Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Compliance Manager

Controlled content often exists as combination of paper documents, collected in binders and distributed manually and electronic files routed for editing and approval using email. Paper documents are a burden to store, even more difficult to share widely, and they can quickly can become obsolete. Electronic content reduces the storage and distribution problem but as emails circulate their attachments may be revised resulting in different versions in use across an organization.

EMC Documentum Compliance Manager offers an automated, integrated online environment for creating, reviewing, revising, approving, distributing, and auditing controlled content.

Compliance Manager helps companies to achieve compliance with external regulations such as FDA 21 CFR Part 11 and internal policies while maintaining high product and service quality standards. It replaces unreliable and inefficient processes with streamlined processes for review, approval, and distribution, and thus reducing the time and effort employees managing controlled content.

By helping organizations meet quality objectives and comply with internal and external regulations and standards, Compliance Manager can help you to reduce operating costs, minimize waste, errors, and production delays and deliver products to market faster with greater confidence.

Compliance Manager can audit all controlled content activities enabling users, managers, and external agencies to know when and why changes were made to content. You can quickly determine who has interacted with content, as well as when and why, and detect attempts to alter or remove documents.

You also can enforce signatures and proper approvals, ensure content authenticity and immutability, and ensure documents retention for required periods.

Compliance Manager is built on the EMC Documentum platform and content repository which includes Documentum-based lifecycles and workflows, EMC Documentum Trusted Content Services for audit trails and digital signatures, and the Documentum client development environment (Web Development Kit).

As an extension of Documentum Webtop, Compliance Manager takes advantage of advanced user interface and platform services such as model dialogues to navigation, extended search capabilities, and configurable pre-sets for convenient user interface configuration.

Compliance Manager is also integrated with EMC Documentum Collaborative Services, Retention Policy Services, Branch Office Caching Services. So, users can collaborate while authoring content, manage review and approval cycles, and control retention and disposition. Once a document is approved, it can be distributed to remove sites for high-performance access.

Compliance Manager is highly configurable minimizing the need for customization. It is easy to upgrade, implement, and validate. It is designed to integrate with any J2EE-based web development and deployment strategy.

The business rules that enforce compliance are exposed as a set of services and components through the EMC Documentum Business Objects Framework. This makes it easy to create applications that work with the Compliance Manager by simply implementing and validating user interface controls. No changes to underlying business logic are required. And because there already exists a large network of experienced service providers for Compliance Manager, you can quickly find the right implementation partner.

Key Features

Secure, globally accessible repository - manage documents from one secure location for review, approval, and reuse.

Intuitive web interface - content is easily accessible.

Automated change management - ensure access to approved versions.

Document signoff with enforced justifications - electronic signature for approved versions.

Proactive notification and tracking - satisfy user acknowledgement requirements of auditors and regulations and ensure approved content is in use.

Full document and user audit trail - store signoffs in the audit trail to ensure validity and prove to regulators or auditors who has seen and approved a document.

Print control with banner and watermark - audit printing, restrict printing to authorized users, and manage hard copy distribution.

Configurable document lifecycle - for review, approval, and distribution.

Rapid search capability - quickly locate the most current content relevant to a given subject.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Automatic Classification - Captiva Dispatcher

In my last post, I mentioned that Documentum has two tools for automatic classification: Content Intelligence Services (CIS) and EMC Captiva Dispatcher. I also described Content Intelligence Services (CIS) tool. In this my post, I am going to describe EMC Captiva Dispatcher.

EMC Captiva Dispatcher delivers high speed automatic content classification, data extraction, and routing documents. With Dispatcher, companies are able to scan multiple batches of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured content within a single flow, without a need for separator sheets, barcodes, or patch codes. By combining EMC Captiva Dispatcher with the Captiva InputAsset Intelligent enterprise capture platform, you can scan, classify, extract, and deliver data from almost any kind of electronic or paper document, often without a need for manual sorting or data entry.

The result is cost reduction and business process optimization which are measures that can help save time and money while increasing an ability to manage the flow of incoming documents.

One of the greatest strength of Dispatcher lies in its ability to identify similar document types. It uses both text and image based analysis to determine document types, automatically capture business data for search and archiving or to drive transactional processes and route documents to the appropriate department for processing. The technology works by automatically learning the attributes of existing documents and using them as a basis for classifying new incoming documents.

By analyzing document's layout design such as logos or other graphical elements, Dispatcher is completely language and format independent. In the case of unstructured and semi-structured documents, they system uses full-text engine results, looking for keywords and text phrases contained in a document to determine the document type. By learning documents based on a visual layout, new document types can be automatically added.

Dispatcher performs automated data extraction and validation, reducing the need for manual data entry and ensuring that accurate information is passed to back-office systems. Dispatcher includes several recognition engines that allow you to extract machine printed and handwritten text, check marks, and barcode information.

For structured forms, Dispatcher extracts data using fast and accurate pre-defined zones. For less structured documents, like invoices or contracts, Dispatcher extracts data using more flexible, free form recognition, enabling data to be extracted regardless of where it exists on a page.

This broad set of recognition technologies and methods ensure that data is extracted with the highest performance from structured forms, while also providing maximum flexibility to extract data from all document types.

