Change Control

Change control within quality management systems (QMS) and information technology (IT) systems is a formal process used to ensure that changes to a product or system are introduced in a controlled and coordinated manner. It reduces the possibility that unnecessary changes will be introduced to a system without analysis, introducing faults into the system or undoing changes made by other users of software.

The goals of a change control procedure include minimal disruption to services, reduction in back-out activities, and cost-effective utilization of resources involved in implementing a change.

Change control is used in a wide variety of products and systems. For Information Technology (IT), it is a major aspect of the broader discipline of change management. Typical examples from the computer and network environments are patches to software products, installation of new operating systems, upgrades to network routing tables, or changes to the electrical power systems supporting such infrastructure.

Change control process can be described as the sequence of of six steps: record/classify, assess, plan, build/test, implement, close/gain acceptance.

Record/classify

A user initiates a change by making a formal request for something to be changed. The change control team then records and categorizes that request. This categorization would include estimates of importance, impact, and complexity.

Assess

Change control team makes an assessment typically by answering a set of questions concerning risk, both to the business and to the process, and follow this by making a judgment on who should carry out the change. If the change requires more than one type of assessment, the head of the change control team will consolidate them. Everyone with a stake in the change then meet to determine whether there is a business or technical justification for the change. The change is then sent to the delivery team for planning.

Plan

Management will assign the change to a specific delivery team, usually one with the specific role of carrying out this particular type of change. The team's first job is to plan the change in detail as well as construct a regression plan in case the change needs to be backed out.

Build/test

If all stakeholders agree with the plan, the delivery team will build the solution, which will then be tested. They will then seek approval and request a time and date to carry out the implementation phase.

Implement

All stakeholders must agree to a time, date and cost of the implementation of the change. Following the implementation, it is usual to carry out a post-implementation review which would take place at another stakeholders meeting.

Close/gain acceptance

When the user agrees that the change was implemented correctly, the change can be closed.

Change Control in a Regulatory Environment

In a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) or ISO 9001 regulated environment, change control activities and procedures apply to software, labeling and packaging, device manufacturing processes, production equipment, manufacturing materials, and all associated documentation such as quality system procedures, standard operating procedures, quality acceptance procedures, data forms, and product-specific documentation. Change control is also applied to any production aids such as photographs and models or samples of assemblies and finished devices.

Any regulated industry has a compilation of documents containing the procedures and specifications for a finished product. It includes specifications and all other documentation required to procure components and produce, label, test, package, install, and service a finished product. Manufacturers are to prepare, control changes to, and maintain these documents using change control procedure which is in fact the document control procedure.

In my next post, I will describe the change control procedure as it applies to documentation in a regulated industry.

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.

Developing Enterprise Search Strategy

During last ten years the volume and diversity of digital content grew at unprecedented rates. There is an increased use of departmental network drives, collaboration tools, content management systems, messaging systems with file attachments, corporate blogs and wikis, and databases. There are duplicate and untraceable documents that crowd valuable information needed to get work done.

Unfortunately, not all content makes into it into a managed content repository, like a portal or a content management system. Some companies have more than one content management system. Having a search solution that could search across all content repositories becomes very important.

Expectations for quality search continue to rise. Many users like to use an expression: "we would like a search like Google". So, how do we formulate a search strategy?

Here are few key points:

• Security within enterprise search strategies should be carefully designed. Information like employee pay rates, financial information, or confidential communications should not end up in a general search results. 
• Search results should deliver high quality, authoritative, up-to-date information. Obsolete information should not end up in the search results. 
• Search results should be highly relevant to keywords entered in a search box. 
• The ability to limit the search should be included.

Steps to Develop an Enterprise Search Strategy

Step 1: Define Specific Objectives for Your Search Strategy

People don’t search for the sake of searching. They search because they are looking to find and use information to get their jobs done. Answer these questions:

1. Who is searching? Which roles within the organization are using the search function, and what requirements do they have?

For example, a corporate librarian is likely familiar with Boolean search and using advanced search forms, while a layperson searcher likely prefers a simple search box. A sales professional may need an instant access to past proposals for an upcoming meeting, but compliance professionals conducting investigations often use deep search across massive message archiving and records management systems.

