Content Management Systems Reviews - Open Text - ECM Suite - Auto Classification

For records managers and others responsible for building and enforcing classification policies, retention schedules, and other aspects of records management plan, the problem with traditional, manual classification methods can be overwhelming.

Content needs to be classified or understood in order to determine why it must be retained, how long it must be retained, and when it can be dispositioned. Managing the retention and disposition of information reduces litigation risk, reduces discovery and storage costs, and ensures that organizations maintain regulatory compliance.

Classification is the last thing end-users want (or are able) to do. Users see the process of sorting records from transient content as intrusive, complex, and counterproductive. On top of this, the popularity of mobile devices and social media applications has effectively fragmented the content authoring market and has eliminated any chance of building consistent classification tools into end-user applications.

However, if classification is not being carried out there are serious implications when asked by regulators or auditors to provide reports to defend the organization’s records and retention management program.

User concerns aside, records managers also struggle with enforcing policies that rely on manual, human-based approaches. Accuracy and consistency in applying classification is often inadequate when left up to users, the costs in terms of productivity loss are high, and these issues, in turn, result in increased business and legal risk as well as the potential for the entire records management program to quickly become unsustainable in terms of its ability to scale.

So what is the answer? How can organizations overcome the challenges posed by classification?

The answer is a solution that provides automatic identification, classification, retrieval, archival, and disposal capabilities for electronic records as required by the records management policy.

OpenText Auto-Classification is the solution that combines records management with cutting edge semantic capabilities for classification of content. It eliminates the need for users to manually identify records and apply requisite classification. By taking the burden of classification off users, records managers can improve consistency of classification and better enforce rules and policies.

OpenText Auto-Classification makes it possible for records managers to easily demonstrate a defensible approach to classification based on statistically relevant sampling and quality control. Consequently, this minimizes the risk of regulatory fines and eDiscovery sanctions.

It provides a solution that eliminates the need for users to sort and classify a growing volume of content while offering records managers and the organization as a whole the ability to establish completely transparent records management program as part of their broader information governance strategy.

Auto-Classification uses OpenText analytics engine to go through documents and codifies language-specific nuances identified by linguistic experts.

Features

Automated Classification: Automate the classification of content in OpenText Content Server inline with existing records management classifications.

Advanced Techniques: Classification process based on a hybrid approach that combines machine learning, rules, and content analytics.

Flexible Classification: Ability to define classification rules using keywords or metadata.

Policy-Driven Configuration: Ability to configure and optimize the classification process with an easy step-by-step tuning guide.

Advanced Optimization Tools: Reports make it easy to examine classification results, identify potential accuracy issues, and then fix those issues by leveraging the provided optimization hints.

Sophisticated Relevancy and Accuracy Assurance: Automatic sampling and benchmarking with a complete set of metrics to assess the quality of the classification process.

Quality Assurance Workbench: Advanced reports on a statistically relevant sample to review and code documents that have been automatically classified to manually assess the quality of the classification results when desired.

Auto-Classification works with OpenText Records Management so existing classifications and documents can be used during the tuning process.

OpenText Auto-Classification was developed in close partnership with customers using the OpenText ECM Suite, and works in conjunction with OpenText Records Management so that existing classifications and classified documents can be used in the tuning process.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Open Text - ECM Suite - Portal

OpenText Portal (formerly Vignette Portal) is a part of OpenText ECM Web Content Management Solution. It enables you to create web sites with rich content and applications, enabling customized users interactions. It provides a highly scalable and efficient means of aggregating content and applications for use across a variety of initiatives inside and outside the firewall.

It enables users to combine web services, repository data, and user interfaces in meaningful ways to create valuable business applications without IT help. Users can create web pages by simply selecting portlets from OpenText’s library of over 200 portlets.

Portal layout management allows users to easily apply a variety of page layouts via visually intuitive tools. There is interaction between portlets. Pages refresh only as needed. Portlets load separately, so the end user does not have to wait until the entire page loads. Pages are dynamic and load quickly.

Users can create a template from an existing site to be used later to create similar sites. Portlets can be embedded at any web site. User can utilize pre-defined portlets that allow rapid site creation of portals with common functionality that is integrated with existing applications and data. There are portlets that enable teams to share and publish portal documents as part of any business processes.

Social platforms such as blogs, wikis, rating, ranking, tagging could be integrated. Out-of-box federated search and taxonomy management tools are also available. There is an ability to custom connect 3rd party search engines.

All portals could be managed from a unified permissions-based management console while allowing delegated administration to individual portals which allows diverse multi-dialect administrators to manage virtually all of their portal objectives.