As part of EMC Captiva intelligent enterprise capture solution, Dispatcher integrates seamlessly with InputAccel, providing a capture platform that supports both centralized and distributed environments. InputAccel custom capture process flows manage the end-to-end process, ensuring that documents are classified, data is extracted and validated, and information is delivered to all relevant content repositories and business systems. Leveraging InputAccel together provides organizations with a complete solution that is capable of processing volumes ranging from few thousand documents a day to several million.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Automatic Classification

Documentum has two tools for automatic classification: Content Intelligence Services (CIS) and EMC Captiva Dispatcher. The subject of my today’s post is Content Intelligence Services (CIS. In my next post, I will describe EMC Captiva Dispatcher.

Content Intelligence Services (CIS) is an extension to the EMC Documentum content management platform that enables automatic classification and categorization of content in the Documentum repository. Its benefit is well organized, classified, and categorized content. With CIS, content is parsed and analyzed and classification rules are applied. The results of the classification can then be used for categorization as keywords to populate content metadata.

The capability of automatically creating keywords to populate content metadata can remove the burden from end users who otherwise have to do it manually. Many users struggle to consistently populate metadata as content is being created which significantly limits its future use since metadata is what enables processing of the content.

CIS eliminates this dependency on users. CIS can propose metadata to users who can accept or modify them as needed. CIS can provide support for a combination or automatic and manual classification with a special user interface to category owners. Category owners can make a classification decisions manually in cases where the automatic rules cannot classify content with a preset certainty level. The user interface is built into every Documentum client such as Webtop and becomes active upon detection of CIS in the system.

With CIS, the results of the classification can be used for content categorization which assigns content to appropriate categories. Typically, categories are represented by a folder structure to which content is linked. A category hierarchy – or taxonomy – is usually common to a department or an organization and allows all users to share the same navigation view for content in active project or content that has been archived.

CIS comes with prepackaged taxonomies for various industries. These taxonomies can be customized and used either out of box or as a starting point for a customization. Users can add categories and sub-categories to these taxonomies.

CIS supports major European languages. This enables the classification of local content in its native language against an enterprise-wide or local taxonomy. Using this multilingual capabilities, companies can deploy CIS globally, enhancing globalization capabilities of Documentum that include pervasive Unicode compatibility and localized user interfaces.

Next time: EMC Captiva Dispatcher.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Records Management

EMC Documentum Record Management Solution helps organizations to comply with legal and regulatory requirements for documents retention. This solution allows to capture and manage records generated in the company allowing for its automation. It also expands classic records management with features that track and dispose of non-records in order to reduce discovery costs and mitigate legal risks.

Records management solution is fully unified with Documentum content management platform.

Key Benefits

Risk Mitigation – reduce your content liability by disposing of records and non-records once they fulfilled all legal and regulatory and compliance obligations.

Automation – automate the capture and classification of records.

Comprehensive Management – manage all records regardless of file type or content type.

Centralized Management – allows to manage all records in one place regardless of disparate repositories and regardless of type or location.

Flexibility – it can be aligned with your needs as necessary.

Seamless Integration – integrate with your systems infrastructure including SharePoint.

Features

File Plan Administration – organize recordkeeping requirements across the enterprise with corporate and departmental taxonomies.

Platform Unification – simplify user retrieval with files that remain in place and preserve audit trail integrity for documents creation.

Physical Records Support – manage paper, microfiche, and other types of hard copy records.

Classification – organize records manually or automatically to specify authorities and disposition instructions.

Management of Compound Records – manage multiple documents as single record.

Records Disposal – ensure timely disposal with automation tools for identifying eligible records, requesting authorizations, and scheduling deletions.

Microsoft Integration – declare records within Microsoft Office products including SharePoint.

Automated Capture – integrate Line-of-Business (LOB) systems with little or no customization.

The solution provides: document expiration dates, superseding or prior versions, notifications and reminders, reports, disposition console, automation, digital shredding.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - XML Platform for Content Reuse

Designed for content oriented applications such as publishing, archiving, information mashups, regulatory filings, collaboration and knowledge management, XDB provides a scalable architecture to warehouse content in an application-neutral format, not dependent on any application for information retrieval.

XML-based Documentum platform reduces costs by enabling technical writers to reuse rather than reinvent content. You can:

• manage content at a granular level thus increasing the likelihood that a particular piece of content can be used without modification;
• automate the assignment of attributes to content so that writers spend less time describing content;
• leverage advanced search techniques to enable writers to easily find, reuse, and repurpose content;
• manage images and other types of rich media in a common content repository;
• separate content from structure and format, using external DTD and schemas to control the document structure;
• leverage automatic transformation and publishing capabilities to package information for different delivery channels;
• significantly reduce costs associated with localization and translation efforts on only the content that has changed.

XDB allows content schemas to be easily modified to adapt to changing information requirements, supports queries against complex structures, and supports automatic versioning of content and schemas.

Common applications for XDB include the following:

Dynamic Publishing

XDB has scalability, performance, and functionality to power high-volume dynamic sites that deliver highly relevant targeted content. You can also take advantage of Dynamic Delivery Services, a platform that makes it easy to build, maintain, and deploy content delivery applications on XDB.

