Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Where large company CMS and ECM solutions Intersect

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. 

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