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Web Content Management with Documentum

Chapter 1. Content and Documentum

Every single bit of information seen on a website can be classified as content be it text, graphics, rich media, video, engineering drawings, XML, images, scanned files—just about anything and everything!

Content can be of various kinds, from pure textual pages to training material, online reference manuals, graphical screenshots and even complex data graphs.

One of the simplest ways to describe content management would be through the example of a daily newspaper website. Most of us start off our day browsing through our favorite newspaper edition (be it the conventional hard copy or the online version). Have you noticed something in particular about most newspapers? The structure or layout of most of the sections in the newspaper remains constant everyday. What typically changes is the actual content within the same sections on a daily basis.

The layout of the headlines remains constant—though the actual headlines change everyday. Sections like cartoons, the editorial corner, and weather report maintain the same look-and-feel everyday but their content changes everyday with the latest edition of the newspaper.

The online version of the newspaper needs to be updated every day with the new HTML, graphics, and text depending on the news. Imagine the time it would take to update the website's HTML/JSP pages manually every day to reflect the latest news. This would cause an increased dependence on the technical web developers to update the content. Updating several hundreds of HTML pages every day would also cause a time and resource problem.

Additionally it would mean technical web developers dealing with content they don't even understand and yet had to safely upload within the security boundaries of the organization. The editorial staff and content contributors/authors would have to rely on the IT staff every day so that their content could make its way to the actual website.

The problems multiply since the IT staff turnover is extremely high in most organizations—imagine having to recruit new web developers on a periodic basis to maintain live websites. Moreover, what if the page updates take a substantially long time—so much so that by the time the updated content shows up on the website, it's too late and practically stale!

The current business circumstances require immediate and correct data to be up 24/7 on the organization's websites. A lackadaisical attitude can literally throw a business out of the current market space. The problems of managing content on websites will keep on growing with time because of the increased visibility of websites today.

It is easy to understand now the need for an effective content management methodology that can result in:

Decreased dependence on IT staff to run and maintain the core business
Reduction in cost and better ROI to maintain the core business
Non-technical contributors maintaining their business website all by themselves
Not having the non-IT staff learn Internet web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, JSP, etc. to run the core business
Always having the most up-to-date information available on the business website without unnecessary delays
Security mechanisms restricting the editing of information by unrelated business divisions, for example, restricting the editing of sensitive financial information to the administrative department
Automation of content creation/approval/publishing through a workflow mechanism
Reduced expenses in maintaining hardcopy versions of documents/manuals/content
Rollback mechanisms in case the updated content needs to be pulled off the website
Effective capture and use of content metadata for indexing and searching

This list is not complete—the virtues of having a good content management methodology are many and varied. The above list simply gives us an idea about the criticality of content management in today's demanding business space.

In a nutshell, what exactly is content management? One of the numerous available websites on content management describes content management as follows:

Content management is the organizing, categorizing, and structuring of information resources (text, images, documents, etc.) so that they can be stored, published, and edited with ease and flexibility. A content management system (CMS) is used to collect, manage, and publish content, storing the content either as components or whole documents, while maintaining dynamic links between components.

Figure 1.1 represents the conventional process of creating content for a website, getting it approved by a sequence of business users and finally having the web developer (IT staff) update the HTML pages to reflect this approved content.

However, this method is not without its drawbacks. It is a time consuming process to author content and get it manually reviewed and approved by a string of business users and then a heavy dependency on the IT staff to make the changes manually in website pages. By the time the sequence of steps gets completed, the content is probably stale and is no longer appropriate to show up on the organization's website!

1.1 Need for an Effective CMS

Most of the above mentioned problems with content management can be solved by using a content management system (CMS). A good CMS allows the content authors to create content in the form of articles through some pre-defined templates. The content author simply needs to provide content (plain text, pictures, etc.) in the template fields. The content management system then uses some pre-defined rules to style the article, thus separating the actual content from its display/layout structure. The author needs to be concerned only about the core content and not about its look-and-feel and formatting, thus saving loads of time and pain. Some content management systems also optionally require the author to enter metadata for content, for example creator name, keywords, etc. so that these can be associated with the content and be used for indexing and searching the website.

Unlike the traditional content management approach of an author manually getting the content/ articles approved by editors and senior members from business content approval divisions, a good CMS has an automated workflow mechanism. The author simply specifies the sequence of approvers to get the article approved and the automatic workflow does the rest of the work. It ensures that the content does not get published to the website until and unless the sequence of editors and approvers approve it via the automated workflow.