Content Warehousing

XML is a perfect format for aggregating content into content warehouse to support archiving. It is application neutral. It is also self-describing, which means that it retains its information value even when the application used to create it is not available. You can easily modify content definitions (schemas) to adapt to changing needs. A high performance repository is required for efficient storage and access and a flexible query language for mining the content. This is where XDB comes in.

Features:

Scalable, high performance architecture: unlimited storage capacity, minimal storage overhead, low memory requirements, extensive tuning options, high concurrency, reduced processing overhead for compound operations, unlimited horizontal scaling.

High reliability with simplified administration: high availability, robust transactions, intuitive navigation, powerful and easy to use administration, embeddability, easy copying between databases.

Comprehensive applications development: complete API, built-in transformations, rapid development.

Powerful search, retrieval, linking, and updates.

Integration and interoperability: content validation, WebDav interface, database import, file import.

Extended content management – manage non-xml content, versioning, metadata, xml differencing.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Federated Search

Documentum Federated Search is a suite of products designed to solve the problem of finding information quickly. Federated Search Services is comprised of two server-based components, the Federated Search Server and Federated Search Adapter Packs, and two client-level options – Webtop Federated Search and Discovery Manager. These options enable organizations to quickly search for information stored in a myriad of sources and data formats.

Federated Search Server

Federated Search Server manages federated searches through a query broker and source adapters to provide relevant results in real time while leveraging the local index and security permissions of each source being queried. The result: the most relevant and secure real-time search results which are organized in an intuitive manner.

Key Features:

• Quickly access relevant information across countless sources with a single query executed from an easy-to-use, web-based interface.
• Search multiple internal and external information sources right out of the box, including Documentum repositories, network file shares, Documentum e-Room and other Documentum products, Google, Yahoo, etc.
• Ensure secure access to content by respecting security permissions set at the information source being searched. This ensures that queries only return only those search results that the user is authorized to see.
• Retrieve information from sources whether or not they support the Documentum query language. The Federated Search Server adapts the query automatically and performs post-filtering to compensate for sources that do not support specific operator or metadata.

Federated Search Adapter Packs and Federated Search SDK

Federated Search Adapter Packs are sets of out-of-the box adapters that provide access from the Federated Search Server to information sources by leveraging native data structure, metadata or index of the information sources being searched. Each adapter gathers relevant search results which are then filtered and presented to the end user in the real time in an intuitive manner. Adapter packs are available as a three-pack, ten-pack or unlimited pack.

Federated Search SDK provides a powerful developer toolkit to customize or create adapters based on industry standards as well as source code and a library of common APIs, including Java API to customize the Discovery Manager client for bespoke applications.

Key Features:

• Adapter Library: out-of-the box source adapters, including adapters for government and industry databases, local content archives, enterprise applications, web services, or bundles of adapters for Pharma and Science.
• Enterprise repositories include: Documentum products, FileNet Panagon Content Services, IBM Lotus Domino/Notes, Open Text LiveLink, Oracle database, Symantec Enterprise Vault, and others.
• Search engines include Autonomy, Google Search Appliance, Google.com, Yahoo, Microsoft Index Server, Open Directory, and others.
• Technology standards include HTTP, JDBC/ODBC, SOAP, Web Services, Z39.50
• Content providers include Factiva (news), IDRAC, Lexis Nexis (news and legal).
• Intelligence Services
• With Documentum Intelligence Services added to the Documentum Content Server, content metadata can be improved helping to produce even more precise search results.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Documentum for SharePoint

Documentum has few products for SharePoint users. These products are: Documentum Repository Services for SharePoint, My Documentum for SharePoint, Documentum SourceOne for SharePoint. In this post, I am going to describe these products.

Documentum Repository Services for SharePoint

Documentum Repository Services for SharePoint allows organizations to manage SharePoint Content and leverage it by re-routing content automatically to the EMC Documentum repository. Repository Services for SharePoint aggregates content from disparate SharePoint sites, providing centralized management and the ability to apply compliance, business, and operational control to SharePoint content without impacting the end user. SharePoint does not show that content is being managed by Documentum and SharePoint users and tools are not affected.

These repository services has platform for secure content including common policy enforcement across systems, utilization of existing retention and records processes, and structured disposition.

Unstructured content is not stored in SharePoint and so SharePoint SQL repository is not being overwhelmed by unstructured content thus providing organization with the substantial cost savings associated with hierarchical storage management, de-duplication, and reduced SQL server backup costs.

Repository services stores content in dynamically created folder location where policies and rules can be applied automatically. All of SharePoint related properties are stored in an accessible XML file for future use.

Once stored in Documentum, the content can be managed in the same way as any other Documentum object – retention policy can be applied to the content and it can be categorized as a specific type of content, routed through a workflow, published to a web site, etc.

This capability improves overall content manageability, enhances performance and scalability across organization’s information architecture, and reduces storage costs.

My Documentum for SharePoint

My Documentum for SharePoint provides native access to the EMC Documentum Content Server through the SharePoint user interface. Users can access their Documentum library through SharePoint interface while maintaining control and security over their content through Documentum.