2. What categories of information are they looking for?

Define the big buckets of information that are the most relevant to different roles. Realize that not all roles need all information. Part of why desktop search tools are popular is they inherently define a bucket called "stuff on my machine". Defining categories for searching project information, employee information, sales tools, and news helps searchers formulate the right query for the right type of search.

3. What are they likely to do with the information when they find it? After defining broad information categories, work to understand context and answer the question: why are people searching?

For example, if a marketer is collecting information on a particular competitor by searching on the company’s name, it is often useful to expand that query to include related information, like other competitors in the industry, specific business units or product lines, pricing information, past financial performance. Related information can be included in search experiences through a variety of methods, including the search results themselves or methods like faceted navigation.

It is impossible to account for every type of information that users may be looking for, but defining broad user roles, like sales professionals or market researchers and identifying their most common search scenarios is a great way to create the scope of a search project. Use such methods as personas, use cases, interview users to validate assumptions about what processes they are involved in, and identify the information that is most useful to support those processes.

Step 2: Define the Desired Scope and Inventory Repositories

When using the search function built into a particular content management system, the product itself limits the scope of the search to whatever is stored in this system. Search engines such as Autonomy, Endeca Technologies, Google, Vivisimo, and others will search across multiple content management systems and databases. Increasingly, portal products and collaboration platforms from companies like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Open Text will also let you search content that is stored inside and outside of their systems.

Use search to reach outside the confines of a single repository. Cross-repository search becomes essential when companies use different content repositories for different purposes.

Match roles and search categories to relevant content sources. Search requirements often include multiple repositories, such as document libraries, file systems, databases, etc. These repositories usually consist of multiple technology products, such as Lotus Notes, EMC Documentum, Microsoft SharePoint, and others. Using the roles and types of searches you are looking to support, identify all of the relevant repositories necessary to achieve your desired search scope.

Create an inventory of required repositories. When creating your inventory, document the name of each repository, a repository owner, a description of its content, an assessment of the quality of this content, and the quantity and rate of growth of content in each repository. Also document the technology product used as well as any specific security access policies in place.

Consider a phased rollout and select simple but telling data source repositories for kick-off. When rolling out a project such as search strategy that involves disparate sources and complex UIs, a phased rollout may be preferable depending upon factors such as resource constraints and time-to-launch pressure. By approaching the project in phases, you can vet the process and workflow while familiarizing users with the objectives.

Inventory and prioritize the repositories at the start of your project so that you can identify and start with the repositories that will have a big impact. For example, basic queries into a CRM system can add a lot of value while remaining relatively straightforward. Throughout this process, it is important to set expectations with your users, since this approach may lengthen their involvement with the project.

Documenting your repositories lets software vendors effectively size and bid on your project. Most search software gets priced based on the number of documents (or data items) in the index plus additional fees for premium connectors that ingest content from repositories like enterprise content management systems.

For example, strategies that require a limited set of commodity connectors are priced altogether differently than those with premium connectors for content management systems and enterprise applications. Thus, knowing which repositories are relevant and understanding the rate of content growth within them can help avoid unnecessary overspending.

Step 3: Evaluate and Select the Best Method for Enriching Content

When addressing content with very little descriptive text and metadata, evaluate several methods for enriching the content to improve the search experience. Methods range from manual application of metadata to automatic categorization. Some companies use a mix of both methods.

Step 4: Define Requirements and List Products and Vendors to Consider

After specifying a search scope, define requirements for users. The most important is not to get distracted with irrelevant features, but instead to focus on products that adequately meet the organization’s requirements over a specified time period. Consider factors like ease of implementation, product strategy, and market presence in any product evaluation.

Score and select vendors on criteria that are relevant for your needs. There are many vendors to choose from. Search vendors include Autonomy, Coveo Solutions, Endeca Technologies, Exalead, Google Enterprise, ISYS Search Software, Recommind, Thunderstone Software, Vivisimo, and others. Also large software providers such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP have one or more search products on the market.

Product capabilities range from highly sophisticated, large-scale, secure searches that mix advanced navigation and filtering, to basic keyword searches across file systems. Products differ depending on whether the content being searched consists primarily of data. For example, high-end search companies like Endeca offer robust tools for searching structured data from databases, while small-scale basic file system search needs can be met with products like the Google Mini or the IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition.

