Day: May 21, 2008

EMC World 2008: D6 Webtop – Focus on Knowledge Workers

Presented by Peggy Ringhausen Principal Product Manager during EMC World 2008

Different areas:
– Simple to use (Any content type
– Searchable (Flexible, federatedm consolidated results)
– Collaborative (Team-oriented, extended enterprise, secure)
– Agile (available anywhere, contextual, integrated)

Presets in D6 – configuration – even more in D7
Better preferences
Saved searched improved and search templates
WebTop 6.5 in late July

She talked about features already available.
Subscribe other people to content
Preferences is persistant – no longer any cookies on the client.

Presets allows you to pick a target and set rules.
A Select a folder. Set it up to only allow certain object.-types to be created in that folder.
Only allow certain actions om certain folder.

Extended search is an optional add-on to WebTop – creates clusters.
Clusters can be created based on certain attributes.
Search templates also part of extended search – allows to make some of the values optional and some fixed.

Collaboration Environment (DCE) is now bundled with WebTop. License key still required though.
Data Tables is also available through Collaboration and 6.5 also allow attachments to data tables
Events in the calendar object can be imported through iCal exports.

D6 SP1 – OLE Link support is optionable.
That feature checks if there are linked objects and imports these documents to and create a virtual documents out of all these items. The same thing during exports.
A checkbox on the import screen to also act on linked documents.

WebTop D6.5

Email conversion to EMF-format. Converting everything to the same parent object
Conversion tools to convert all emails to subtype dm_message_archive, lightweight html-format called EMC Email Format. Email viewing tool based on HTML for viewing email and attachment without having to export.

Page Refresh Reduction – reduced as many as possible. A really good thing I think.

Modal Dialogs can be turned off. Brings up small new browser windows to see the context. Properties with its own window. Instead of the usual Documentum-screens that fills the browser window.

Multi-select Drag and Drop is supported.

HTTP or UCF Choice enhancement.

Deep Export. This is great and I can’t really understand why it took them so long.

Content Transfer Improvement (multithreaded streaming)
New import screen. Small window with green bar. No longer a white screen which is a great user interface improvement. That screen had a tendency to scare people a little bit

Security Testing has been extended. Promised no level 1 or 2:s…

Take the WDK components and pull them into a new container and give users a new UI.
The new UI of the WebTop is optional.
Looks a little like Outlook. Collapsable parts (bars) on the left.No huge tree structure any more.
The tabs I saw were:
– Search center
– Subscriptions
– Home Cabinet

User configurable home page. New column to the right for properties, versions, comments. A great improvement since it almost provides a portal page within WebTop.

Contextual right click menus.

Offline client – My Documentum Offline (OEM product) Available end of July and beginning of August.
D6 SP1 release. Free of charge for any user using WebTop.
– The My Documentum Folder (provides access to the latest versions of documents when not connected)
– Synchronize (Choose specific documents, folders, and subscriptions)
– Personalize (Tailor to suit individual needs)
– Resolve issues (Mechanism to resolve conflicts that arise during synchronization)
Offline client has a small Jet-DB on the client to hold the metadata.

Still a bit of an overlap between File Sharing Services (FSS) and Offline client though. Will most likely be merged in someway in a D7 timeframe.

Learned later on that all these new feature will be available in DAM 6.5 as well since DAM is just an extension of WebTop.