This requires the IT staff (web developers) to prepare the templates and associated rules as a one-time activity, along with stylesheets that format the entered content articles and are responsible for the look-and-feel of the website.

The IT staff additionally needs to configure and establish the CMS software once and from then onwards the content authors simply use the system and templates, getting rid of future dependency on web developers.

Figure 1.2 simply gives a graphical perspective to the benefits of using a CMS.

The one-time effort that a web developer puts in creating templates/rules so that later content creators can use it going forward is a good money-saving approach.

The automated workflow available in a CMS routes the content through its different lifecycle stages finally getting it approved and publishing it to the business website.

1.1 Need for an Effective CMS

Figure 1.2 simply gives a graphical perspective to the benefits of using a CMS.

The one-time effort that a web developer puts in creating templates/rules so that later content creators can use it going forward is a good money-saving approach.

The automated workflow available in a CMS routes the content through its different lifecycle stages finally getting it approved and publishing it to the business website.

1.2 Qualities of a Good CMS

Owing to the high demand, tons of companies have come into play today offering content management services. Fortunately or unfortunately we have numerous content management systems available today in the market each with its own positives and negatives but with the same end goal—ease of managing content.

A good CMS should be meticulously chosen because most are quite costly and involve training overhead so that the end users (mostly business content contributors/editors/approvers) can effectively use them.

Following are some (but not all) of the points that should be considered while evaluating a CMS for one's organization. Always remember one thing—there is no "one size fits all" solution available! One should analyze one's business needs first and then choose from the range of CMS available in market.

A good CMS:

Allows the non-technical core business personnel to author/publish content without the assistance of IT staff(web developers)
Separates the actual content from the structure(look-and-feel) by allowing an easy way to create templates and associated rules/presentation files
Ensures that the content contributors adhere to the organization's website standards and also maintain security and navigational elements
Ensures a mechanism to publish content in a timely manner so that the website information is always up to date
Consolidates business data and content in a single storage repository for faster retrieval and also reduces the cost of maintaining hardcopy versions of content
Allows authoring content via standard web browsers thus reducing training needs
Creates an audit trail of activities performed on the content/articles for security reasons
Restricts content editing on the basis of the role/group/division of the user in the business
Provides a process mechanism to control content authoring, reviewing, and publishing through an automated workflow
Provides support on multiple OS platforms and web browsers and can be easily integrated with web application servers and third-party software or existing business systems
Provides a version control/history mechanism to allow rollback of specific content/pages to their older versions
Provides document control through a simple check-in/check-out user interface
Schedules automatic publishing/removal of content at specified release/expiry dates
Allows easy creation/management of CMS users, groups, and roles
Provides a built-in rich text editing interface to allow content authoring with extensive features like formatting, hyperlinks support, image/file upload, and copy-paste from other authoring applications
Rules out the need to install any software on the end user machines
Supports multiple simultaneous users
Supports indexing/searching on the basis of metadata for the content
Provides an extensive reporting system for both end users and system administrators

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

Key benefits

Design and implement Documentum applications

Practical examples to help you get the most from Documentum

Tips and tricks to ease everyday working with the system

Description

One of the world leaders in Enterprise Content Management, the EMC Documentum family of applications helps you manage all types of content across multiple departments within a single repository. With the Web Content Management suite of applications, you can efficiently manage content and underlying processes for your Web properties, and ensures that they are responsive to business needs. To fully realize the power of this system can seem daunting, but this book will help you achieve that. With easy to follow examples, this book will take you the simplest and most straightforward route to success. Along the way, you will learn insights that only a seasoned professional would know. Packed with practical examples, you will get hands-on with the powerful features of Documentum to grow your skills and confidence. You will see tips and tricks to handle complexities of the system, and avoid the common errors that waste your time. From installing and getting started with Documentum, you will see how to design and develop Documentum applications, before rounding off with deployment.

Who is this book for?

This book is targeted at IT professionals who are Documentum beginners or intermediates. The depth of coverage means that experienced Documentum developers will also benefit from the book, and learn some new tricks. Although no knowledge of Documentum is presumed, exposure to Java/J2EE, XML, and related web technologies will help to get the most from this book.

What you will learn

Understand the basic components of the Documentum system

Install, configure, and get started with Documentum

Design Documentum applications and custom object types

Create rules and presentation files

Master workflows and create custom workflows

Deploy Documentum applications

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