OpenText Content Manager Reviews

All features are important for a complete solution since any solution will need to cater to drive the transformation from the reliance on paper-based processes to digitized solutions, as per the following:

• Inbound processing – capturing incoming traffic through inbound scanning, conversion to long-term preservation PDF format, document classification, metadata extraction, capturing emails.
• Repository/storage of content – ingesting all inbound traffic to a reliable ECM system with governance capabilities relating to records and information management with the capacity to identify records, storing, retrieving, collaborating, tracking, security, lifecycle management – disposal and retention, etc.
• Outbound processing – documenting composition and dispatch and database storage.

Many organizations are facing the same problems with their operating environment and scope of responsibilities. Due to the fact that collaboration with external stakeholders has grown in scale and complexity, keeping track of important business decisions and ensuring that all relevant internal and external stakeholders have timely access to this information, is now a major corporate challenge, as in the exponential growth of paper, shared drives and emails.

Government agencies and private organisations alike expect to do more with the same or fewer resources. Giving staff the tools to enhance productivity is essential to help meet the increasing demands and expectations of the Government and public in a constrained fiscal environment. Changes to Government policy concerning digital records management, security and amendments to legislation such as the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts are also expanding compliance requirements for employees and corporate IT systems. Digital Continuity is an approach to creating and managing information that can be trusted and used for as long as needed despite technological change.

This is how the solution has helped transform business organisations. Businesses are facing the same problems. Network drives, accumulation of paper records, and email used to manage documents and other digital format records of business value do not adequately support the information management compliance requirements. This lack of an enterprise approach to information access and management is limiting organisational efficiency, responsiveness and capacity to maximize business opportunities.

Investment in a modern EDRMS solution has been identified as a key component for addressing efficiency and compliance business needs. Electronic business will mean the necessity to become more diligent and smarter in terms of the information management of the department. Usually a staged approach is taken to select and implement a commercial-off-the-shelf EDRMS. Hence the above vendors cater for these goals and objectives to some degree with integration to Record Management software capabilities, as well as OCR, conversion capabilities and content management.

In line with any digital continuity policy an EDRMS solution is about making sure that information is complete, available and therefore usable for business needs. Information is usable if people can:

• Find it when they need it.
• Open it as they need it.
• Work with it in the way they need it.
• Understand what it is and what it is about.
• Trust that it is what it says it is.

So any product vendor solution must be able to meet the above minimum requirements closely aligned to an out of the box solution such as MS SharePoint has perfected.

Perhaps:

• Cloud computing could be added.
• The ability to substantiate adherence to Australian security standards.
• Better ways in managing extraction of metadata.

In the case of SharePoint you rely on user selection but vendors should try to alleviate human intervention where possible.

I have used the above products for the last 20 years.

Many projects I've worked on encounter issues in production relating to load balancing and throttling where systems cannot cope with the volumes and capacity of transactional processing.

In the case of conversion of Adlib software polling MS Exchange and writing to an HNAS drive, it managed to bring down both servers. It's paramount to adequately plan capacity and preventive maintenance.

They need to support the processing by adding CAS servers, etc to manage extra loads. Also there is the importance of creating an active/active redundancy topology.

The technical support is OK as long as you pay for ongoing technical support structure to get appropriate support during critical breakdown when time is money and have the vendor understand your backup and recovery needs for transparent BAU continuity.

We have used many that do not deliver what they say so we chose the above because they deliver the goods. However, licensing is always an issue.

Initial setup is always complex to get all integrated processes/technology/software working together. For example, Adlib software will poll exchange mailboxes to ingest and process emails and create conversion and content metadata XML output as well as PDFA documents including native formats. OpenText OCC will poll the HNAS drive to ingest the output files that Adlib produced and to OCR all documents and create full text index to extract all metadata and them apply customization code that ingests the Adlib conversion metadata and merge the OCR content metadata then output the transformed XML with the PDF files ready for the next step.

Any content management software will then poll the output directory and ingest all files into the ECM system to store in a database record management system. Paper documents digitized by an external provider were transferred via secure FTP to a shared drive which the ECM system utilities would also poll to ingest and create the records in the EDRMS.

Some implementations were in-house and others were through vendor engagement.

Initial ROI is not appreciated but if you look at the time it takes to process for example, claims, then you are providing an optimized business model where you are competitive because you are more responsive to customer requests and processing.

Claims don't take a week or a month, instead they are processed daily and get into a downstream workflow system that sends notifications and gets assigned to the relevant teams to action. This creates a more sustainable, competitive, government compliant, and secure solution in the long term which pays off on the investment.