Documentum includes integrated web parts that can be easily used with any existing SharePoint site. These web parts provide direct user access to content that is being managed within a Documentum Content Server repository through the SharePoint user interface.

Users can easily configure SharePoint to include Documentum specific functions such as view, and edit the content, lifecycles, and renditions as well as leverage advanced search capabilities in Documentum libraries.

It also has the following features:

• It provides advanced content protection through a single security model applied to all content, regardless of application. My Documentum for SharePoint is a Documentum client that emulates the SharePoint user experience.
• It provides the appropriate level of centralized document control and policy management to SharePoint users.
• It preserves project information that could be re-used in future.
• It leverages single sign-on using either Documentum or SharePoint credentials.
• It provides virtual document creation capabilities with multiple nested documents in multiple formats.
• It provides renditions management to allow rendition of documents in a variety of popular formats. View all renditions in the repository even those created by other content transformation applications.
• It leverages the full capabilities of Documentum content management platform for secure content including common policy enforcement across systems, utilization of retention and records management processes and structured disposition.
• It supports critical data management requirements, including regulatory compliance, data retention, and document lifecycle management throughout the enterprise.
• Define specific sequence of lifecycle as content passes through specific phases of the lifecycle such as creation, review, and approval.
• Use Documentum tools to customize the display of attributes within web parts providing consistency across all applications. A separate configuration mode affects only the Documentum web parts.
• It provides quick, out-of-box deployment with no customization required.

SharePoint makes content widely accessible while Documentum enhances protection of content. Documentum enables content security and provides solutions for encryption, access control, and fraud protection. This way users can leverage the full capabilities of Documentum content repository while providing easy to use, widely accessible solution for SharePoint users.

Documentum SourceOne for SharePoint

Documentum SourceOne for SharePoint helps organizations to improve performance of SharePoint environment, reduce backup times to meet service level agreements and reduce operational costs.

By externalizing active content, the burden of SharePoint servers can be reduced resulting in quicker search and retrieval times and lower primary storage costs. Storage utilization monitoring ensures that current investments in storage resources are fully optimized.

Inactive content can be moved out of SharePoint environment. By archiving inactive content to a centrally managed archive, your organization can employ proactive information governance strategy and benefit from centralized content archiving. This enables the consistent application of retention, disposition, and overall lifecycle management policies and ensures that the right data is retained and managed according to industry and corporate regulations. By archiving SharePoint content into the same central archive as other unstructured content search and discovery is simplified. Organizations can ensure that critical content is retained and quickly find and produce content when required to do so in audits, investigations, and litigations.

Documentum SourceOne for SharePoint allows user to continue their work in the environment of their choice. It ensures user transparency and maintains complete content accessibility to both active and archived content from within SharePoint. This product leverages Microsoft recommended APIs, maintain native Microsoft integrations, existing workflows, and explicit document links.

Documentum SourceOne for SharePoint enables organizations to manage the explosive growth of information and proliferation of inactive or orphaned SharePoint sites and all the content kept within them. Proactive removal of SharePoint content from supported Microsoft SQL databases and archival them into EMC SourceOne can be automated based on rules and policies.

This product would help to reduce IT costs associated with information retention and disposition by leveraging tiered storage and deduplication capabilities, and driving efficiency in archiving applications. It also enables common policy management and information access across many applications, delivering integrated archiving and compliance.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - CenterStage

In my last post on Documentum, I described one of its collaboration products - eRoom. In today's post, I am going to describe another collaboration product of Documentum - CenterStage.

CenterStage delivers the benefits of enterprise content management, advanced search, and collaboration tools on a single architecture.

It allows to:

• manage and visually organize project, team, and corporate work information; 
• launch projects with space and content templates; 
• work with team members on documents in public and private workspaces; 
• find information wherever it resides; 
• gain access to this information from anywhere.

Public or team workspaces where contributors can share and exchange ideas and activities. There is cross-project visibility and awareness for easy project management of simultaneous projects. Users can establish roles and permissions for their team members, set workspace and content policies, and use templates to ensure best practices.

The CenterStage community model brings people and content together with similar interests or objectives. A community member can become aware of many contributors and their activities across different workspaces.

CenterStage provides wide range of collaboration tools: wiki, blogs, inline authoring, discussion threads, tagging, ratings. These tools allow “collaboration with context” – the ability to see inter-related items and information in one view.

Standalone tables

CenterStage provides standalone data tables to facilitate the management of content collections. A structured arrangement of related content organized into fields, columns, and data tables provide a way for teams to manage such information as list of planned projects, contact information, action items, etc. Data tables organize information into a series of related entries making them a useful way to manage such simple items as to-do lists or more complex items as inventory tracking data. With standalone data tables, information is easy to manage, track, and update.

Search and discovery

CenterStage includes advanced search feature. Users can search with one query an unlimited number of information repositories such as SharePoint, file shares, email archives, ERP systems, ECM systems. The results are filtered, merged, and organized into logical groupings so that users can navigate to the most relevant search results.

The search and discovery features are further enhances by different viewing capabilities, providing the ability to determine contents of any file or folder without opening it. In addition to the regular thumbnail view, users can hover their mouse over any file to display its metadata or employ the slides view to grasp the actual content of any file. Search and discovery enables rapid access to the most relevant content by extracting metadata such as company name, place, and topic, and then dynamically filtering the results.

