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A Detailed Review
Abstract
The EMC My Documentum family includes EMC My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook, EMC My
Documentum for Desktop, EMC My Documentum for Offline, EMC My Documentum for Microsoft
SharePoint, and several other products. These products provide enterprise content management capabilities to
knowledge workers through the popular business applications they use every day such as Microsoft Outlook,
Microsoft Office, Windows Explorer, and Macintosh Finderwhether they are online or offline. This white
paper focuses on EMC My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook, Desktop, and Offline.
September 2009
Table of Contents
Executive summary ............................................................................................ 4
Introduction ......................................................................................................... 4
Audience ...................................................................................................................................... 5
Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 13
Executive summary
Despite the billions of dollars organizations spend on enterprise content management (ECM) systems,
many ECM initiatives fail. Why? Because most ECM solutions today are not well integrated into popular
business applications that knowledge workers use every day.
Knowledge workers spend the majority of their time working with information in a variety of forms; they
resist anything that makes that process more complex or time consuminglike learning yet another
application and its interface. What knowledge workers really want to be able to do is access, secure, store,
and manage information from within the familiar interfaces of common business applications such as
Microsoft Outlook.
The EMC My Documentum family of products addresses this very problem. These products provide
transparent, frictionless ECM capabilities to knowledge workers through the popular business
applications they use every day such as Microsoft Outlook, Windows Explorer, and SharePointwhether
they are online or offline. Now knowledge workers can decrease time to information and thereby time to
market, as they find, share, access, and secure information through their everyday applications, with little to
no training. The IT organization also improves adherence to corporate policies on retention and
governance by providing ECM capabilities from within everyday applications.
Introduction
Organizations spend billions of dollars to purchase, tailor, deploy, and maintain ECM systems. They do this
to provide their knowledge workers (KWs) with centralized access to information, to help them collaborate
easily across geographic and functional boundaries, and to address the IT and legal requirements for
information security, governance, and regulatory compliance.
But despite this investment, many ECM initiatives fail. The primary reason, as the market research firm
Forrester Research pointed out in a study, is that for many business people, the hassle of using [an] ECM
system exceeds the systems value. 1 And this is despite the fact that ECM delivers many compelling
benefits, such as:
Increased efficiency
So why is using ECM functionality such a hassle? Because it is rarely well integrated into the applications
knowledge workers use every day.
Knowledge workers engage in a great variety of activities. A stock broker is a knowledge worker. So is a
product manager, an architect, an industrial designer, and a marketing manager. They want easy, simple
access to information that increases their productivity and helps them get tasks accomplished faster. They
do not want to waste time navigating multiple applications or spend time learning a new application.
Knowledge workers want to access information anytime, anywhereonline and offlineand to execute
their business tasks from within the familiar interfaces of common business applications such as Microsoft
Outlook. They want to be more productive more quickly.
Craig Le Claire and Ken Poore. "Enterprise Content Managements Next Step Forward," For Information
& Knowledge Management Professionals (2008): 2. (accessed June 6, 2008).
Audience
This white paper is intended for organizations that are looking to provide their users with intuitive solutions
to access, share, find, secure, and manage information. It is also intended for Documentum customers who
are looking for integrations between Documentum and Microsoft Office.
Figure 1. The familiar Microsoft Outlook interface delivers powerful content management
features
Feature enhancements
My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook now includes native integration with the Microsoft Outlook
interface and provides offline access and support. My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook supports
Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007 SP1. The latest release enables knowledge workers to employ Outlooks
native menus and toolbars to easily find, file, store, and manage e-mails and documents in the repository.
The following sections describe improvements to My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook in three areas.
Personal productivity
In contrast to earlier versions, the latest release of My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook completely
adopts the familiar Outlook interface, which substantially reduces the knowledge worker learning curve.
The addition of a Documentum toolbar, a series of buttons added to the Outlook menu bar, provides
convenient access to top-level My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook functionality, such as checking
documents in and out, canceling checkout, creating new objects, and viewing checked-out and recent
documents. Users can simply drag and drop e-mails and attachments into repository folders and then apply
content management functionality such as properties, permissions, versions, and locations directly from the
Outlook interface. My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook has also added offline support, which allows
users to work with content when disconnected from the repository.