Content could be delivered to customer's PDA, cell phone or other device of choice. Content could be targeted from different repositories based on dynamic user segments.

User experience can be improved by enabling inter-portlet communications, web services integration and display of 3rd party portlets in an integrated, contextual way.

One can enhance security and auditing of the site activity via a native reporting interface that reports on site modifications.

Web presence is globalized with extensive internationalization for portal users and administrators to support diverse audiences.

Live sites could be updated faster via incremental item changes instead of import/export of the entire navigation tree. Import/export components or versions of components, categories of components or versions of components using batch processes.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Open Text - ECM Suite - Web Content Management

The following products deliver the Web Content Management component of the OpenText ECM Suite:

OpenText Web Experience Management is a comprehensive solution for managing content in high performance, scalability, and transaction-oriented web applications.

OpenText Portal works in tandem with OpenText Web Experience Management to allow you to rapidly create mashups and composite applications built on Web services, repository data, and user interfaces.

OpenText Dynamic Portal for Third-Party Portals works in tandem with OpenText Web Experience Management to allow you to publish content directly into portals such as Liferay, IBM WebSphere, or Oracle WebCenter.

OpenText High Performance Web Delivery provides a unique, integrated combination of real-time caching and intelligent cache management capabilities. It improves Web site performance, makes Web sites more scalable, and in many cases reduces costs and manual overhead.

OpenText Semantic Navigation is a powerful and engaging technology, OpenText Semantic Navigation combines content analytics with information retrieval to automatically present Web site visitors with content that is relevant to what they’re looking for or viewing.

OpenText's Web Experience Optimization products give you the capabilities to optimize each phase of your on-line marketing campaign lifecycle and provide customers with a more relevant Web experience.

OpenText Campaign Management helps deliver highly personalized content to individual recipients through online and offline touch points. From simple campaigns to more sophisticated marketing programs, it enables the easy design, execution and measurement of multipart, results-driven communications across a variety of channels.

OpenText Business Integration Studio is a graphical development environment for rapidly integrating business applications, processes and information that facilitates the integration of OpenText's Web content management, social media, and portal management applications with disparate applications and content repositories inside and outside the enterprise.

Today's post is about OpenText Web Experience Management.

OpenText Web Experience Management (formerly Vignette Content Management) is a solution for creating and managing content for enterprise Internet, extranet, or intranet applications.

Users can:

• create new sites from site templates derived from their existing sites or launch a sample site with out-of-the-box content types, workflows, and presentation assets;
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• apply graphical themes, page and region layouts to pages, layouts or whole sites;
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• browse content in contextual, multi-dimensional workspaces by site, content type, folder, category or explorer views.

It offers user-friendly console, branded themes, and preferences that empower its content owners to easily create and manage web content while automatically adjusting to day-to-day authoring actions. This enables users to edit pages and content with no experience and non-intrusive toolbars, improve productivity with contenxtual views that present information users need when and where they need it, and publish in one click.

Powerful and easy to use site layout, theme, and content templating interface enables users to control how site content is presented and helps ensure consistent branding and communication to a variety of audiences, while reducing site development and maitenance cost.

Users can manage all content through intuitive and configurable role-based management console. The console includes ribbon menu and properties toolbar for commonly used items, content tracker, task inbox, and content search with saved queries. There are ergonomic controls for faster editing including language, time zone, filters, page and content settings.

Cotent items can be reused across multiple sites. For example, one article can be published on 100+ sites with a single management workflow.

Vanity URLs can be completely automated or manually defined to help increase site rankings in major search engines and support marketing campaigns, promotions, and messaging that can help increase the number of visitors to your site.

It integrates well with social and collaboration sites.

Users can create content using their favorite tools and web forms. Content from other repositories can be dynamically integrated or migrated for full cycle workflow and publishing management. Images, podcasts, Adobe Flash files and video metadata management allows editors to streamline approval, metadata tagging, and publishing of these assets.

Support for roles allows organizations to customize access to content creators, approvers, developers, and other users. This allows individulas to participate in selected processes automatically while standardizing and enforcing business practices that are exposed to users through delegated administration.

There are good workflows and content types modeling and the best practices template in the sample site. The content type modeler provides an intuitive interface to create and modify content objects such as articles, products, news, etc. Content type evolution allows you to make common modifications.

Content could be in any data format including files, database records, XML documents, rich media assets such as images, videos, and podcasts. There are library services such as check-in and check-out, version control, rollback, content history, security, content classification, metadata indexing, and search. Content could be in any language.