Governance, risk, and compliance

Documentum Content Server is the back end to the CenterStage solution and addresses the need to ensure that all information is compliant with regulations, legal stipulations, and best practices. The content server provides a rich set of content management services and a comprehensive infrastructure for all content applications, so implementation and administration is simplified. It also provides the scalability, robust functionality, and service orientation for global enterprise deployments.

With the content server, companies can store and manage all types of content including HTML and XML, graphics, multimedia, and traditional documents created with desktop applications. All content can be safely managed and archived. There is full audit at all stages of content creation, approval, and use while enforcing information retention and disposal. This in turn ensures optimum network performance by eliminating isolated pockets of data and content stranded across the enterprise.

Other benefits

Branch office caching services – provides quick access to any type of content regardless of bandwidth constraints or network latency.

Content storage services – allocate content across storage tiers based on its changing value and access requirements.

Media transformation services – transform and manage content such as images, video, and other rich media.

Information rights management – secure information no matter where it travels to maintain control over that information.

Transactional content management – accelerate business processes such as invoice processing or case management.

Web content management – manage the content, underlying structure, and publishing process for web sites and portals.

CenterStage Key Features

Team and community workspace	Wiki, blogs, discussion forums, tagging, RSS feeds
Organization of structured content	Standalone data tables to manage content collections
Workspace and page templates	Lifecycles
Component-based UI and composition model	Advanced search and discovery
Policy-based configuration	Federated Search
Access control	Guided navigation
Lifecycles	Content analytics

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - eRoom

Collaboration has become very important in a work place. It increases efficiency and productivity of employees. Documentum eRoom is one of collaboration tools available on the market.

It is a web-based shared workspace where team members can store project content, communicate and share ideas, assign task, and manage deliverables using a shared project context. It improves knowledge sharing, decision making, and problem solving.. eRoom integrates well with Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, and other desktop applications. Files can be imported from Microsoft Project into eRoom.

Project Planning

You can kick off a project by selecting people from the enterprise directory and inviting them into the eRoom workspace. eRoom sends an email invitation with the hyperlink to this workspace. Users can leverage the workspace by saving their business files in this workspace for others to view.

eRoom includes project scheduling engine to organize, manage, and report on project tasks and milestones.

eRoom has dashboard feature which provides users the ability to see such information as events, tasks, and status across multiple eRoom workspaces and so to manage and coordinate multiple projects in one place. Users can create personalized views. Within the dashboard, project data can be rolled up from multiple eRoom workspaces, providing detailed real-time visibility into the status of multiple projects at once.

You can create a project plan with tasks and milestones, assign owners and deadlines. You can also view tasks relationships and interdependencies with Gantt chart views and enable project team members to update their own tasks as well as report on the status of task groupings or the entire project.

You can hold real-time on-the-fly meetings to deal with issues, plan, and group edit documents. You can create a discussion to deal with issues. You can use polling to get consensus on open issues.

There are instant notifications and alerts to keep users updated. Users can access project information remotely and work on it offline.

Users Interface

Users can see their tasks list on the left side of screen while working on a task detail in the main window. User interface can be customized. There is a real-time summary view across multiple eRooms of project milestones, issue resolution, or project status information. There is top-down visibility into a larger portfolio of connected project records.

There is full-text search with relevance ranking to locate and re-use documents and data. This search can performed no matter where users are within the larger site environment. Users can initiate full-text search for content within eRooms to which they have access.

There is version tracking to maintain a history of changes for each document without losing iterative versions. The multi-step approval process can be configured to get sign-off on documents and deliverables.

Items can be copied and pasted or dragged and dropped from any eRoom to any other eRoom within the same community. Database templates can also be copied and pasted from any eRoom to any other eRoom.

There are standard templates to create new workspaces. Existing workspaces can also be used to create new workspaces. You can leverage saved repository of plans, procedures, discussions, and solutions.

Files can be downloaded and shared via email or portable media like a CD or USB drive.

Documents can also be expired to make sure that the most current version of documents is available for use.

My eRoom feature provides users with the single interface where they can visit all their accessed in the past rooms. Users can access it from any location.

Security

eRoom has robust security. Every item has its own access control which includes an ability to restrict control who may open it, edit, or view it. For example, a discussion thread about a new product under development could be hidden from everyone on a team except those who need to see it.

Security can be integrated with the third-party authentication products.

Information Rights Management

Information Rights Management is included to these security controls. Users can prohibit printing a document, disable copy/paste, prevent screen capture, and watermark pages if printing privileges are granted. The security is enforced if the file is accessed while the user is offline.

A copy of the document inherits the permissions of the original document. It is very useful in a situation when an access to the document needs to be revoked, the access permissions of that document can be modified and enforced on all copies no matter where they are located. There is also a complete audit trail that reflects all activity on protected documents.

The IRM server uses cryptography with symmetric ciphers. With a symmetric cipher the same key used to encrypt information is also used to decrypt it. After a user connects to the server and selects desired security parameters, the IRM server generates a random encryption key for each page of content, records a local copy of the keys and policies, and sends these keys to the user. They user encrypts the content using these keys.

