Best Practices
Enterprise Content Management
Sherry Roark 4/29/2010 INTRODUCTION
We like most Universities are drowning in documents — from applications for enrollment, student records, and human resource forms. A clear strategy is needed for our faculty, staff, and departments to manage their documents throughout their lifecycle.
ECM refers to the technologies, strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to an organization and its processes.
The four primary categories of ECM include:
o Imaging capture software and scanners needed for paper documents making text searchable and retrievable
o Workflow automatically routing files to the appropriate places and providing a mechanism for approvals online
o Collaboration providing communities for team collaboration and making it easy for users to work together
o Document management using content management software needed for storing, sharing, security, and accessing
ECM tools allow the management of an enterprise level organization's information. In Information Technology at the University of Louisville there are four primary tools for ECM to assist in the gathering and finding of content information. They are SharePoint, KnowledgeLake, Plone, and OnBase.
Each ECM tool has various strengths and weaknesses with respect t o the types of content. Each ECM tool has been evaluated to create the most successful plan for use by the customer. In this document we will define each ECM solution and define its intended University use.
The goal of this document of ECM Best Practice is to leverage the strengths of a particular ECM tool and to create a best practice that will be easy for University departments to follow.
1 1 Available Solutions
Plone (Public Facing – University Branding) Java or .NET (C#) Static Content Dynamic Content Public facing Public facing Student authentication (LDAP) Student authentication (LDAP) Simple forms Database supported forms Automation for the webmaster function Complicated Workflow Exposed to search engines(Google, Yahoo)
SharePoint (Current / Live Documents) OnBase (Historical Documents) Electronic Documents Paper to Electronic image documents. Paper Documents (supported by KnowledgeLake) PeopleSoft integration for lookup and retrieval Photo Libraries Keyword indexing of documents for search and retrieval (emplid, grant id). Extensive collaboration abilities (Blogs, Wiki, Large Volume capture (50+ documents per day) Discussion Boards) Versioning , check in – check out process Automated capture and indexing of documents. Content searchable (within documents) Access to very specific work groups which are manually defined and maintained by IT staff. No global student authentication. Intelligent Workflow Intelligent Workflow for content management. Security (ability to set your own security) Data retention / archiving
KnowledgeLake (SharePoint Integrated Solution) Desktop Scanners & Copiers Paper to Electronic image documents for use in Can be integrated to capture paper documents for SharePoint use with SharePoint / KnowledgeLake or Onbase Large Volume capture (50+ documents per day) Mass electronic document loading
2 Characteristics of Content:
2.1 Public Facing (Plone) Public facing content is available to users on the World Wide Web. The content needs to be accessed by anyone by the World Wide Web. This content could be used for promotion, education, research, and/or student recruiting.
There are several things that need to be taken into consideration by making content available to users via the World Wide Web.
o UofL Branding meets the necessary standards required to promote the University o All electronic documents need to be made ADA compliant
o Video needs to have a transcript or captioning for ADA compliance
o Documents that are still being edited or revised should be linked through Plone to the SharePoint environment
2.2 Current or Live Documents (SharePoint) SharePoint was selected to be used for current or live documents because of its extensive collaboration tools. Users can interact with one another to complete documents and share document ideas.
SharePoint was chosen to be our live document solution based on the following items.
o Electronic Documents providing communities for team collaboration and making it easy for users to work together on documents, tasks, contacts, events, and other information.
o SharePoint Secure internal documents, required login, collaboration, and user controlled access.
o SharePoint Public external documents, updated frequently, and linked from Plone to allow global outside University viewing using supported Universities branding standards available through Plone.
2.2.1 KnowledgeLake – Supporting Paper and Electronic Documents KnowledgeLake was added to the mix to provide a solution for supporting paper and mass electronic use within SharePoint.
KnowledgeLake brings the bellow features to support SharePoint.
o KnowledgeLake was added to our ECM tool set to allow users to scan documents into SharePoint.
o Supporting SharePoint by providing a method to support document scanning and indexing
o Electronic Documents providing mass loading of inbound electronic documents for SharePoint access
o Paper Documents scanning solution to support access in SharePoint
o Indexing content to make document easy to locate
o Searchable content and easy retrieval on demand
2.3 Historical Documents (OnBase) OnBase was chosen to support historical documents because its ability to compress large amounts of information. B elow are the features OnBase performs to support historical documents.
o Paper Documents needed for record keeping and kept in filing cabinets
o Electronic Documents stored in SharePoint, your hard drive, or I:drive that is no longer accessed but needed for record retention.
o Searchable content and easy retrieval on demand.
o Workflow solutions for types of documents need to be filed together for easy retrieval.
o Paper Documents needed for record keeping and kept in filing cabinets
3 Security
3.1 Confidential
To a certain extent all the content management tools can protect the content and present it to the correct audience. If you would like to maintain your own security SharePoint is the best option for you. Onbase requires an IT professional to setup security and also make any future security changes.