There are tools to optimize the staging and delivery of managed content through web sites, portals, and other applications. The application streamlines the retrieval of content items according to their multi-faceted taxonomies and then transforms the items to suit the intended delivery context, application or device.

User can publish content through automated workflows that deliver content to multiple delivery applications (web servers, databases, application servers). The publishing engine manages content dependencies, so content retains its context throughout content lifecycle.

Search capabilities allow parametric search across content, content attributes, and metadata, both within the management console and for the site search features as well as framework for 3rd party search, enabling high degrees of search accuracy.

There is an ability to manage user access centrally including delegated administration based on LDAP standards.

I will continue describing other products of web content management component of the OpenText ECM Suite in my next posts. Follow me and stay tuned!

Content Management Systems Reviews - Open Text - ECM Suite - Knowledge Management

OpenText Knowledge Management (formerly Livelink ECM - Knowledge Management) is a comprehensive knowledge management solution that enables organizations to search, classify, navigate, and collect all of their corporate knowledge in a single, secure, web based repository.

OpenText Knowledge Management works with OpenText Document Management or OpenText Content Lifecycle Management, leveraging the power of these content repositories and adding functionality that manages all knowledge from a single interface, regardless of originating source. Open Text Knowledge Management is a completely integrated, web based solution that delivers end-to-end, closed-loop management for all of your corporate knowledge assets.

Knowledge Management enables employees to perform their daily work more efficiently and accurately. The benefits of a centralized knowledge repository and library services ensures that you are working with the most up-to-date information. Specialized tools enable you to identify topic experts; quickly finding the best information resources from anywhere in your organization.

Powerful search, classification and navigation tools to help you find and manage an unlimited number of documents: from files, documents and objects, to project logs, search queries, discussion items, tasks, workflow maps and more in an organized, hierarchical structure.

You can identify subject matter experts and harvest their knowledge from the centralized knowledge repository. Open Text Knowledge Management extends the functionality of Open Text document management foundations - Open Text Document Management and Open Text Content Lifecycle Management. Open Text document management solutions fit your existing security framework, ensuring protection of content through permissions based access rules. Authorized users benefit from full access to all functionality from a single, secure web browser, and the flexibility of Open Text document management foundations allows for configuration of permissions on a group or individual level.

Features

Organize and share knowledge: Knowledge Management manages any type of electronic document in any file format. You can organize electronic documents into hierarchies of folders and compound documents within three types of workspaces that reflect the different ways in which people work: the Enterprise Workspace; Project Workspaces; and Personal Workspaces.

Capture knowledge automatically: Knowledge Management allows you to associate metadata with documents. Metadata is indexed and can be used to more easily find, retrieve, and generate reports on documents based on your custom criteria. Each piece of metadata information is an attribute, and sets of attributes can be grouped into categories that can be associated with any document.

Classify and categorize knowledge assets: multiple taxonomic classifications can be associated with documents in their original locations. This enables you to browse and search documents in the knowledge management repository according to taxonomies that differ from the one implied by the folder structure without having to create multiple copies of documents. You can organize information placed in Open Text Document Management or Open Text Content Lifecycle Management repositories via manual, assisted, or automatic means. Streamline browsing and improve search precision.

Automate knowledge management processes: Knowledge Management's graphical Workflow Designer tool enables you to automate document management processes, such as document change requests and document review and approval processes, to ensure that they are carried out accurately and consistently. You can design processes according to your own requirements or those imposed by regulatory agencies.

Discover knowledge with prospective queries: Knowledge Management provides prospective searching capabilities. You can create special queries to monitor various data sources, including the OpenText Document Management or OpenText Content Lifecycle Management repositories, shared network drives, external web sites and any integrated databases. When new information is discovered, you are immediately notified.

Single point of information access: federated search enables you to query multiple repositories and brings disparate information sources together. Use powerful search tools to quickly information access locate the right information. View results on a single page in a sorted, clustered format. Show hit highlights, document summaries, relevance rankings and result themes to improve fidelity.

Dynamic, multi-dimensional navigation: create dynamic, virtual folder structures built on pre-defined information taxonomies and document attributes; no pre-defined hierarchy is required. Often, metadata is not visible or navigable when you browse for information. Using taxonomies for browsing and additional context, you can decide which dimension is best to find required documents. Drill down the hierarchy using associated metadata to refine values and corresponding documents.

Optimize taxonomy creation and maintenance: analyze and cluster related documents, and extract and generate key concepts. Create suggested taxonomy nodes based on analyses; import and export in many common formats.

