Wouldn’t it be great if your company could combine the
parallel efforts involved with development and deploying internet/intranet/portal
websites and document management/workflow systems? Below are some intersections
that might help with synergies.
Expectations
Have your integration requirements clearly stated,
understanding that there will be performance, security, and functional limitations.
Intersections
Easy
Links to document management application
·
This involves publishing links to documents
(with some descriptive metadata) from a backend ECM solution to the Portal for
presentation. This link serves up the document in the User’s client, usually in
its native format and application.
New browser window from portal link
·
Link from Portal to ECM web solution (assuming SSO
is setup) and new window frame. This would allow full access to the
functionality and breadth of the underlying application.
Moderate
CMIS
·
If this is offered, it could be a way to perform
basic import/export operations with documents.
Web services
·
Larger ECM solutions will offer web services
access. The question is to what extent. Short are building your own custom
services using the native API, this could provide enough integration.
Difficult
Search
·
The scoping of the search criteria, or limiting
the search by doc type/metadata values across solutions.
·
Complex search, such as below, are difficult to
integrate at the portal level, unless there’s a solid integration between the
systems.
o
Fuzzy
o
Sounds like
o
Term proximity
·
Searching indexes and presenting results within a
single portal can pose many issues around performance and access control.
Round About
Through a two-step publishing process
May your CMS has out-of-box connectors to the most common
business ECM solutions, like Sharepoint. This could open an opportunity to use
Sharepoint as a surrogate repository, where both solutions connect to it,
offering up common functionality.
“The Vendor Said”
A vendor’s hyped up solution offering of 5 years ago, might
be almost forgotten now. This could mean that, although your product offers a
module for CMIS, they implementation and support has waned in the past.