The system ensures that even authorized users cannot get direct access to encryption keys. Keys and policies are kept only on the server to prevent offline security breach. All time-based decisions are made based on the server clock and not on a user’s clock which could be a subject to unauthorized users.

User Management

User selection within a large list of users can be managed in a tabbed, alphabetically sorted selection interface. This reduces the number of clicks needed to select users for addition to eRoom members lists, access control lists, notification alerts, and other areas.

It is a full-feature collaboration solution and is the foundation of eRoom Enterprise, a companion product integrated with Documentum Content Management Platform.

eRoom Enterprise

eRoom Enterprise integrates collaboration and content management features. Teams can work on projects, resolve issues, make decisions, and engage external participants. At the same time, the content is stored in the enterprise repository which allows team members to search for, reference, re-use or publish information.

eRoom Enterprise provides an environment in which people from different organizations and different time zones can work together on projects, programs, and processing while managing content which is generated during this process as an end result.

eRoom Enterprise provides enterprise repository across collaborative workspaces. It includes content management features such as library services, life cycles, renditions, virtual documents, workflows, records policy management, retention, etc.

Discussions, data tables, notes, and calendars are available throughout the repository. In this way, they can be tracked, audited, and archived. This is especially important as companies look to ensure that content created by teams is managed within corporate governance guidelines.

Users can leverage this framework to securely interact with external participants while protecting internal content from unauthorized access.

It includes the support for the classification of collaborative content according to corporate taxonomies and categorization strategies. Companies that have developed custom content properties based on document types or other criteria can use these properties in eRoom Enterprise, enforcing classification of content according to corporate standards.

Centrally managed content can be delivered to multiple applications and projects. Collaborative content, including file templates, can be shared across multiple eRoom workspaces without duplication, reducing human errors, and eliminating time spent searching for or recreating existing information.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Content Transformation Services

In my last post on Documentum, I described Digital Asset Manager and mentioned that Content Transformation Services product of Documentum is very useful in conjunction with Digital Asset Manager. Content Transformation Services product of Documentum is useful also for other content management goals. In this post, I am going to describe Documentum Content Transformation Services (CTS).

Content is typically authored in one formal (such as Microsoft Word) then converted or transformed into a different format (such as HTML or PDF) that is more appropriate for the content reuse. This is a slow process and requires specialized knowledge not possessed by every user. Documentum CTS automates the creation of re-use ready content through pre-defined format transformations that can occur on demand or systematically.

The CTS suite enhances these processes and improves efficiencies by providing additional content intelligence, such as thumbnail and storyboard support, while shielding business users from the technical complexities of converting files from one format to another.

The full CTS suite includes:

• Document Transformation Services (DTS) 
• Advanced Document Transformation Services (ADTS) 
• Media Transformation Services (MTS) 
• Audio Video Transformation Services (AVTS) 
• XML Transformation Services (XTS) 

Document Transformation Services (DTS)  includes the following features:

• HTML support: automatically renders HTML from formats including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Corel WordPerfect, and Adobe PDF. 
• PDF support: generates PDF format for documents, providing access to engineering and architectural drawings, graphics, and publishing files. 
• Rendition management: links PDF or HTML versions to the original document so that changes automatically update the web-ready version. 
• Extensibility/configurability: adds server-side support for additional transformations and property extraction for any document format. 

Advanced Document Transformation Services (ADTS)

Advanced Document Transformation Services (ADTS) extends the capabilities of DTS by providing additional PDF rendering for multi-page TIFF, AutoCAD, Microsoft Visio, and Microsoft Project. ADTS also provides additional format and metadata extraction support, a necessity for content authors who use advanced features such as template styles, hyperlinks, and URLs in their source documents and wish to preserve these features in their PDF documents.

ADTS also provides support for the electronic common technical document (eCTD) specification submission process.

ADTS includes the following features:

• Document thumbnail and storyboard support: automatically generates thumbnails and storyboards for popular document formats. 
• Hyperlink and bookmark support: leverages the styles, bookmarks, and hyperlinks contained in files such as Microsoft Word to create bookmarks within the PDF output. It automatically converts ail URL text to clickable links, including internal cross-references within the document. 
• XMP round-tripping: allows the extraction of Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) attributes on import into the Documentum repository and indexes them for searching and categorization. When content is exported from the repository, the content and metadata stay together. 
• PDF assembly: merges multiple files into a single PDF with the ability to auto generate a table of contents. Watermarks and overlays: applies a watermark content overlay when transforming content to PDF. 
• Header and footer support: automatically adds header and footer information such as date, filename, or object metadata values when performing PDF transformations. 
• PDF manipulation: enables you to modify the security settings, add watermarks, or web optimize existing PDF content with predefined and configurable transformations. 
• E-mail to PDF support: transforms MSG and EML files to PDF and RTF formats. 
• Embedded PDF attachments: embeds PDF transformations as attachments (visible in the "attachments" tab of Acrobat Reader). 
• CAD support: supports DWG, DWF, and DXF CAD formats. 