Automatically collect and extract information: crawl multiple Web-based information sources including intranets, extranets, web sites, and more. Create personal entries for crawling, search specific sites and search from the Document Management or Content Lifecycle Management user interface.

Content Management Systems Review - Open Text - ECM Suite - Records Management and Archiving

In my last post on Open Text ECM Suite Content Lifecycle Management group of products, I mentioned that this group consists of document management, imaging, records management, and archiving. I described document management in my previous post and I described imaging solution yesterday.

Today, I am going to describe records management and archiving solutions of Content Lifecycle Management group of products.

Records Management

OpenText Records Management (formerly Livelink ECM - Records Management) delivers records management functions and capabilities to provide full lifecycle document and records management for the entire organization. This product allows your organization to file all corporate holdings according to the organizational policies, thereby ensuring regulatory compliance and reducing the risks associated with audit and litigation. Records management can manage content in a number of different repositories.

Record management product provides services to core ECM Suite components. Its features are embedded in the interface of respective applications enabling users to access records management functions in the interface they are most familiar with.

Users can access records management solution from a standard Web browser. It provides a common interface to access all forms of information, such as images, paper, word processing documents, spreadsheets and email. Users can apply metadata to submitted documents to enhance search capabilities. Metadata is indexed and can be used to more easily find, retrieve and generate reports on documents based on your custom criteria.

Metadata, retention and disposition rules can be applied immediately upon the classification of a record to all content regardless of type. The product supports the application of multiple file classifications, holds, and retention schedules to individual records. Content can hold two or more record classifications and be retained according to multiple retention schedules. You can combine classifications and schedules to meet the unique retention and disposition needs of content.

Users are able to create Record Series Identifiers (RSI) to define a disposition schedule for each RSI. RSI Apply rules can be created that define which records belong with what RSI. Rule searches can be applied to return documents that are marked with an RSI value. File Plan can be created with which an RSI or a Records Management object can be associated.

The product includes the ability to manage physical items such as paper records, equipment, and more, adding representative object graphics to electronic storage repositories. In addition, it supports the use of XML-based color labels and barcode labels for physical records such as folders, boxes and shelves directly from within the Records Management interface.

There are few options for classifying records. You can classify records interactively with a single click or automatically inherit retention schedules and classifications by moving many records at the same time into folders. You can automatically import retention policies and other data. Records management maps records classifications to retention schedules.

All Records Management objects have Access Control Lists. In addition, security settings can be modified globally. Administrators can periodically review vital records to ensure appropriate classification and disposition.

All activities can be fully audited. You can track which records were purged from the system and generate high-level views of all system activity.

Disposition of records can be automated according to organization requirements. You can create list of records that are ready for review or final disposition, and route them to individuals for review and approval.

You can perform disposition searching against items. Searching calculates the disposition date of the items based on RSI schedule and returns the records ready for deletion, archiving or moving on to the next stage in their lifecycle.

You can support vital records identification and the cycling of vital records based on pre-set periods, such as monthly, quarterly, and annually.

You can make records official to prevent users from modifying them. You can also apply legal holds: you can suspend retention schedules and protect content from deletion with legal holds. You can apply multiple legal holds to documents at the same time.

You can also manage physical records:

• barcode label management supports the use of XML-based color labels and barcode labels for physical records such as folders, boxes, and shelves;
• warehouse management - box items and send them to off-site storage;
• circulation management - allow users to borrow items, request for future borrowing, and pass single or multiple records in a single steps. Users can box items and send them to off-site storage.

You can extract records into a secured centralized repository and manage records in them as "in place" or physically extract and automatically replace records with shortcuts, enabling secure content archiving in a centralized, compliant storage environment while still allowing user access directly from application.

Archiving

An OpenText archiving solution is powered by records and retention management.

The following products deliver the archiving component of the OpenText ECM Suite:

OpenText Archiving for SAP Solutions - links document content to the SAP business context. Archiving for SAP Solutions enables you to create, access, manage, and securely archive all SAP content. Archiving for SAP Solutions is a highly scalable and secure repository for business-critical SAP business documents and data. It is designed for the complete range of business documents such as incoming/outgoing invoices, orders, delivery notes, quality certificates, HR employee documents, archived SAP data, and more.

OpenText File System Archiving (formerly Livelink ECM - File System Archiving) provides secure, long-term storage of content from file system drives, while ensuring content integrity, avoiding redundancy, reducing storage costs, and enabling records management. Physical files are managed by a secure document archive.