Step 5: Define a Taxonomy of Logical Types of Searches

While it is impossible to predict and account for everything people search for, it is possible to organize the search experience so it is intuitive to use. Start with defining logical types of searches. For example:

People Search. Searching for employees has gained acceptance as a valuable type of search within enterprises for finding expertise on a subject. A search for people, whether it is a simple name look-up or more advanced expertise search, requires attention to everything from how the query gets processed to how results appear in the interface. For example, searchers typically want to see an alphabetical list of names in a people search results as opposed to results ranked by relevance.

Product Search. A search for products frequently needs to include product brand names (e.g., Trek), concepts and terms related to the product (e.g., bike, bicycle, road race, touring), product description, and specific product attributes, like frame size, material, and color. Knowing where all of this information is stored and how it should be optimally presented to end users is essential.

Customer Search. It is now possible to search and return results for virtually any logical item in an enterprise, like orders, customers, products, and places. You should look into sources like enterprise data warehouses, ERP systems, order histories, and others to create a full picture of the items that is being searched.

Documents Search. Documents usually reside in few repositories, so be sure to include them in your search sources. Users expect search results to be highly relevant with most relevant to be on the top of the search results list.

By bucketing types of searches into logical categories, you can also improve the quality of those searches. Several methods include applying type specific thesaurus, taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies.

Administrators can influence the relevance algorithm in a way that returns the right information the right way, like weighting hits in a product description more heavily than a product attribute field.

Step 6: Plan for a Relevant User Experience

Recognize that not all search experiences should be the same. Google, Yahoo!, and MSN’s popularity on the Web have generated strong interest in offering simple-to-use wide search boxes and tabbed interfaces within the enterprise. But in the enterprise, it is often helpful to use more advanced interface techniques to clarify what users are looking for, including:

Faceted navigation adds precision to search. It exposes attributes of the items returned to an end user directly into the interface. For example, a search through a product information database for "electrical cables" might return cables organized by gauge, casing materials, insulation, color, and length, giving an engineer clues to find exactly what he is looking for.

Statistical clustering methods remove ambiguity. Methods like statistical clustering automatically organize search results by frequently occurring concepts. Clusters provide higher level groupings of information than the individual results can provide, and can make lists of millions of documents easier to scan and navigate.

Best bets guide users to specific information they need. Creating best bets is the process of writing a specific rule that says something like: "when a person enters the term "401K plan" into the search box on the corporate intranet, they should see a link to the "401K plan" page on the intranet".

Additionally, products like Google OneBox and SAP’s Enterpise Search Appliance enable retrieval of frequently searched facts, such as sales forecast data, dashboards, and partner information from back-end ERP systems. Best bets help users avoid a lot of irrelevant results and are very effective for frequently executed queries.

Use basic interface mock-ups and pilot efforts to test, refine, and make these concepts useful for employees in your organization. Many companies use a "Google Labs" style page on their intranets to test out search user interface concepts and tools prior to exposing them more broadly to the enterprise.

Step 7: Implement, Monitor, and Improve

For large projects, allow a lot of time for change management. Teams should maintain the interface between the search engine and all of its back-end content sources.

It is essential to keep IT individuals informed of product evaluation and selection plans so that the final implementation supports security and regulatory policies that are in place for these systems.

Create a plan for ongoing maintenance of search indexing processes and exceptions. Create a monthly reporting plan that lists most frequent searches performed, searches that did not retrieve results, and overall usage of the search function. This can help you troubleshoot existing implementations and drive future decisions on how to enhance the search experience over time.

Enhancements typically include adding types of searches to the experience, further enriching content assets for better retrieval, and incorporating new, valuable content into the overall experience.

In my future posts, I will describe search products such as Autonomy, Coveo Solutions, Endeca Technologies, Exalead, ISYS Search Software, Recommind, Thunderstone Software, Vivisimo, and others.

SharePoint - Workflows

Workflow is the automated movement of documents through a sequence of actions or tasks. Workflows streamline the cost and time required to coordinate business processes, such as project approval or document review by managing and tracking the human tasks involved with these processes.

Rather than going to a person to get the document approved, you can use the workflow feature of SharePoint to accomplish this task. Workflows also encourage collaboration on documents.

Workflow Types

Workflows available in SharePoint are: approval, collect feedback, collect signatures, disposition approval, three-state.