Media Transformation Services (MTS) delivers transformation and analysis for rich media content such as photographs, presentations, and graphics and includes the following features:

• file transformation: transforms media automaticity when adding it to the repository, on demand, or through workflow. PowerPoint assembly: saves time by dynamically creating new Microsoft PowerPoint presentations using individual slides from existing files.
• rich media attribution: quickly locates content that has been checked into the Documentum repository by searching for media properties.
• thumbnail/storyboard support: automatically generates low resolution thumbnails and storyboards. XMP round-tripping: extracts extensible metadata platform (XMP) attributes on check-in and indexes them for searching and categorization.
• server-side support: adds server-side support for thumbnails, transformations, and property extraction for any document format.

Audio Video Transformation Services (AVTS) is an add-on tool to Media Transformation Services. It delivers enhanced support for audio, video, and Flash content and includes the following features:

• format transformations: easily converts popular audio and video formats through a web browser, without any additional applications, eliminating the need to download audio and video to the desktop.
• dlosed caption extraction: automaticity extracts closed caption text and associates it with the content in the Documentum repository.
• streaming server support: integrates with popular streaming servers providing support for all of the major audio and video file formats.
• thumbnail support: provides frame-by-frame viewing of low resolution video so that you don’t need to export your files.
• storyboard support: automatically extracts storyboard frames based on scene changes or at specified intervals.
• flash support: allows you to thumbnail and storyboard SWF files and convert them to other web-ready video formats using built-in Flash transformation capabilities.

XML Transformation Services (XTS)

XTS is built for customers who would like to leverage the power behind authoring and managing their content in XML. It transforms and renders XML documents into a variety of formats. It includes an eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) engine, a style sheet tool kit and the following features:

• extensive format transformations: easily converts XML content into popular web formats, mobile formats, PDF, help file formats, Rich Text Format (RTF), and Postscript.
• XSLT engine: leverages the eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) engine with full extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting objects (XSL FO) support.
• stylesheet toolkit: supports Darwin information Typing Architecture (DITA) and DocBook standards.
• XML schema transformation support: Converts XML from one schema to another and involves these transformations via workflows, lifecycles, user-based actions, and other applications.

More Documentum products descriptions are coming up.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Digital Asset Manager

I started to describe Documentum in my last post. I described Enterprise Content Management Platform and Documentum Webtop. The subject of my today's post is Documentum Digital Asset Manager.

Documentum Digital Asset Manager (DAM) allows to manage all digital assets, rich media, and traditional documents in one interface. It provides enhanced capabilities to effectively manage rich media in addition to the complete set of enterprise content management capabilities.

DAM is a part of a total Documentum Enterprise Content Management Platform. It can be used to:

• implement rapid changes to digital assets while maintaining consistency and control; 
• repurpose rich media regardless of platform or file format; 
• perform fast search, retrieval, and delivery of digital assets; 
• deliver enhanced media handling capabilities to your organization.

DAM provides easy to use, web-based interface to the unified Documentum content management platform. When enhanced with EMC Documentum Content Transformation Services (CTS) products, Documentum enables the same automation, control, and availability for images, audio, and video that it provides for traditional enterprise content.

DAM allows user to access it from any Windows or Macintosh browser. Users with appropriate permissions can also access administrative controls from DAM interface.

Digital Asset Manager has the following capabilities:

Content Management Functions - provides essential content management services such as:

• Workflow: View inbox, view and initiate workflows, and route documents. 
• Lifecycle: assign lifecycle stage to any object created within DAM. 
• Search: search the entire Documentum repository using keywords and other metadata. 
• "Quick Search" feature is always available without launching the full search dialog. 
• Version Control: manage and access the versions of any rich media asset or document in the repository. 
• Security: control the set of users, groups or roles that can access content within the repository. 
•  Rendition Management: import, view, and create new renditions such as low resolution JPEG or web-ready GIF. 
• Relation Browsing: user can detect and navigate the relationships between assets. 

Loupe Display: zoomed view of each asset by rolling a mouse over the top of thumbnail.

Multi-size Thumbnail Display: view the contents of any folder or the results of any search as select a thumbnails size – small, medium, large.

Active Preview: view contents of multi-page documents (PDF, Word, PowerPoint) page by page with an optimized, web-based pare preview and storyboard navigation interface.

File Sharing for Macintosh Users: share Mac-created files with Mac and PC users by stripping the resource fork when a Mac file is checked out to a PC user and maintaining it for Mac users.

Collections: create, share, manage, transform into specific formats or download content that is grouped together to allow users to exchange ideas related to a particular task or project.

Intellectual Property Rights Management: capture and communicate intellectual property rights associated with assets and extend this framework to third-party tools. This feature includes the ability to create customized rights objects, view associated objects under rights management, search on rights metadata, assign rights on import, check-in, and apply existing rights to assets.

Asset Usage Tracking: view the history associated with a particular asset including who, when, where, and why it was used.

Comprehensive File Transformation: repurpose or render existing content into new formats and resolutions with an easy to use wizard that controls the features provided by Documentum Content Transformation Services products. You can transform single or multiple documents automatically or on demand. For example, automatically convert high resolution print images to low resolution JPEGs and turn commercial video into streaming formats.