All contextual metadata information, including auditing, version control, security permissions, and more, is handled by a dedicated metadata management layer. You can configure storage rules according to relevant criteria, such as file size, date, or folder, to control what file system content is archived and to which storage media.

You can migrate content out of file systems and replace items with hyperlinked shortcuts to archived content. Clicking a shortcut retrieves the corresponding archived document, creating a seamless end-user experience.

Alternatively, you can copy files into the OpenText managed repository. This scenario accommodates organizations who want to consolidate access to content stored in file systems, but do not want to disturb the physical files stored therein. You also can move files into the secure storage repository entirely. This scenario accommodates organizations who want to discontinue usage of file systems altogether.

Archive content to secure storage media such as WORM, DVD, UDO, or write-once hard disks. Time stamps and system signatures ensure the integrity of documents. Furthermore, you can quickly review activity logs around archived content, including who viewed or edited documents, when, and why.

File System Archiving enables you to automate the process of storing content safely in multiple physical locations or on hot stand-by devices. In addition, you can automatically render content into standardized formats, such as PDF and TIFF, to ensure future readability.

You can detect multiple instances of content and eliminate redundancies. Content can be compressed automatically to minimize wasted space. You can execute powerful full-text searches across archived file systems, consolidating content from multiple file systems into a single result set.

Multiple archived documents can be restored to the original file system (or to a new, specified location) with a single click from the search results. If appropriate, shortcuts are replaced with original files, and content can be optionally left in or removed from the OpenText managed repository.

OpenText Email Management products are characterized by a centralized foundation of compliant archiving and records management, enabling you to securely store, manage and retrieve email content and ensure regulatory compliance. This is done

through the archiving, control, and monitoring of Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange email to reduce the size of the email database, improve server performance, and control the lifecycle of email content.

OpenText Application Governance and Archiving for Microsoft SharePoint provides integrated, end-to-end management of SharePoint sites and documents across an entire enterprise.

OpenText Storage Services for Microsoft SharePoint stores Microsoft SharePoint content in external storage devices and reduces wasted space by automatically detecting multiple instances of the same content. This ensures the scalability and performance of SharePoint, reduces the costs accorded to having it reside on the very costly production environments that host SharePoint. Also, by redirecting content storage can increase efficiencies, enabling the storage and management of a larger number of documents, simplifying backup and restore processes, and allowing customers to house SharePoint content on less expensive storage devices.

The content metadata attached to documents is still stored and maintained within SharePoint. No stubbing or linking is used in this method of externalization, so end-users can create and edit content within the SharePoint environment seamlessly with no knowledge of the storage management going on behind the scenes.

In addition to lowering overall storage costs, Storage Services for SharePoint can help businesses to meet requirements for information retention. Storage Services for SharePoint ensures that business-critical content is secured in multiple physical locations, and enables the housing of information on a number of different storage devices to meet business and compliance requirements.

The product detects multiple file instances to ensure that only a single instance of every file is stored, provides optional content compression before storage configurable for each individual logical archive, monitors archive server through events and notifications. It uses secure encryption to ensure content is always protected.

OpenText Integration Center for Data Archiving enables full audit and records management for data archiving alongside files and emails from any business application to the ECM Suite. It is a data and content integration platform that unifies information silos that cross application boundaries, consolidating and transforming data and content throughout the entire information ecosystem, including leading-edge ERP, CRM, and ECM systems as well as legacy applications. This product enables you to:

• control the lifecycle of your data with integrated Records Management and Archiving in the ECM Suite;
• archive data to the ECM Suite's Archive Server from any application;
• utilize full record extraction from source systems and transport to the Archive Server;
• automatically apply lifecycle management rules to archived data;
• transform data, enhance content metadata, and deliver records into the Archive Sarver as one process;
• perform monitoring and generate audit trails for reporting.

See more about Open Text products in my upcoming posts.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Open Text - ECM Suite - Content Lifecycle Management

In my last post about Open Text, I started describing Open Text ECM Suite. The subject of my today's post is Open Text ECM Suite - Content Lifecycle Management. Content Lifecycle Management includes document management, imaging, records management, and archiving.

Managing, controlling, and securing content is critical to an organization’s overall information governance strategy. OpenText ECM Suite, Content Lifecycle Management gives organizations ECM solutions to manage content throughout its entire lifecycle.

Features

Fully featured, highly scalable, web-based document management provides a secure, single repository for organizing and sharing enterprise content.

Workflow automates processes, such as change requests and approval, for accuracy and consistency. Processes can be designed according to corporate or regulatory standards.