Be very clear with functional and non-functional requirements. Set forth minimum mandatory baseline business requirements in order to meet overall EDRMS objectives, aligned with the Principles and Functional Requirements for Records in Digital Office Environments and compliance. Also identify non-mandatory features deemed desirable but not mandatory.

In addition:

• Provide the organisation functional requirements specific to the use and operation of the EDRMS.
• Detail the relevant standards and specifications applicable to the efficient management of public/private records – NAA or PROV.
• Provide the mapping and traceability between the Business Requirement and NAA standard/business and specification with the functional use case as context.
• Provide guidance to vendors in the implementation of the EDRMS system, testing and user acceptance testing.

All requirements should be uniquely identified for tracking purposes and have a business priority assigned to provide an understanding of business importance.

The priorities should be derived from an EDRMS strategy to ensure consistency across business units. A code should be provided to indicate EDRMS’s (Vendors) ability to meet the business, compliance and functional requirements. There should be clear traceability in their ability to meet expectations. What is their ability to meet functional and non-functional requirement statements? Can they fully meet, partially meet, conditionally meet, solution not concluded, cannot deliver, etc.

Stipulate your complexity model to identify what requires complex customization, requires complex configuration, requires minor configuration or is an out of the box requirement. Identifying these components will make it easy to manage the vendor's deliverables and gives the business a better grasp on the monetary bottom line expectation and where the money is being allocated to. Create transparency where you can.

Records management tracking and workflows.

• Eliminated the need for paper records.
• Increased compliance with our internal approval processes.
• Helped us with grant, contract approval, and retention.
• The workflow routes the contract/grant through our legal group and then on to the department and/or finance department and/or city manager for approval.
• Can use the workflow to see where in the process their contract/grant is and where it may have gotten stalled.
• The contract/grant route is dependent on what kind of document it is, what agency it is with, and the cost.
• Helps with the filing of the records and to track and close contract tasks.
• Our agency doesn’t want too many different workflows: It gets confusing for users to decide which one to use.
• Too many options on the workflow for users to select

• Having a workflow tool that is a little bit smarter. This means being able to leverage the metadata entered about a record in order to make workflow decisions.
• Having a workflow template designer that didn’t require adding in a whole lot of steps in order to make the circuit work.
• The retention tool is probably fine. It just needs a lot of trial and error to get more comfortable. That is probably a user issue on my end with me.
• The reporting tool is very clunky and it is hard to make it do what I want it to do.
• There is very little information in the online help. Just this week I was trying to build a report that would have a simple signature line at the report end with some standard text. I was limited to how much text each box could have. I couldn’t find a simple way to set a margin for the report that wouldn’t have the signature line drop off the page.
• Trying to figure out which versions of which fields to add to the report.
• Tying everything to the “bands” isn’t that intuitive either.

I have used HPE Content Manager since 2006.

The product is very stable.

We have not had scalability issues.

Technical support is very frustrating. It is difficult to get a good response from HPE and even more difficult to find anyone that can really help us with the product.

It doesn’t fail often. When it does, it is usually something unusual and out of scope for our regular group that handles common errors.

The initial setup was complex.

Make sure this is really a product you are going to use fully. Otherwise, you are paying for a lot for a product that won’t get utilized.

We evaluated EMC and OpenText.

You can’t pre-plan enough on how you want to organize the records. The more planning you put into the implementation, the more you will get from the product. Don’t discount the amount of hand-holding and change management your organization might need.

The product offers many features and functionality. A few of my favorites include:

• Integration with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook), allowing for streamlined archive of business documents.
• Retention Schedule allows us to incorporate our company schedule directly into the system. By doing so, we are able to confidently manage our destruction process.
• Retention Hold process allows for the suspension on the standard retention process when records are identified as part of a hold order.

One of our prior products required all records to pass through our Records team to be added to the repository. Thanks to the Microsoft integration, our users are empowered to check their records in as they are created, saving both time and money.

We have not yet utilized the web version, as we encountered a few issues during testing.

We upgraded to HPE Records Manager 8.1 in 2015.

We have only encountered minor issues during the deployment.

We have not experienced any stability issues.

We have not experienced any scalability issues.

We appreciate HPE's team of resources, who assist us as issues arise.

On a scale of 1-10, I would rate technical support at 9; great group, always willing to share insights, very empowering team.

We actually had two systems in-house for many years. We consolidated down to one.

We had a great Value Added Reseller (VAR) in place. They handled the initial setup and configuration wonderfully.

A vendor team implemented it. I rate them a 10; they were extremely knowledgeable.

We are very pleased with HPE Records Manager.