The vision for the Modern Knowledge Worker

Presented during EMC World 2008 by: John McCormick, GM Knowledge Worker Business Unit

Today’s Problem: An information Explosion
The nature of content management has changed, IM, email, videos etc
Spend so much time finding things…

Who is the Knowledge Worker?
– Work in different or remote locations
– Create and work with a variety of different content
– Engage in dynamic work processes that change frequently
– Work in teams to get their job done
– Need access to managed content in their everyday application

A wide variety of interface for people to work from, spaces, wikis, powerpoint, outlook etc

KW Challenges
– Proliferation of information silos
– Work in many dispersed teams
– Finding the right information
– Seeing the relationships between types of information
– Organizing and sharing information
– Ensuring information is always accurate
– Adhering to IT-requirements for compliance and governance

IT Challenges
– Volume both in volume but also types of information
– Users are always connected – how to you do maintenance and upgrades
– Enpowerment – expect on-the-fly customization capabilities
– Control – Corporate regulatory concerns

Traditional KW Solutions
– Create silos of information
– Same info stored in multiple places
– Multiple search engines & queries
– Users re-invent wheel out of frustration
– Create solutions
– Complex interfaces are more than what users require
– No immediate access from remote locations
– Rely on yesterday’s technology (email, shared drives)

Four pillars of KW
– The Platform for Web 2.0
– Web 2.0 client
– Intelligence from information
– Access anywhere

The Platform for Web 2.0

Wikis, blogs, RSS managed as objects
Everything exposed as web services
Can be leveraged in any UI (purpose-built, partner, portal etc.)

Enterprise Scale
Built on a repository that can scale to billions
Wide array of platform services
Can interoperate with other CMA soltions like TCM
Any object can be retained, made a record, archived, published

Services-enables
Available to .Net and open environment
From a very chatty API to a less chatt SOA-based interface
Support a wide array of dispersed networks through BOCS
Extensible services for added functionality

Vision for Enterprise CM with Web 2.0
– Author & Publish (Blogger, Youtube, Wikipedia, Flickr) – Ratings on Content, IRM Security. Team Wikis, Collaboration
– Organize & Manage (Digg, del.icio.us) – Guided navigation, Tagging of items, Classification, Personalized Views
– Network & Access (LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, iPhones) – Enterprise Ready, Secured off-network, Mobile access, scalable infrastructure, Retention & governance

Pre-configured:
– Object models
– Taxonomies
– Business Processes
— User Experiences
– Retention Policies

BOCS Make sense for the KW Platform – ease the user experiences
BPM
Retention Policy Services
De-duplication
Archive

Web 2.0 Client

Personalized
– Simple to configure
– Include information to you
– Easy to use interface

Team thru Enterprise (Scale)
– Customizable team workspaces and templates improve efficiency
– User Management of Communities
– Ability to locate experts within an organization

Extendable
– Ability to mashup external information sources
– Components can be extended & created by partners and customers

Magellan Essentials
– No cost client
– Team workspaces
– Access control
– Library Services
– Guided navigation
– Content Templates
– Lifecycles

Full client
– Low cost client
– Wikis, Blogs & RSS
– Extranet Support
– Personal Spaces (Team Members)
– Tagging (Tag clouds)
– Federated Search
– Visualization
– Workflow

Multiple Patterns of Collaboration Supported

– Org/LOB/Deparmental
– Team & Project Oriented
– Individual (Ideation)

Information Intelligence

-Expansive Search
Both through EMC or own UI for ECIS
– Analyze & Classify (spot key concepts, detect relationships accross information assets
-Visualize (timeframe etc)

Smart Searching
– Indexing (real-time search results)
– Security (even for outside sources)
– Scalability

Tagging
– User created
– Folksonomies
– Change over time
Rule.based classification
– Metadata qualifiers
– Confidence weights
Semantics.-based classification
– Better linguistics support
– Derives the “gist” of the document
– Monitors designated information sources and provides updates
– Extracts key insights from text based on linguistics and indexing technologies

Visualization (Recommended, Indexed, Personalized, Aggregated, Guided)
– Expertise Location
– Mash-ups (google maps)
– Personalized Navigations
– Tag clouds

Work Wherever
– Offline support (synched to My Documents folder)
Use familiar tools
– MS Office, Adobe Creative Suite and beyond

Bring ECM to the desktop
– get control of email and files on the desktop
– Enforce corporate policies

Used iPod-iTunes metaphors for how the mobile client worked 🙂