Imaging transforms physical records into valuable digital assets. Scanned information is indexed and classified with customizable metadata to make it fully searchable.

Records management enables full lifecycle management of all enterprise content, electronic or physical, enabling you to control retention and ensure destruction at the right time.

Intelligent storage management optimizes storage according to business context and metadata, leveraging less expensive media and provides high-end storage reduction services.

Last time I described Document Management (formerly Livelink ECM - Document Management) solution of this suite of products. Now: imaging solution.

Imaging Solution

OpenText Imaging accommodates the need to scan paper documents and the need to view electronic documents. It covers both aspects of business document integration—capturing documents from various sources including scanners, faxes, email, and other office applications, and retrieving documents for users in many different environments, including in remote offices and via the Internet.

The OpenText Imaging solution provides interfaces for integration with workflow, OpenText Archive Server, OpenText Content Server, and other business applications. With OpenText Imaging, documents can be captured, archived, and linked to all types of business objects within enterprise applications.

Features

The Enterprise Scan feature of OpenText Imaging:

Scales from hundreds to many thousands of documents per day.

Supports complex business processes by integrating with and initiating SAP Webflow, OpenText BPM Server, or Content Server workflows.

Integrates with Content Server, including single sign-on and scanning directly from a Content Server folder.

Integrates with SAP Business Suite applications, supporting SAP ArchiveLink and interchange of metadata between SAP systems and Content Server.

Provides built-in barcode support and automatic document separation.

Provides sophisticated pre-indexing capabilities, including pick lists and sticky fields.

Provides full-page views with the ability to zoom.

Generates scanned documents in TIFF, PDF, Searchable PDF, or PDF/A formats.

The DesktopLink feature of OpenText Imaging:

Integrates with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, allowing users to store and archive office documents directly from the originating application and link them to the appropriate transactions in business applications.

Stores and archives documents in Microsoft Windows Explorer via drag-and-drop or the file menu.

Stores documents in their original format or renders them in standard formats, such as TIFF or PDF, for long-term archiving and readability.

The OpenText Imaging ExchangeLink and OpenText Imaging NotesLink options:

Archive and link Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes emails or email attachments to the appropriate transaction in the enterprise application (such as SAP ERP), allowing the email to be searched and displayed directly within the enterprise application.

The Web Viewer, Java Viewer, and Windows Viewer features of OpenText Imaging:

Scroll, rotate, and zoom via an easy-to-use thumbnail view of document pages.

Append documents with notes that are automatically tagged with the current date, time, and user name.

Add, edit, and view annotations, including drawing elements such as arrows, lines, mark, checkmarks, and text elements.

Support form overlays, enabling documents to be displayed together in the original form in which they were printed.

Print or save documents locally, with automatic document rendering.

Perform free text search in documents like ASCII, ALF (Advanced List Format), and OTF (Output Text Format) documents.

Support ASCII, ALF, OTF, TIFF/FAX, and JPEG formats. PDF documents are supported in Web Viewer and Windows Viewer.

In my next post, I will describe records management and archiving solutions of ECM Suite - Content Lifecycle Management.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Open Text - ECM Suite - Document Management

Open Text ECM Suite - Document Management (formerly Livelink ECM - Document Management) is a document management solution that provides full lifecycle management for any type of electronic document. Document Management provides a single, authoritative repository for storing and organizing electronic documents. Web based interface and open architecture make it easy to deploy.

It is the powerful, fully integrated content management system that delivers the essential capabilities for managing documents. You can store, organize, access, and manage documents in an organized, hierarchical structure. Version control and audit trail functions ensure accuracy and currency. Powerful search functionality allows users to easily find what they need when they need it. Classification and metadata identify content authors and stakeholders so users can quickly find subject matter experts.

Documents from across entire organization can be consolidated within a centralized web-based interface. Each user has access to a personal workspace which can be customized to suit individual preferences and enhance the overall user experience. By allowing users to organize information intuitively, they can quickly access what they need.

The core library services are integrated with process automation tools. All important activities can be routed into work stream, allowing critical data to be included with key tasks and assignments.

Compliance measures for documents retention are included in the system.

Features

Repository: the system manages any type of electronic document in any file format. You can organize electronic documents into hierarchies of folders and compound documents within three types of workspaces that reflect the different ways in which people work: the Enterprise Workspaces; Project Workspaces; and Personal Workspaces. Dynamic shortcuts point to any document, folder or object within the repository.