Approval - this workflow routes a document or an item to a group of people for approval. The "approval" workflow is associated with the document content type, and thus it is available in document libraries. A version of the approval workflow is also associated with the pages library in a publishing site, and it can be used to manage the approval process for the publication of web pages.

Collect Feedback - this workflow routes a document or an item to a group of people for feedback. Reviewers can provide feedback, which is then compiled and sent to the person who initiated the workflow. The "collect feedback" workflow is associated with the document content type, and thus it is available in document libraries.

Collect Signatures workflow routes a document to people to collect their digital signatures. This workflow must be started in a application that is part of the 2007 Office release. Participants must complete their signature tasks by adding their digital signature to the document in the relevant Microsoft Office application. The "collect signatures" workflow is associated with the document content type, and thus it is available in document libraries. However, this workflow appears for a document in the document library only if that document contains one or more Microsoft Office signature Lines.

Disposition Approval - this workflow, which supports records management processes, manages documents expiration and retention by allowing participants to decide whether to retain or delete expired documents. This workflow is intended for use primarily within a records Center site.

Three-state - this workflow can be used to manage business processes that require organizations to track a high volume of issues or items, such as customer support issues, sales leads, or project tasks. It can also be used to manage documents expiration and retention.

Translation Management - this workflow manages the manual document translation process by creating copies of the document to be translated and assigning translation tasks to translators. This workflow is available only for translation management libraries.

Setting up Workflows

Before a workflow can be used, it must be added to a list, library, or content type to make it available for documents or items in a specific location.

The availability of a workflow within a site varies, depending on where it is added:

If you add a workflow directly to a list or library, it is available only for items in that list or library.

If you add a workflow to a list content type (an instance of a site content type that was added to a specific list or library), it is available only for items of that content type in the specific list or library with which that content type is associated.

If you add a workflow to a site content type, that workflow is available for any items of that content type in every list and library to which an instance of that site content type was added. If you want a workflow to be widely available across lists or libraries in a site collection for items of a specific content type, the most efficient way to achieve this result is by adding that workflow directly to a site content type.

When you add a workflow to a list, library, or content type, you can customize the workflow for its specific location by specifying various options:

• the name for this instance of the workflow The tasks list where workflow-related tasks are stored; 
• the history list that records all of the events that are related to the workflow;
• the way that you want the workflow to be started;
• additional options that are specific to the individual workflow, for example, how tasks are routed to participants, what circumstances complete the workflow, and what actions occur after the workflow is completed.

When you add a workflow to a list, library, or content type, you make it available for documents or items in a specific location, you do not start the actual workflow.

Starting a Workflow

After a workflow is added to a list, library, or content type and thereby made available for use, you can start this workflow on a document or item.

To start a workflow, you select the workflow that you want from the list of workflows available for the document or item. If necessary, you may also need to fill out a form with the information that the workflow requires. Depending on how the workflow was designed and configured, you might have the option to further customize the workflow when you start it on a document or item by customizing such options as participants, due date, and task instructions.

Workflows can be customized in several ways. For example, when you add a workflow to a list, library, or content type to make it available for use on documents or items, you can customize the tasks lists and history lists where information about the workflow is stored. When a site user starts a workflow on a document or item, the user may have the option to further customize the workflow by specifying the list of participants, a due date, and task instructions.

Modifying a Workflow

After a workflow is started on an item, you may need to make changes to how the workflow behaves. For example, after a workflow starts, the person who started the workflow might need to add additional participants. Or a workflow participant might need to reassign his or her task to another person or request a change to the document or item that is the focus of the workflow.

Completing Workflow Tasks

When a workflow assigns a task to a workflow participant, the task recipient can either complete that task or request changes to the workflow itself by editing the workflow task form. Workflow participants can complete workflow tasks on a SharePoint site or directly within a client program that is part of the Microsoft Office.

For example, you can add a workflow to a document library that routes a document to a group of people for approval. When the document author starts this workflow on a document in that library, the workflow creates document approval tasks, assigns these tasks to the workflow participants, and then sends e-mail alerts to the participants with task instructions and a link to the document to be approved.

When a workflow participant completes a workflow task or requests a change to the workflow, this prompts the system to move the workflow to the next relevant step. When the workflow participants complete their workflow tasks, the workflow ends, and the workflow owner is automatically notified that the workflow has completed.