For knowledge workers, searching for information can be a tremendous impediment to productivity. In fact,
without efficient search tools enterprise knowledge workers spend approximately 25 percent of their time
searching for information and another 25 percent evaluating it. 2 Through the Outlook interface, My
Documentum for Microsoft Outlook enables search in two modesonline and offlinestreamlining and
accelerating the search process. In online mode, users can use metadata properties and content to search
Documentum repository profiles for specific documents and messages. The search results will include only
documents located in the folders for which the user has adequate permissions. In offline mode, My
Documentum for Microsoft Outlook searches local storage for items that have been set as offline
enabled.
My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook also gives users the option of simple or advanced searching. With
a simple search, users can search by word or phrase for any item in the repository. When running a simple
search in online mode, the repository and local storage are searched. A simple search could encompass a
single folder, single repository, or all the repositories to which the user has access. If a search target is
found in multiple profiles or linked to multiple locations, all instances of the item are displayed in the
search results, which can contain up to 500 items. The advanced option gives users more search criteria
including object type, format, text fields only, content only, date, size, value, and conditions. Advanced
searches can also employ wildcards.
Knowledge management
The extensive content management capabilities delivered via My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook that
enable users to work with e-mails and documents from the comfort of the Outlook interface are well
known. Users can open, edit, and save a document from Outlook, and My Documentum for Microsoft
Outlook provides several views that display document properties, permissions, and versions. Users can also
create new documents in either online or offline mode using Documentum templates. Behind the scenes,
the latest release of My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook delivers performance improvements in the
following four areas.
Managing metadata
My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook provides comprehensive metadata management functionality such
as folder-attribute inheritance and the ability to set metadata during multi-select import operations.
Documentum repository objects (e-mails, e-mail attachments, or documents) can be classified with
metadata fields (properties) such as sender, recipient, date sent and received, size, file type, format, and
others that are tailored to an organizations requirements. Properties are stored with objects in the
repository.
My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook can be configured to inherit attributes from the target folder or to
prompt for metadata via an Outlook-style import dialog. When synchronization occurs between local
storage and repositories, changes to properties are synchronized along with content objects. IT and the
corporate compliance team can set the system so that any new content or information gets assigned a set of
values based simply on the folder into which the user places the item. The user is complying with
corporate policies with no overhead on ITs part.
Working online and offline
Users can work in My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook in two modes: online, connected to the
Documentum repository; and offline, disconnected from the repository. Online mode provides immediate
2
Feldman, Susan. "The Hidden Costs of Information Work." IDC Update (2006): 2-3.
access to content, permissions, locations, and advanced search. In online mode, the most recent (current)
document version is displayed, and users have access to previous versions. When documents are modified
in online mode, changes are automatically synchronized with the repository enabling others to see them.
Offline mode enables users to work with e-mail messages and documents when a connection to the
repository is unavailable. Changes are synchronized the next time a user connects to the repository. My
Documentum for Microsoft Outlook switches to offline mode automatically when a connection to the
repository is unavailable and back to online mode when a connection resumes.
Synchronizing content
Each time a user launches Microsoft Outlook, content synchronization starts automatically, ensuring that
repository settings such as properties, profiles, and formats are up to date. The status of the synchronization
process is displayed in a dialog box. The users information store is updated with any changes that occurred
while they were disconnected. In addition, any corporate changes to the profile are driven down to the user
behind the scenes.
Users have a great deal of control over synchronization. They can schedule auto synchronization, or turn it
off and synchronize a repository or folder manually as needed. They can also set synchronization
preferences, such as synchronize every hour or at a certain time. Synchronization also occurs automatically
when a user closes a document that has been open for editing. When a user works on a document offline,
the synchronization of all changes is scheduled and starts as soon that user goes online. Synchronization
uploads changes to the repository, creates a new version if required, and unlocks the document in the
repository. Similarly, deleting an item triggers synchronization. Users and administrators can control the
overhead imposed on any given client system.
During the synchronization process, synchronizations of different types can overlap. When that occurs,
synchronization operations are put in queue and users can view and prioritize them via a dialog box.
Resolving synchronization collisions
My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook can resolve conflicts during the synchronization process. For
example, a conflict (called a collision) may occur if a document is simultaneously changed in a users local
My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook and in the repository. This might occur when someone changes a
document online while a colleague works on the same document offline. Or it would occur if a document
created in local storage cannot be uploaded to the repository because the author lacks sufficient
permissions.