Classifications - apply custom metadata to documents: you can associate metadata with documents. Metadata is indexed and can be used to easily retrieve and generate reports on documents based on your custom criteria. Each piece of metadata is an attribute, and sets of attributes can be grouped into categories that can be associated with any document. You can also add to your attributes, which improves the accuracy of attributes and enhances query precision. You can classify documents by applying pre-existing taxonomic classifications, categories or attribute values.

Classify documents according to alternate taxonomic hierarchies: Multiple taxonomic classifications can be associated with documents in their original locations. This lets you browse and search documents in the repository according to taxonomies that differ from the one implied by the folder structure, without having to create multiple copies of documents.

Information Retrieval:the web interface includes a simple search bar on every page that supports full-text or natural language querying within the folder or across the entire repository. The solution also includes an advanced search form for building search queries using system and custom metadata, taxonomic classifications, Boolean operators, and modifiers such as Soundex and a thesaurus. Search result pages provide result rankings, automatic summaries, clustered result themes, hit-highlighting and Find Similar. Users can save queries, result snapshots, and multiple search form templates.

Support for Any File Format: the system handles numerous file types including engineering drawings, system reports, email messages, periodicals, rich media, etc.

Rate and critique documents: Document Management allows you to rate the value of a document and write a critique that is saved with the document and viewed by other users. In addition to providing users with lists of the most highly rated documents, the solution tracks document usage to show the most recent and frequently accessed documents.

Workflows - automate change request, review and approval processes: graphical workflow designer tool enables you to automate document management processes, such as document change requests and document review and approval processes, to ensure that they are carried out accurately and consistently. You can design processes according to your own requirements or according to those imposed by regulatory agencies. Web forms streamline the data entry process.

Work directly from popular document authoring tools: the system allows users of popular desktop authoring tools, including Lotus Mail and Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, to open and save documents directly from the repository. Using Windows Explorer, users can drag and drop documents and folders between their desktop and the repository. Document Management also supports the WebDAV protocol, allowing users of WebDAV-compliant desktop applications to connect directly to the repository.

Email documents to and from the repository: You can assign a unique email address to folders in the OpenText Document Management repository, thereby allowing users to email document attachments directly to a particular folder. Each document in the repository has an email function, enabling the document's link or the document itself to be emailed to any recipient.

Use permissions to fine-tune access to documents: You can set up to nine levels of permissions on a document or folder in the repository. This helps you fine-tune the type of access that you want to grant to individuals and groups based on corporate policies. For example, some users may not have the permission to even see a document, others may have the permission to only view a document, and others may be able to modify or delete a document. You can assign roles and groups, control whether users can see documents, view their content, modify or delete them.

Version Control: Control document versions and prevent multiple authors from overwriting each other's work using Document Management's check-out and check-in functions. When a user checks out a document, it can be viewed, but not modified, by other users. Users can access the complete version history of a document and view the content of previous versions. Manage the history of documents. Create static pointers to specific versions to create a generation or to specify published versions.

Audit Trail: comprehensive audit trail functionality to automatically record the date, time and performer of every type of action, description of it, and related document activities such as who worked on it, reserved it, etc. Activities that can be recorded include document creation, renaming, reserving or unreserving, adding or deleting versions, viewing and so on. Integrated notification capabilities inform users whenever relevant content within the repository is updated.

Generate document usage reports: the system includes predefined reports, such as a list of the largest documents or all the documents owned by a given user. In addition, Document Management includes a report building tool for creating custom reports.

Manage compound documents: Use compound document containers to manage documents that comprise multiple document files. Within a compound document, sub-documents can be ordered and nested compound documents can be created. You can create major releases and minor revisions of compound documents as well as links that point directly to a particular release or revision.

Next post on Open Text ECM Suite - content lifecycle management.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Open Text - ECM Suite

In my first post about Open Text, I mentioned that Open Text Corporation is the software company which provides enterprise content management (ECM) software solutions. I described Open Text Solutions in general. In my today's post, I am going to start describing Open Text ECM Suite.

The Open Text ECM Suite integrates multiple technologies for document management, records management, web content management, portal, digital asset management, email management, and content lifecycle management. Other components include electronic discovery, auto-classification, document capture, document imaging and digital faxing solutions. The suite provides functions for team collaboration, forums, blogs, wikis, and real-time instant messaging and collaboration. These functions are connected through business process management tools to each other and to other business applications and processes.