Tracking the Status of Workflows

While the workflow is in progress, the workflow owner (in this case, the document author) or the workflow participants can check the workflow status page that is associated with the workflow to see which participants have completed their workflow tasks. The status page includes status information about outstanding workflow tasks. It also includes history information that is relevant to the workflow.

There are also reporting tools that provide an aggregate analysis of workflows history. Organizations can use this analysis to locate bottlenecks in processes or to determine whether a group is meeting the performance targets for a given business process. SharePoint includes Excel reports that can be used with any workflow. Additionally, workflow history information is available.

Custom Workflows

Your organization may choose to design and develop workflows that are unique to the business processes in the organization. Workflows can be as simple or complex as the business processes require. Developers can create workflows that are started by people who use a site, or they can create workflows that start automatically based on an event, such as when a list item is created or changed. If your organization has developed and deployed custom workflows, these workflows may be available in addition to or instead of the predefined workflows already described.

There are two ways in which custom workflows can be created:

Professional software developers can create workflows by using the Visual Studio. These workflows contain custom code and workflow activities. After a professional developer creates custom workflows, a server administrator can deploy them across multiple sites.

Web designers can design no-code workflows for use in a specific list or library by using SharePoint Designer. These workflows are created from a list of available workflow activities, and the web designer who creates the workflow can deploy the workflows directly to the list or library where they will be used.

Here are few screenshots demonstrating workflows.

In the 1st step, you set up workflows for a content type. Click on "workflows settings":

Set up the workflow:

You can use the page below to manage workflow settings:

It is now available to start on a document or an item in a library or a list:

On the next screen, you can check the status of the workflow:

Now you can have efficiency in your business processes!

Information Architecture Components – Labeling Systems

In my last post about information architecture, I mentioned that information architecture includes four components - organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, and searching systems and I described organization systems.

In this post, I am going to describe labeling systems.

Labeling is a form of representation. Labels represent a relationship between users and content. So, the goal of a label is to communicate information efficiently that is without taking too much of a web page space or of a user's time. Labels show the user your organization and navigation systems. Unprofessional labels of a web site can destroy a user's confidence in that organization.

There are two types of labels: textual and iconic labels.

Textual Labels

Textual are the most common labels. Types of textual labels include: contextual links, headings, navigation system choices, and index terms.

Contextual links are the text withing the body of a document or chunk of information. They are usually used to create a connection between different pages of a site. These links rely on context. To ensure that contextual links labels are representational, ask yourself a question: "what kind of information will the user expect to be taken to?"

Labels as headings are used to establish a hierarchy within the text. The hierarchical relationships between headings are usually established visually through consistent use of numbering, font sizes, colors and styles, whitespace, and indentation or combination of these parts. It is a good idea to present these headings as a hierarchy. It is important to maintain consistency. Heading labels should be obvious and should convey the sequence. These labels need to tell the user where to start, where to go next, and what action will be involved in each step along the way.

Navigation system labels require more consistency that any other type of label. Users rely on a navigation system to be "rational" through consistent page location and look. So, these labels should be no different. Effectively designed labels are integral to building a sense of familiarity, so they should not change from page to page. Here are some examples of this type labels: Home, Search, Site Map, Contact Us, About Us, News and Events, Announcements. Do not use the same label for a different purpose.

Labels as index terms are often referred to as keywords, descriptive metadata, taxonomies, controlled vocabularies. These labels are used to describe any type of content: sites, pages, content components, etc. Index terms support precise searching. Index terms can also make browsing easier: the metadata from a collection of documents can serve as the source of browsable lists or menus. A very good example of these labels is an index of a site with links to each page.

Iconic Labels

These labels most often used as navigation system labels. They can sometimes serve as headings. The problem with iconic labels is that they present a much more limited language than text. That is why they used for navigation system or small organization system labels where the list of options is small. But they are still risky to use because a user can get confused.

General Guidelines For Creating Labels

Context, content, and users are three key principles that affect all aspects of information architecture including labels. Narrow the scope of your labels whenever possible. Use narrow business context. Keep labels simple and focused.

A good rule is to design labels that speak the same language as a site's users while reflecting its content. If there is a confusion over label, there should be an explanation. On the main page, labels should stand out to users. Labels should clearly represent the content.

Consistency is extremely important. Why? Because consistency means predictability and predictable systems are easier to use. Consistency is affected by few issues: style, presentation, syntax, granularity, comprehensiveness, audience.

