Speaking at Momentum 08 in Prague on Tuesday

Speaking at Momentum 08 in Prague on Tuesday

I have arrived to Prague today to attend EMC’s Momentum 08 conference which focuses around their Documentum product line. I love travelling and especially flying and have no problem at all spending time at big international airports. However, being by yourself in big towns when heading for a dinner is not always that nice. However, now I am having a great time after a warm bath and lying in my bathrobe watching BBC World and using my computer.

On Tuesday at 0945 I will be speaking at the conference. My session in the Software Development Track is called “Active Knowledge Management using Documentum D6.5”. The full description looks like this:

The Swedish Armed Forces uses EMC Documentum D6.5 at the Joint Concepts Development and Experimentation Centre to develop staff procedures for a next-generation operational HQ. Based on the knowledge support concept, a customized EMC Documentum solution, using multiple user interfaces to access all kinds of digital content, has been developed.

My presentation will cover our workflow implementation using TaskSpace and BAM, our customized relationship object, graphical visualization of relationship and our integration with external search engines and GIS-systems. It will be interesting to get some reactions to our concept and how we make use of the Documentum platform. I hope for reactions not only from EMC employees but also from other big customers.

Download the full conference programme

Reflections from a busy week

For the third year in a row I have the busiest week of the year when we are conducting what we call an “Experiment” at work. What it means is that we bring real people in to work according to the outlines in the concept we are developing. It is as interesting as it sometimes is tiresome. Since I am more or less the “mum” of the design of our information technology platform I struggle hard to make it work as much as I have previously “advertised” to my colleagues and participants. This year I think we have made a really interesting (and cool) integration of Documentum 6.5, a 4D-database tool called Beata (space+time), FAST ESP 5.2, IBM Lotus SameTime 8.0.1, Carmenta Server and the portal based on InfoGlue.

This week meant luckily that I could stay at a hotel in Enköping so I did not have to drive two hours back and forth each day. Since the traditional Viking-exercise was going on at the same time in Enköping there where a lot of military officers from other countries staying at the hotel. I wrote about my experiences at at a previous exercise before and this time it was nothing like that at all. I could wear my nice blue uniform with a skirt which makes me feel both pretty and comfortable. I was together with a colleague more or less in control of all that happened and the experiment participants have been really nice. However, at the hotel I had somewhat of a deja vu some mornings. Maybe it was my uniform or the sounds of my heels, I don’t know but with all these mostly male officers from all over the world I felt so stared at that it became uncomfortable at times. During the evenings when we usually had some food in the bar it felt much better, maybe because I was sitting with somebody all the time. I told a friend of mine about it and he just told me that they were only looking because I was so good-looking. Hmm…I like to believe that but there is that something in people’s eyes that says something. Maybe it is because I am a female officer – I know other women in the Armed Forces have told me similar stories.

A high level Mac switcher

It is with great satisfaction to notice that we now can add the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt to the growing number of switchers. His blog post around the issue have of course got some attention at computer news magazines such as Swedish MacWorld. And yes, in the comments of his blog posts you can read the standard variety of comments where many seem to be filled with old prejudices about the Mac and who should have one. And Bild himselfs says:

Att säga att jag inte ångrar det steget är månadens stora understatement. Min enda kritik av mig själv är varför jag väntade så länge att ta steget

First impressions of Documentum Digital Asset Manager 6.5

Before going on my planned sick-leave I played around with DAM 6.5 for a while. I will try to summarize a few reflections I have on this brand new release.

Good things
The interface have got yet another refresh but rather small modifications that I guess I won’t even notice in a couple of weeks. The biggest change is that some functions have got modal windows meaning that when you click on properties you no longer see the big full screen page but instead a new browser window that allows you to see where you where when you clicked. A great improvement I think. The import/export/check-in process also has small modal windows with a nice looking update progress bar.

A thing that I just love is the new clusters/facets features which appears when performing a search. Your results can then be drilldowned based on user, topic, date and so forth. Will improve findability hugely. We had these installed in D6 SP0 but they did not work then and seem to be connected more closely to ECI Services back then.

In general the interface is prettier and looks more distinct and modern. The icons have been slightly improved as well.
Another small improvement is that attributes which have both value assistance (dropdowns) but also allows entering of an own value now have the correct width.

I guess it is not really connected to this upgrade but I finally manage to find how one creates Presets (rules) for specific folders and users which was great. Look at the three structure in DA – not in the menu.

Bad things
The left tree structure has been cleaned up with clearer icons and the update is based on AJAX (or should see bad below). This works fine in Documentum Administrator 6.5 but for some reason they seemed to have missed something in compiling DAM because there is small refresh anyway when you click on a folder. Our partner suggest that they simply have inherited from the wrong WDK-class.

Another interesting thing is that some features that are highly marketed at EMC World are turned off by default in the configuration files. Those include Deep Export and OLE-linking support (resolving links in Office documents and imports associated files if desired). That is rather strange I think since those are really handy features. The OLE-linking can also be toggled on/off in Preferences. The effect of that is that there was no folder export available at all which is fairly strange. We also had some issues with getting import of more than two folders working.

We also have a an irritating issue around thumbnails. It seems that those can not be created for PDF-files at all which also means no storyboarding. When reading through the release notes this is noted as a known bug and it seems that despite our bug report from earlier this year nothing has been done to fix it. From a usability standpoint that is not so good.