Drag and drop: With users having dual screens nowadays, this functionality is used a lot by staff and is also a good way to show people who are new to TRIM (HPE Content Manager) the simplicity of how things can be done. It is also handy if your MS Outlook integration breaks or crashes; the drag and drop of an email into TRIM usually still works. Then you can fix the actual problem with the integration later, as it becomes less of a priority. It is also handy to show people how they can drag and drop from the desktop (or network share) into TRIM, as well as drag and drop internally within TRIM. When dragging and dropping multiple items at once, a TRIM Queue window is bought up, which is pretty neat.

The online audit log is part of the reason people buy and use TRIM, as there is a requirement to have an audit trail. The audit trail is very handy, though, to be able to see exactly what has occurred when there is a problem or issue. The audit trail does not lie. Also, when sending out information in emails, I attach a TRIM reference in the email to the actual information, which is in TRIM. I can then see who has actually looked at the information via the online audit log rather than wonder who has actually read it.

Simple workflows (actions/procedures) such as “Review” and “Approve” are better than multiple copies in various iterations existing within emails. The “Actions” also replaced the need for a signature (for internal documents), which means there is no printing of paper, signing, and scanning back in as a PDF.

There is no integration with social media. Functionality gets removed as new versions are released. The full client has had no new functionality since HPE bought it in 2008; only functions and features removed. (Document Assembly, Web Content Management, long-term email preservation format VMBX, all removed. The Meeting Manager was rendered useless.) A simple and important feature was to be able to default a record type at the document level. This can no longer be done with the release of HPE Content Manager. This means you now have to teach everyone about record types, and therefore records management, which they may not be interested in. So you lose them at the start, rather than just being able to keep things simple, such as default record type.

I have used the current and previous versions since 1997.

The database configuration would need to be redeployed to servers after a restart, even though everything looked OK and reported as OK. Clients could not resolve the data-source until the configuration was redeployed.

We have not encountered scalability issues.

I haven’t used technical support that much, but the times I did use it, it was OK.

We did not have a previous solution.

Initial setup was straightforward.

Try and do a deal. The prices may seem fixed, but are not really, and if you can get hold of an account manager and say “this price or nothing”, then you might be able to strike a deal, especially if you offer to pay maintenance as if you bought it for the full price.

We did not evaluate alternatives.

Know what you are doing from an information management (IM) perspective. The IT side of it is easy. If you get the IM components wrong, or not optimised, then you usually become part of the problem that the solution is trying to solve.

The product is valuable generally due to its wide use and acceptance in the public sector in my region. The skills and knowledge are transferable.

Many associated products offer OTS integrations.

Some of the tools are useful for sharing information; however, organizational culture inhibits records management compliance and TRIM acceptance, in general, is low.

It has extensive configuration restrictions for administrators and file extension limitations.

Clunky in look and feel.

I have been using it for approximately seven years over different versions.

We had regular and different experiences related to user profiles and control over client product.

We have not had any scalability issues.

Support is good from a preferred vendor.

Our previous solution was outdated and non-compliant.

It was an easy installation.

Pricing is competitive.

We did not evaluate alternatives.

There are serious considerations of compliance for the product role. HPE TRIM has limitations beyond a document repository.

HPE Content Manager is a complex product with a great deal of functionality for managing paper and electronic records on a very large scale. The security model is excellent, the locations management is extensive, records options are abundant and metadata search is very efficient and allows for precision searching. Functions to modify records en-masse are handy and powerful, integration with other products is better established these days and the ability for HPE Content Manager to manage large amounts of content is integral to many organizations. Not only does it handle large amounts of content, but if configured and structured properly, it can manage content for you over the long- to very long-term and in accordance with legislation, many international standards and other compliance requirements.

HPE Content Manager provides organizations with a reliable system for managing massive amounts of information. It does so in a structured, compliant and secure way. This is not easy to achieve. I have seen custom-built systems and other systems used to try and manage various types of content, and I can say that none of the ones I have seen provide the same level of functionality and reliability as Content Manager does. It just works. All organizations I have worked with use Content Manager in a different way, because each organization functions in a different way. This flexibility to set up a structure that works for us has been vital to managing our records properly. When it comes to organizing information at the organizational level or the organizational-unit level, Content Manager has no match.

Many government (and other) organizations struggle to find a system balance between user requirements and records requirements, and HPE Content Manager is no different. Users are intimidated by the Content Manager client application, especially when it comes to searching and managing content at an individual’s level. The “tray” system, the limited “favourites” options and the inability to “share” content in an effective way (at the user level) means that users are confused about how to find content and manage content for themselves. This means that the power inherent in the product, particularly with the “trays” and metadata searches, is lost on users. Extensive training is required for users to get the most out of the product The good news is that if you train users to a certain level of competence, they tend to love using it.