Points to consider:

• Consider writing all your labels in a list to get the visual representation of them. You might sort this list alphabetically - this way you may see some duplicates. Then review the list for consistency of usage, punctuation, letter case, etc.
• Establish naming conventions.
• Consider using a controlled vocabulary to maintain consistent terms.
• Analyze your content and create categories.
• Do user-side testing and please do not underestimate it.
• Perform card sort exercises.
• Use search log for analysis.
• Anticipate the growth of the site and plan ahead so that labels you might add in the future don't disagree with the current labels.
• Decisions about which terms to include in a labeling system need to be made in the context of how broad and how large is your site.
• Labeling systems may need to be adjusted as necessary.

Have fun labeling!

Case Study - Applied Biosystems - Enabling Website Search

In the "Case Studies" series of my posts, I describe the projects that I worked on and lessons learned from them. In this post, I am going to describe the project of enabling website search in Applied Biosystems.

Applied Biosystems website included the search of the company products. There was a search field where a user would enter keywords hoping to retrieve the company products. However, this was not the case. Entering keywords in the search field was not retrieving any results.

My question for the company's webmaster was: what data source feeds this web site? I was told that there was a Lotus Notes database which contained products information and which fed the website and enables search. I asked to take a look at this database. When I looked at this database, I noticed a couple of metadata fields that were not populated: keywords and related terms.

I told the webmaster that this was the reason why company products were not retrievable on the website. This did not sound credible so I set out to prove it. I populated these two metadata fields in dozen of records and asked the webmaster to re-set the crawler. After this was done, those dozen products were retrievable from the company website. As the result, my diagnosis and solution proved to be correct.

I created a controlled vocabulary of terms and related terms with which records in this database should be indexed, i.e. entered into the keywords and related terms field. I also created a customized taxonomy to categorize company products on the web site and make them browsable through this database. I indexed all records in this database with terms from my controlled vocabulary. And so browsing and search of company products were enabled.

Lessons Learned

• Never underestimate the value of metadata. It is absolutely invaluable in enabling search.
• Metadata values should be consistent. If you decide to call a portable computer "laptop", you must continue to use this term in all your records. In order to maintain the consistency, create controlled vocabulary.
• Use related terms in enabling search.
• Provide two access points to any system: one is search, another is browse. When a user knows exactly what they are looking for, they are going to use the search. If they don't know what they are looking for, they are going to browse. Some time during browsing, they may switch to search and then back to browsing.
• Search is iterative and interactive process. Provide means for it to be such.

SharePoint - Content Types

One of biggest success stories of the last few years is the overwhelming adoption of Microsoft's collaboration and content management platform SharePoint. Because it is so popular and important, I thought that I would post series of topics about SharePoint. In my today's post, I am going to describe content types.

A content type is a group of settings that describe the shared behavior of a specific group of documents. Content types make it possible to organize and manage documents in a consistent way across a site. In the course of a single project, a company might produce several different kinds of content, for example SOPs, Work Instructions, White Papers, Articles. Although these documents might be stored together because they are related to a single project, they can be created, used, shared, and retained in different ways.

To define content types review your documents and divide them by categories: SOPs, Work Instructions, Specifications, White Papers, etc. Each document category would be a content type. You can also define content types by the requirements that each document category needs to have. For example, SOPs might be controlled documents and if so they would need to go through the approval workflow. It would be a good idea to define SOPs as the separate content type.

Content types are organized into a hierarchy that allows one content type to inherit its characteristics from another content type. This allows categories of documents to share attributes across an organization, while allowing teams to customize these attributes for particular libraries or lists.

Content types are first defined centrally in the site level for a site. Content types that are defined at the site level are called site content types. Site content types are available for use in any sub-sites, libraries, and lists of the site for which they have been created. If a content type has been created in a site collection level, it is available for use in lists and libraries in all of the sites in that site collection.

When you define a new custom site content type in the Site Content Type Gallery for a site, you start by choosing an existing parent site content type in the Site Content Type Gallery as your starting point. The new site content type that you create inherits all of the attributes of its parent site content type, such as its document template, workflows, and metadata. After you create this new site content type, you can make changes to any of these attributes.