3.2 Permanent
All the content management tools participate in backup processes and disaster recovery preparation. If content is deemed a permanent record the best tool may be determined by how the records are searched.
4 Capture
4.1 Paper -> electronic file -> ECM tool SharePoint with the use of KnowledgeLake or OnBase can be used for converting paper documents into an electronic image when the volume is high or low.
4.2 Directory -> ECM tool All the content management tools are capable of moving an electronic document from a local drive into the content management tool. SharePoint with the use of KnowledgeLake or OnBase has the additional capability to scrape a set of documents from a directory and place them as a group within either document management system. 4.3 Forms based content capture Plone or Java is capable of presenting a web form and gathering information. The main distinction is the use of a database to store or retrieve information. Plone forms are easy to create and store information in a standard file format. Plone can also email form submissions. Java is required if the data is to be stored in a database or the form is to be pre-populated with data from a database. SharePoint and OnBase also have form capability. Presently SharePoint not OnBase can be setup for public facing access via the World Wide Web.
4.4 Automated / Manual Capture SharePoint with the use of KnowledgeLake or OnBase is oriented towards large volumes of documents gathered through repeatable processes and stored in a manner to facilitate search and retrieval.
Plone / Java have a similar dichotomy between manual and automated capture. Plone presents content based on a manual derivation of paths and uploading of content. Java represents the custom development capability of U of L which can through design automate processes.
4.5 Indexing
4.5.1 Automatic SharePoint with the use of KnowledgeLake or OnBase are both capable of scraping a directory of files and automatically indexing the group based on an index file in the same directory. Both provide a keyword indexing capability that can read from a predefined section of a document and update an index.
JAVA or .NET (C#) can be developed to accomplish similar levels of automation. This may be needed to accommodate public facing content.
4.5.1.1 Whole text indexing SharePoint with the use of KnowledgeLake or OnBase are both capable of whole text indexing. This is where an index is created for every word of the content. Functionally this is similar to a search engine on the World Wide Web.
Plone or Java uses this functionality for World Wide Web search engines such as Yahoo and Google.
4.5.1.2 Content off paper Once paper is converted to an image document there are various technologies to extract content from the image. Examples of these techniques include bar codes. Both SharePoint with the use of KnowledgeLake and OnBase has the capability of indexing scanned documents based extracting an index from the scanned image.
4.5.2 Manual Manual indexing is another phrase for simply creating a directory path to a document or content. In a web context the path is part of the URL. SharePoint and Plone the path is incorporated into menu items and / or displayed as breadcrumbs. 5 Storage All the content management tools store content in an environment designed to recover from backups and to be restored in the event of a disaster. The relative capacities of Plone, Java development, SharePoint and OnBase are similar. This means the size of the content is not a determining factor with regards to the best content management tool for a particular kind of content.
5.1 Archiving Archiving is a method of compressing content that should be retained but is not frequently accessed. SharePoint or OnBase has allowed compression of content to be stored. We are currently evaluating solutions for archiving SharePoint.
5.2 Versions Version control is a way of measuring the change that occurs within content. Retention and archiving have an implication of time versioning is focused on relative change. SharePoint has tools which assist in the versioning of posted documents.
6 Workflow When content passes through a series of decision or branching steps this is referred to as workflow. SharePoint and OnBase offer features to support workflows which track and capture the events that move the content to the next step. SharePoint uses the .NET (C#) programming language to provide complex workflow solutions.
7 Integration Integration is accomplished through COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) tools that are designed to integrate two different applications or custom development. The goal of integration is to leverage the best of differing applications and more fundamentally keep content in one primary place. The presentation of the content may be best done from a different application than the storage of the same content.
This section was added to highlight the flow of content through capture, storage, and presentation. All the Enterprise Content Management tools are capable of integration.
7.1 Data passed out from ECM system
7.1.1 PeopleSoft SharePoint .NET (C#) workflow, OnBase, and Java custom applications have the capability to present content based on index values derived within PeopleSoft. 7.2 Data passed into ECM system
7.2.1 Electronic Data Interchange style feed Both SharePoint and OnBase have EDI capabilities to receive content from other applications in a predefined format.
7.2.2 Bulk import of records Both SharePoint with KnowledgeLake and OnBase has functionality to process sets of content with a file defining the appropriate index.
7.3 Email At this point the placing of Email into the content management tools is a manual process.