Open Text ECM Suite includes the following products:

• Document Management 
• Content Lifecycle Management
• Records Management
• Knowledge Management
• Web Content Management
• Digital Asset Management
• Portal
• Auto-Classification
• Enterprise Search
• Rights Management
• Email Management
• eDiscovery
• Archiving
• Transactional Content Management
• Capture and Imaging
• OCR/ICR and Classification
• Collaboration
• Social Media
• Semantic Navigation
• Content Analytics
• Content Reporting
• Library and Collection Management
• Managed File Transfer
• Widget Services

Next post: ECM Suite - Document Management

Content Management Systems Reviews - Open Text

Open Text Corporation is the software company which provides enterprise content management (ECM) software solutions. This software combines content lifecycle management, business processes, and collaboration. It includes the underlying platform to manage most content types, ranging from user generated content in social networks to data in enterprise resource management systems. These ECM technologies can be used to address end user engagement, business agility, and cost and risk reduction.

Open Text sells software licenses including support and maintenance, offers worldwide consulting services, software training, and individual support packages.

Because Open Text has many products that would be interesting to you, it is impossible for me to describe all of them in one post. I am going to break up the description of Open Text products into few posts. Today, I am going to describe Open Text product offerings in general. In my future posts, I will describe specific products.

Major Open Text Product Offerings

Open Text ECM Suite

The Open Text ECM Suite integrates multiple technologies for document management, records management, web content management, portal, digital asset management, email management, and content lifecycle management. Other components include electronic discovery, auto-classification, document capture, document imaging and digital faxing solutions. The suite provides functions for team collaboration, forums, blogs, wikis, and real-time instant messaging and collaboration. These functions are connected through business process management tools to each other and to other business applications and processes.

Open Text eDocs

Open Text eDOCS products (formerly Hummingbird Enterprise), complement the Open Text ECM Suite. They are integrated with OpenText ECM Suite. eDocs products are used for managing all forms of content and also include collaboration, forums, blogs, wikis, instant messaging, and provide business process management tools. These products are widely used in pharmaceutical companies.

Open Text StreamServe Products

Part of the Open Text ECM Suite, Open Text StreamServe products are customer communications management software solutions that help organizations process and deliver highly personalized documents in any paper or electronic format. They enhance customer interaction capabilities enabling the automation of customer communications for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, as well as customer service scenarios.

Designed to address the "last mile" of communication between an organization and its customers, StreamServe products help to improve and expand business relationships and customer experience. They enable companies to automatically create personalized documents in high volumes through rules-based dynamic assembly and present them to customers, partners, and suppliers in multiple formats and through any channel they prefer.

Open Text StreamServe products scale across a company's document-driven business processes and are designed for easy integration with ERP and supply-chain systems and applications, including those from SAP.

Simple to deploy and maintain, StreamServe products deliver dynamic composition, document process automation, and output management capabilities to meet the demanding challenges of today’s businesses for producing and delivering highly customized documents in any format.

Open Text Business Process Management Products

Open Text Business Process Management solutions (formerly Global 360 and Metastorm) address the broadest spectrum of process improvement needs. From enterprise architecture and business process analysis to delivering platforms for case management and business process management applications.

OpenText MBPM is the industry leading solution for rapid design and deployment of process solutions for mission critical business applications.

Open Text Process360 for Microsoft SharePoint accelerates the delivery of process applications that leverage your Microsoft technologies (SharePoint, SQL, Lync, Office, Visio, etc.) while improving the management of people and processes.

Open Text Case360 is the solution that allows businesses to rapidly create and deploy business process applications built on a dynamic case management foundation.

Open Text Provision for Enterprise Architecture offers multi-layered visibility into business strategies, including how people, processes, systems, and technologies can be aligned to attain them.

Open Text Provision for Business Process Analysis allows business and IT users to collaborate on process analysis and design to support business process improvement initiatives.

Open Text Portfolio Products

OpenText Portfolio offerings include the following distinct content and data management products and services that are designed to fulfill specific requirements:

Open Text Connectivity Solutions (Hummingbird)

Open Text Content Lifecycle Management, RKYV Edition

Open Text Content Viewing Solutions (Spicer)

Open Text Document & Report Management for IBM AS/400 iSeries (Gauss)

Open Text Eloquent Media Server

Open Text Fax & Document Distribution (Captaris)

Open Text FirstClass

Open Text Integrated Document Management (IDM)

Open Text Records & Documents, Vignette Edition (VRD)

Open Text Report & Output Management (Vista Plus)

Open Text Social Workplace

Open Text Web Site Management (RedDot)

Open Text Workflow Server, .NET Edition (Captaris Workflow)

Please follow me on this blog for a description of individual Open Text products.