Site content types can be added individually to lists or libraries and customized for use in those lists or libraries. When an instance of a site content type is added to a list or library, it is called a list or library content type. List and library content types are children of the site content types from which they were created.

If a child content type has been customized with additional attributes that the parent content type does not have (for example, extra columns), these customizations are not overwritten in the parent content type when the child content type is updated.

If you assign metadata, workflows, and policies to a site content type, all libraries will inherit this metadata, workflows, and policies.

When you create libraries, select the site content type for this library – metadata, workflows, policies, any other settings will apply to all libraries where you selected this content type.

If you need to change settings for many libraries, change it on the content type level. If you need to change settings for one library only, change it on the library level. You can customize any library, this will not affect the parent content type.

Below are few screenshots on how you create content types.

1st step: in the site settings, click on the Site Content Types under Galleries heading:

Click "Create" in the next screen:

Enter the metadata about your new content type:

Next screen shows your new content type. From this screen you can set up metadata for this content type, workflows, and change any other settings:

When you populate the metadata for an item in a list or a library, select your content type and metadata will be populated automatically:

Now you can have consistency in your documents!

Information Architecture Components – Organization Systems

Information architecture components can be divided into four categories:

Organization systems – how do we categorize information, for example by subject or date.

Labeling systems – how do we represent information, for example scientific or folk terminology.

Navigation Systems – how do we browse or move through information, for example clicking through a hierarchy.

Searching systems – how do we search information, for example executing a search query against an index.

In my today’s post, I am going to describe organization systems component of information architecture. Organization systems are composed of organization schemes and organization structures.

An organization scheme defines the shared characteristics of content items and influences the logical grouping of those items. An organization structure defines the types of relationships between content items and groups. Organization systems form the foundation for navigation and labeling systems.

Organization Schemes

There are exact and ambiguous organization schemes.

Exact organization schemes divide information into well defined and mutually exclusive sections. For example, alphabetical order of a phone book. If you know the person’s last name, you can look in that letter of the alphabetical list. This is called known-item searching. You know what you are looking for and it is obvious how to find it. The problem with exact organization schemes is that they require a user to know the specific name of the object they are looking for. Exact organization schemes are easy to design, maintain, and use.

Types of exact organization schemes include alphabetical, chronological, and geographical.

Ambiguous organization schemes divide information into categories that defy exact definition. They are difficult to design and maintain, and they can be difficult to use. Is tomato a vegetable or a fruit? However, they are often more important and useful than exact organization schemes. Why? Because users don’t always know what they are looking for. Information seeking is often iterative and interactive. What you find in the beginning of the search may influence what you look for and find later in your search.

Ambiguous organization supports the method or grouping items in meaningful ways. Therefore, while ambiguous organization schemes require more work, they often are more valuable to the user than exact schemes. The success of these schemes depends of the quality of the scheme and the placement of items within this scheme. User testing is very important for this type of scheme. There is ongoing need for classifying new items and for modifying the organization scheme to reflect changes in the scheme.

Types of ambiguous schemes include are topic or subject, task, audience, metaphor, hybrids.

Topical schemes organize content into subjects.

Task scheme organize content by processes, functions, or tasks. Most common example of web sites using this scheme is e-commerce sites where a user interaction is centered on tasks, for example buy, sell, pay, etc.

Audience oriented schemes are useful for sites that are frequented by repeat visitors of a certain audience. For example, Dell web site separates its content into "Home" and "Business". Audience schemes can be open or closed. An open scheme would allow users of one audience to access content or another audience. A closed scheme would prevent users from using content of another audience.

Metaphor schemes use association with known subjects. They should be used with caution. They must be familiar to users.

Hybrids combine elements of multiple schemes.

Organization Structures

The structure of information defines the ways in which users can navigate. Major structures are hierarchy, the database-oriented model, and hypertext.

The foundation of almost all good information architecture is a well designed hierarchy or taxonomy. In creating a taxonomy, it is important to not make categories mutually exclusive. You need to balance between exclusivity and inclusivity. Sometimes an item may belong in more than one place. It is also important to balance between breadth and depth in the taxonomy. Breadth refers to the number of options at each level of the hierarchy. Depth refers to the number of levels in the hierarchy.

If a hierarchy is too narrow and deep, users have to click through a lot of levels to find what they are looking for. If a hierarchy is too broad and shallow, users are presented with too many options on the main menu and the lack of content once they get to the option level.