Media Profile Creation and Modification: an easy to use wizard to create new profiles for Documentum Content Transformation Services products that control what transformation are available and what they do; you can also chain multiple profiles for more advanced media processing.

Transformation Queue Monitoring: you can see what tasks are currently being processed Documentum Content Transformation Services products configured against given repository; you an monitor where specific items are in need of priority.

PowerPoint Assembly: search and review PowerPoint presentations without having to download and open them on your desktop. You can use thumbnails to select, assemble, re-template, and save slides into a new presentation.

Video Details: you can preview video and flash content through enhanced previews such as storyboards using SMPTE time codes, embedded video preview with play-from-frame streaming capabilities, and text-track management.

Authoring Tool Support: configure Digital Asset Manager to tightly interoperate with My Documentum for Desktop, resulting in seamless user experience when working with authoring tools such as Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, and QuarkXPress.

Next post on Documentum: Documentum Content Transformation Services.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Content Management Platform

Documentum is a content management system produced by EMC Corporation. It is the unified platform for storing a virtually unlimited range of content types within a shared repository. It allows to manage all types of content including documents, photos, video, images, e-mail, web pages, XML-tagged documents, etc.

The core of Documentum is a repository in which the content is stored securely under compliance rules. This repository appears as a unified environment, although content may reside on multiple servers and physical storage devices within a distributed environment.

Documentum provides a suite of services which include content management, web content management, digital asset management, collaboration, content classification, email management, input management, business solutions (forms, invoices, reports, etc.), Information Rights Management, records management, document control, archiving, etc. It also includes xml content repository component which allows dynamic publishing.

Because Documentum includes so many components, it is impossible for me to describe all of them in one post. I am going to break up the description of Documentum components into few posts. Today, I am going to describe Enterprise Content Management Platform and Documentum Webtop.

Enterprise Content Management Platform

The platform provides a secure, unified environment for storing, accessing, organizing, controlling, and delivering any type of unstructured information.

Repository Architecture

Content files can be stored as a file system, a database, or EMC storage Centera. Metadata and full-text index are stored separately. By supporting all major database platforms, operating systems, browsers, portals, application servers, and development standards, Documentum provides vendor agnostic architecture. This architecture supports flexible deployment.

Repositories can be replicated, federated, and locally cached. Both the content server and the repository scale to accommodate billions of items. There are intelligent backups, clustering, and auto-failover by application which provides high availability and business continuity guarantees in managing mission critical business applications.

Application Development and Deployment

The platform includes EMC Documentum composer which provides Eclipse-based tools to significantly enhance the assembly, configuration, and deployment of Documentum applications. Reusable application elements such as user interface components, lifecycle definitions, security settings, object type definitions, and workflow templates speed up the time of deployment. Additional configuration elements such as role-based user presets, forms, templates, and skins emphasize configuration over coding.

Content Functions

Documentum Foundation Services (DFS) – provides core content services such as basic library services including check-in and check-out, version control, object-level access control, and role-based configurations. It also includes features like automatic metadata analysis and attribution, enhanced preview, rendition modeling, workflow, lifecycle management, and virtual document management.

Content Storage Services - users can define and automate the execution of content storage policies, enabling policy-based information lifecycle management (ILM).

Content Protection

Documentum includes encrypted communications between the repository, clients, and applications, and enables flexible and comprehensive authentication, authorization, as well as audit and access control. It also provides platform extensions such as Documentum Trusted Services, Information Rights Management, Records Management, and Retention Policy Services.

Flexible Client Infrastructure

The platform allows users to use content management functionality across desktop, portal or web-based applications. Platform components maintain consistent look and feel when using common functionality.

Integration

The platform integrates well with MS Word, Excel, Outlook, SharePoint and enable content access and process management through familiar applications. It also integrates will portals from IBM, Oracle, and SAP.

Multiple Languages

The platform supports the Unicode universal character set (UTF-16), provides localized UIs, stores, displays, and searches across documents in multiple languages and runs clients on native language browsers and operating systems, all within single repository.

Documentum Webtop

Documentum Webtop is easy to use interface that provides access to repository and content management services via standard web browser rather than having to install a separate client application. It can also be extended to other Documentum services such as collaboration, extended search tools providing a single location to find, update, share, and publish information.

It includes such features as right-mouse click support, auto-completion of fields, ability to perform action on multiple items, enhanced items subscriptions, notifications, and ability to save searches.

Webtop also provides an ability to customize common interface menus and settings based on role, group membership, or location. Departments can include only services they need within Webtop interface and remove those that are not necessary without any IT support. Features and services can be modified as business requirements change over time.

Users can easily add collaboration to their content management applications by implementing Documentum Collaborative Services. When Collaborative Services are enable within a repository, user can create "rooms" with a full set of team collaboration tools. “Rooms” are users managed so team members can be added or removed as necessary.

Webtop includes extended search. It is an advanced search and discovery web client. Within Webtop, users can create a query that would search not only across Documentum system but also across many other information sources within the enterprise and outside the organization.

Webtop delivers results in a dynamically clustered list based on owner, topic, content attributes, and other criteria. Smart navigation features allow users to quickly find relevant information, bypassing irrelevant results on other topics. These queries can be saved as search templates for simplified sharing of commonly searched items.