When a collision occurs, the application icon on the My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook status bar
blinks, prompting the user to select an action that resolves the discrepancy. My Documentum for Microsoft
Outlook presents several resolution options based on the cause of the collision such as upload the local
version to the repository, select to discard local changes, preserve the server version, and so on.
Conclusion
My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook provides a unique blend of the familiarity of Microsoft Outlook
with the power of EMC Documentums enterprise content management services. Users dont need to leave
their everyday e-mail/personal productivity client to leverage the benefits of ECM features for increased
efficiency and widespread adoption and use. Several of our customers in the controlled release program
have indicated two major benefits of deploying My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook an intuitive,
transparent ECM solution and savings in training costs. In the words of one of our customers, who has
deployed My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook to more than 100 users and is planning a much larger
deployment, There was no need to explain to users how to store and manage information. The difference
between DCO 5.3 and My Documentum for Microsoft Outlook is night and day. I would recommend
customers to start the upgrade process now."
Link documents from within certified applications, such as linking a Microsoft Excel table to a
PowerPoint presentation or creating inter-document links for PDF files
Enjoy improved read/write performance from remote locations through integration with Documentum
Branch Office Caching Services (BOCS)
Use a built-in authoring cache to avoid transferring content to the repository after each save
Leverage intelligent information handling capabilities such as virtual documents, file analysis, and
image extraction
Feature enhancements
The most recent release of My Documentum for Desktop release 6.5 SP2 has been significantly rearchitected to improve performance and scalability. Originally, My Documentum for Desktop was built for
the creative user, but release 6.5 SP2 meets the heavy demand by knowledge workers for access to basic
Documentum content services functionality through Microsoft Office applications. The following sections
summarize the most significant upgrades in the 6.5 release.
Conclusion
My Documentum for Desktop provides transparent content management access to content from within
Microsoft Office applications. My Documentum for Desktop is essentially an extension to the desktop that
exposes a lightweight set of content management capabilities; it allows content to be opened and saved
directly to the repository through a certified set of applications. In keeping with the My Documentum
brand, with My Documentum for Desktop, knowledge workers can continue to work within familiar
interfaces while leveraging the basic content services capabilities of Documentum to save, secure, find, and
access information.
The EMC My Documentum Product Family
A Detailed Review
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Collision resolution
A collision resolution mechanism ensures that changes to the same content do not conflict. The user is
alerted when a collision occurs and is offered several options to resolve the conflict such as delete, merge,
use local version, use server version, create a new object, or exclude from synch.
For example, the merge dialog box opens when a user selects the merge option to resolve the Concurrent
Changes in the Same Object collision. The dialog box displays the properties that have different values for
local and repository documents and allows the user to select which properties will be used for the merged
document. Users can also select the content from either the local or the repository document to appear in
the merged document. Once the collision is resolved and synchronization proceeds, the merged document
appears in the repository and the offline folder.
Conclusion
My Documentum for Offline is a lightweight client that provides users immediate access to the latest
versions of the content they use most often as well as allows users to work on documents when they are not
connected to the server. By utilizing the Offline client, knowledge workers can now be productive, achieve
a base level of informal collaboration and distribution, and have access to information anytime, anywhere,
even when they are disconnected from the network.
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Conclusion
The EMC My Documentum family of products focuses on transparent, seamless access to content
management from within familiar business applications. Knowledge workers can continue to work within
popular desktop applications while leveraging basic content management capabilities such as versioning,
lifecycles, workflows, check-in and check-out to an extensive range of content services that include
retention and records management, and role- and user-based security. The My Documentum products allow
knowledge workers to:
Use Documentum content management functionality directly from familiar desktop applications
Secure and manage intellectual property their organizations retention, archiving, and compliance
requirements
My Documentum products can make an immediate impact on knowledge worker productivity, decrease
time to information and to market, and secure and store information for governance, risk, and compliance
requirements. The focus for the My Documentum product family is easy-to-use ECM and to provide such
capabilities within interfaces knowledge workers are familiar with. With My Documentum, knowledge
workers work through familiar, intuitive interfaces with no additional training costs. The My Documentum
products extend ECM capabilities to every desktop, enabling organizations and their employees to access,
find, share, and secure business critical information while addressing the need of IT for security,
information governance, and compliance.
To learn more about the My Documentum family of products, visit our website at
http://www.emc.com/products/series/my-documentum-suite.htm.
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