Consider the following: recognize the danger of overloading users with too many options; group and structure information on the page level; subject the design to user testing. For new web sites, lean towards a broad and shallow hierarchy. This allows the addition of content. Be conservative in adding more depth as you need to prevent uses to make too many clicks.

In a database-oriented model we structure the data using metadata. Metadata links the information architecture to the design of database schema. By tagging information with metadata, we enable searching and browsing.

A hypertext system involves two primary types of components to be linked. These components can from systems that connect text, data, image, video, and audio. This structure provides flexibility but also causes users confusion because hypertextual links are often personal by nature. This structure is good to use to compliment the hierarchical or database models.

It is very important to provide multiple ways to access the same information. Large web sites would require all three types of structure. The top level will be hierarchical, sub-sites are good candidates for database model, and less structured relationships between content can be handled by hypertext.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Oracle UCM

Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM), formerly Stellent, is a component CMS and supports the entire content lifecycle. Component CMS manages content at a component level rather than at the document level.

Oracle UCM manages the entire spectrum of unstructured content - from documents, graphics, and Web pages to scanned images, e-mail, and records.

Oracle UCM converts over 500 file formats to web-ready formats such as HTML, XML, GIF and PDF, and delivers content via web sites, desktops, syndication feeds, mobile devices, and web services.

It integrates with Microsoft Office, Outlook, AutoCAD, Lotus Notes. It includes multi-site web content management, document and image management, digital asset management, records and retention management, personalized content delivery, categorization, portal integration, SharePoint integration, document capture and scanning integration, content conversion and transformation.

Unified CMS offers the same set of common functionality in one product for all content types. This eliminates the requirement for integrations between various ECM components. All managed content and services can be accessed from a common user and administrator interface. Features included are search, security, workflow, revision control, content conversion for all types of content, web based authoring and version control.

It includes the following key features: 

• in-context web site contribution, preview, updates, and approvals;
• e-mail notifications during workflows;
• library services, including full-text search, check-in, check-out, and version control;
• flexible metadata and security;
• template-based pages;
• libraries of reusable components and XML-based fragments;
• native content conversion to web viewable formats, including HTML, XML, and PDF;
• dynamic delivery and scheduled publishing models;
• personalized content delivery;
• scheduled content release and expiration;
• full digital asset and records management features.

Consolidating the overall architecture on a single code base, security model, and API eliminates the need for integration, leverages a common IT infrastructure, minimizes application development and support costs, enables simple upgrades, maintenance, and training.

Although each type of content requires some unique functionality, such as file plan management or warehouse management for digital and physical records, robust transformation for video files or for digital assets (such as taking Adobe Photoshop files and transforming them to different formats, resolutions, and sizes), and WYSIWYG editors, layouts, and templates, or dynamic and static publishing models for web sites, these independent content management systems all share a common set of services and functionality.

Any of the content management features can be enabled or disabled within the Oracle WebCenter Content platform. The same content publishing capabilities used to build web sites also work with digital asset management, so the customer’s images and videos can be transformed and added to the site. The same document management system also works with records management.

Benefits of a Single Platform

• Users can create content in Microsoft Word, Visio, or Adobe Photoshop. Whether they are adding content to a web site or collaborating on a presentation, the functions they need stay constant and that is the ability to find content easily, collaborate efficiently, securely store and transform content from one form to another, and deploy it wherever it is needed.
• A unified architecture offers graphical user interfaces with a common look and feel.
• Ease-of-use, because document and imaging management, digital asset management, web content management, and records management functions are on the same web interface.
• Higher productivity because users can perform all content related functions in one place.
• Consolidating the overall architecture on a single code base, security model, and API eliminates integration, leverages a common IT infrastructure, and minimizes application development and support costs.
• Dramatically reduced implementation and setup time compared with rolling out separate or integrated systems.
• Simpler upgrades because all updates occur on a single platform.
• The unified architecture of Oracle WebCenter Content ensures all ECM applications can be deployed on the same platform, and specific content management capabilities are interchangeable, extensible, and complementary to each other.
• Oracle WebCenter Content’s unified architecture ensures all ECM applications can be deployed on the same platform, and specific content management capabilities are interchangeable, extensible, and complementary to each other. This single architecture approach allows users to access all content, applications, and content services from a common user interface.