EMC Documentum CenterStage

If you haven’t done it already I recommend a look at the site for the beta of EMC Documentum’s new web client called CenterStage. This modern Web 2.0 client has earlier been called both Magellan and IntelliSpace but EMC now seem to have settled on the name CenterStage. It is kind of funny because I associate CenterStage with a TV application for Mac OS X which is found at the CenterStage Project site. Anyway it is interesting to see how the interfaces and feature looks for the free CenterStage Essentials (included in any Content Server license) and the paid version called CenterStage Pro. I have long waited to for a good application that both can do “Facebook for the Enterprise” while still having all the features of an advanced and full-fledged Enterprise Content Management platform. This seem to be a big step towards that. The key thing is to be able to collaborate both around content (documents etc) but also around people, groups and projects. Although there are good collaboration platforms out there such as Clearspace which has some basic integration with Documentum it is still creating a lot of duplicate information in separate “stove-pipes”. I want the content objects found in the Clearspace platform stored in Documentum but this is not the case today. What we are looking at is being able to search Documentum content from Clearspace for the immediate future.

Again, back to Centerstage I believe it will provide a lot of organisations with a client that will be a lot more intuitive and useful out of the box than we have ever seen from Documentum before. This is thanks to an ambitions usability project run by Gideon Ansell in the Documentum User experience group. However, after having had a looked at the project release matrix found in the beta community it looks like the beta of CenterStage essentials will not have enough features to be the flexible collaboration client I need. Those features will be added later on this year. We just have to wait for the full CenterStage Pro version I think. I also hope that the few missing pieces like a full fledged personal profile, expert location and integration with external presence/Instant Messaging systems will be on the schedule for the next update of it.

This week I will be able to play with the Documentum 6.5 release for the first time since it is being installed by our Documentum partners at work. I especially look forward to see the new Digital Asset Manager (DAM) 6.5 client and TaskSpace 6.5. I also hope that I can get some further information about what release of the embedded FAST InStream Search engine is used in this release.

I will be a speaker at Momentum 08 in Prague

This weekend I got a nice surprise in an email from EMC which confirmed that my speaking proposal had been accepted. So now I guess I will be going to Momentum 08 Prague as a speaker! It feels great and I look forward to it a lot. Unfortunately it is in the middle of a very important week at work but I got confirmation from my commanding officer today that I can at least fly down for the day to give the speech and possibly also check out the other sessions that day. My sessions is entitled “Active Knowledge Management using Documentum D6” and will be focusing on how we use Documentum as a foundation to work proactively to support end users in finding, organizing and utilizing their information in a military HQ. Fortunately it looks like we are going to do another major step in taking our platform forward and that will not only include a very early upgrade to D6.5 but I will also get my data-deduplication feature 🙂 It sure will be an interestung autumn.

Interesting details about Documentum licensing

Today I learned some interesting things about the names and licensing of Documentum products. MediaWorkSpace which was previously announced as included in the DAM license will now require its own license. A little bit strange since it is merely handling image files so far. The Magellan essentials license however will be included in each Content Server license which is good. The full Magellan client (which for a while was called IntelliSpace) will be a separate license when it will become available. I also learned that there are no longer any licenses for Reporting Services developer which limits the number of Crystal Reports designer tools in your system. Instead there are is a CPU license for Reporting Services allowing as many designers as you like in your system. Furthermore I learned that what is labeled Business Process Management includes both Documentum Process Builder and Forms Builder but only used one at the time on one machine. Forms Builder can be bought as a separate license. We had intended to get Forms User licenses but we chose to for some TaskSpace clients instead where Forms User is included. At EMC World we also learned that the Process Engine DocApp is required to run BAM in Documentum D6.5

Grateful for any clarifications or corrections if someone have found out something else.

Got my new Mini Cooper Clubman D today

Mini Cooper D Clubman Nightfire Red
It has been ready for a couple of days but believe it or not but I had so much to at work that I could not squeeze in the time to go to Uppsala to get it. However, today I finally decided that it could not wait any more so I raced to Uppsala in my Mini Cooper S for the last time and enjoyed the big engine as much as I could 😉 When I got to Novation (the name of the car dealer) my sales person was taking it out of the garage just as I rolled in. It looked wonderfully red in the sunshine and I immediately felt it was a good decision. The new car is certified as an environmental car by the Swedish Road Administration (Vägverket) and consumes around half of the fuel per 10 km compared to my old car. It also has cool features such as brake-regeneration of electric power and an “enviromental” stop feature which makes the engine stop (while everything else is running) when you put the gear stick into neutral. A small touch on the clutch (koppling) makes the engine start again. Highly useful in Stockholm’s rush-hour. The car also has a new iPod interface which is a real improvement over the old one. This one speaks Swedish and allows you to navigate just as you do on the iPod and show the title of the current song in the display. So my car is essentially an iPod accessory 🙂

Star Trek – The Experience

Me on the bridge of USS Enterprise
I have always liked Science Fiction and as you might know got hooked on a few lately like Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Eureka and a few others. However, a science fiction classic is Star Trek and I have watched quite a few even though I would not consider myself a real “Trekkie”. My favorite Star Trek show is Voyager with Captain Janeway as the commander (surprise…). Anyway when me and my colleague discovered that there was a big Star Trek attraction in Vegas we decided to try to squeeze it in. We did not have that high expectations but it turned out really good. It is located next to the Las Vegas Hilton hotel and it is actually a miniature theme-park in-door. The exhibitions are nicely done and the two attractions do really have the feel on Star Trek. I will always remember the feeling I had when we walked through a perfect replica of the sign-mark corridors of the Enterprise. It felt like being in the show actually – and the Borgs where actually a bit scary when you met them. We bought a big package and in that was included an option to have your picture taking while sitting in the chairs of the bridge and it was also a nice experience. The only stupid thing was that we noticed afterwards (!) that there were costumes for rent. So the hard conclusion is that if I ever get back to Vegas I need to do another photo where I can look as Janeway for real 🙂