1.4 Documentum Features

Choosing the right CMS has always been an intriguing question for all and sundry. However, while evaluating Documentum, there are a lot of features that can catch your attention. Some of these are very basic functionality that any good CMS should offer and some are very specific only to Documentum.

Listing all the available features from Documentum would not be possible and this might qualify as not doing enough justice to it.

However, following list should serve as a quick reference for people who are using Documentum for their projects/businesses:

• Allows creating, managing, and archiving content through "lifecycles" (or Business Policies in Documentum's lingo)

• Supports integration with several industry-standard authoring applications like Microsoft Office products, Adobe publishing products, CAD applications, and XML authoring tools

• Provides a web-based collaborative environment (Documentum 'eRoom') that exposes content management services

• Encrypts content in Documentum repository and beyond via Records Management, SSL, and LDAP

• Provides automatic versioning of documents/content and history tracking

• Allows creation of multiple renditions of the content in varied formats, such as HTML and PDF

• Supports virtual document management for assembling information from various sources

• Supports the ability to parse, validate, and transform XML documents with XSLT support

• Supports clustering, load balancing and back-up/recovery features

• Provides content authoring/managing capability through Documentum Web Publisher and publishing capability through Site Caching Services (SCS)

• Deployment of website content to multiple servers through Site Deployment Services (SDS)

• Deployment of content from source to subscribers based on business rules via Content Distribution Services(CDS)

• Supports numerous archival/storage techniques, for example, RAID, optical laser disks, CD, and DVD jukeboxes

• Supports automated workflows to route a content item in the various phases of its lifecycle (creation, review, and approval)

• Provides workflow process extension to external participants and organizations via Inter-Enterprise Workflow Services for better collaboration

• Provides an exhaustive data dictionary (containing information in the repository and its objects) for the applications to use in order to enforce business rules or provide value assistance to users

• Supports business objects to encapsulate business rules that can be further exposed as web services to third-party applications

• Supports indexing/searching on the basis of metadata for the content

• Supports multiple simultaneous users

• Provides a wide range of library services for content management

• Allows automatic intelligent extraction of a list of properties for a Documentum document via Content Intelligence Services (CIS)

• Provides content aggregation services to collect content from multiple sources for storage in a centralized location

• Offers products like Content Services that allow interaction with Documentum CMS from various enterprise applications like SAP, Siebel, and Lotus Notes

• Supports high-availability by having multiple Content Servers serve a single repository and repository replication for backup purposes

• Complies with UTF-8 Unicode—single-byte and double-byte character languages