2 minutes.
• Meet. Some emails are requests or invites for appointments/meetings. If so, I convert them into an invite or meeting. The difference? In the invite I invite others. For a meeting I just block time in my agenda. Both are supported with macro’s that do the creation and copying of the content.
• Take Action. I’ve tried as much as possible to keep from getting more work to do, but unfortunately, the majority of my emails do lead to something I must do sooner or later. AT this point, for sure the email ends up in my @Action folder. The question becomes: when is action needed. Today? Tomorrow? Net Week? Next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? This weekend? I make that call and set the due date accordingly. Again, I have macro’s to reduce this to a few clicks.

What does this bring me? An empty inbox! I’m in control of all the email I get. Things that I need to do are reduced to:

• Working down the actions in the @Action folder
• Monitoring the responses to the emails that are in the @Waiting For folder
• Taking care of the tasks on my To Do list
• Attending the meetings/appointments that are in my agenda

As said, some emails are filed immediately. Others get filed as soon as the required action is finished. For this I have structured my email store. First, I have multiple stores. I have personal Outlook Data Files for each customer I work with, one for personal mail (like vacation reports, time registration, training information), one for all corporate mail) and one for new business development. If I need more, I just create one. Off course I do create frequent backups. In each store I create a folder structure that is useful for that type of store. Think of folders for projects, assignments, recurring meetings etc. Without a few exceptions, I have no folders for people. I like to structure on content and not by whom I received the email from. I do make a folder for a person e.g. if I do regularly have email conversations that are not bound to a particular topic that would lead to a regular folder. An example would be my manager.

To make life easier I have macro’s (download and import in the Visual Basic Editor) bound to a toolbar in my Inbox view. There are macro’s that create actions for today, tomorrow, next week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and the weekend. There are also macro’s that convert the email into a task, a meeting and an invite.
There are also three rules (download @WF, @WF24, @WF48 and import in the Rules and Alerts dialog) for intercepting the outbound emails that require monitoring the response.

Last but not least, I tweaked the view of the @Action and @Waiting For folders a bit. These views are now grouped by due date. I also tweaked the To Do list. It is grouped by due date and within a due date by category.

I started by stating that this blog post is a little sidestep but still has some common elements in relation to ECM. We discussed the file plan and structuring unstructured data. The method I described is a form of event processing. Basically I use the incoming emails events for create queues with tasks that need to be taken care off and the outgoing email events for a monitoring queue. Since I have no fixed rigid flow that I follow to do my work, the link to BPM is not there even though some would see task and due dates as the key elements in BPM.

Bottom-line: I shared with you the way that works for me in dealing with email. I hope there are some clues for you as well.

or any other