Other feedback regarding the client suggests that the check-in/check-out requirement for records is cumbersome. It does not allow for concurrent editing of documents. Document preview and search-word highlighting could be improved.

Integration with Outlook could be improved, and a more-intuitive and less-intimidating search function could be implemented.

I have used Content Manager for 13 years; from TRIM Context versions 5 and 6 to HPE TRIM 7 and HPE Records Manager 8. I am now working on HPE Content Manager 9.

Considering the complexity/range of functionality, and the sheer amount of content it can handle, the stability of the product is impressive. The database side is excellent. The document store is reliable, as well as the workgroup and event services. Most user problems occur because of network connectivity issues or issues with client applications such as Word or Outlook and are not related to Content Manager directly. Outlook integration and, in versions 7 and before, content index searching has been a little flaky (it may have improved since they changed to IDOL searching). Other than that, I’ve seen the HPE developers continually improving the product and resolving any issues that arise (most of which are not significant).

It is difficult to backdate the separation of your document store and the database. So, if you wanted to split your document store and then transfer older (and less used) content on cheaper storage, it is quite difficult to do so. This means planning document store/data tiers is advisable prior to implementation.

Support has improved over the years, and the online forum and support content resolves most of the issues I cannot troubleshoot myself. The support desk is generally quick and will endeavor to help you as much as they can. The complexity and uniqueness of each organization’s infrastructure, standard operating environment and third-party applications make it difficult in some cases to get the help required. Also, many organizations I have dealt with have customizations of their own, which complicates matters.

I have used custom and integrated SharePoint systems that were not able to handle large amounts of content as easily as HPE Content Manager. Managing the moving of content was particularly difficult and SharePoint’s security model doesn’t allow for security classifications to be added to content to restrict access. The long-term management (applying retention schedules) of content for archiving was much more difficult to implement.

Technical side: Initial software setup would benefit from specialist involvement. The documentation is comprehensive, so it’s not absolutely necessary to engage a specialist as long as all the documentation is read and understood. For experienced installers, the setup is actually very straightforward and can be done anywhere from a half a day to a few weeks (depending on existing infrastructure, database access and complexity of system). I would recommend specialist knowledge for software/schema upgrades to prevent potential loss of data.

Content structure and administration: A successful implementation requires an experienced Content Manager business analyst and administrator. Planning the management of content before you start is integral, and a good business analyst will be able to identify the functions and activities of your organization and structure your Content Manager environment accordingly. Setting up appropriate security classifications, security caveats, business classifications schemes, record types and locations structure would benefit from a Content Manager administration expert.

Ensure you have enough licenses for all your users. Invest in more intuitive search modules if available/required.

We have seen several SharePoint-based products and other custom-built systems; however, I am not an authority on these.

Firstly, plan, plan, plan: Hire a good business analyst and assess how your users work, what type of content they create and how you want it structured. Planning your content structure is integral to a successful implementation. Ask yourselves the questions: How do users want to search for content? How do users create content? How do users collaborate/share content? Then ensure you have a good migration plan to transfer content from your current system to your new one.

Secondly, training: Training your users comprehensively, to the point of confidence, will see a much larger user uptake. If they are unsure of themselves, they will not use the product.

Thirdly, infrastructure: Make sure you have good, reliable hardware for your Content Manager servers and database servers, and that your network is stable and fast.

Fourthly, change management: Different things could work for you here. Examples of things that I see work are constant, positive communication prior to implementation; lock down shared drives and easy migration to new system; top level-down migration. Management buy-in is integral and they need to use the product. If they do, then their staff will follow.

The most valuable features are primarily the record web services interface and SharePoint Integration, although there is a lot that can be worked upon in the integration space.

Integration helps organizations build internal relationships with other products and communicate effectively. No wonder sole EDRMs like Objective, etc., are losing their charm as they remain into their own space without considering the overall enterprise paradigm. Look at SharePoint. It is good, but cannot replace HPE CM, as it doesn’t handle a large capacity of storage units.

RM 8.3.9365 or patch 3 is still under development. I myself have suggested a lot of improvements and defects, and they are being addressed. Although it is user friendly, it needs work to be at it’s best.

IDOL integration: With as much as 180 million records and 80 TB of data and 18,000 users, I can see IDOL not behaving as expected, and I work with IDOL experts to seek workarounds to issues. IDOL is a good product, but more careful planning could have been done to see some more robust outcomes. Performance across 40 content engines is poor, as some CE’s don’t work compared to others in the engine layer.

I have used Records Manager 8 for about a year now, but TRIM for many years.

We had stability issues primarily with performance, where title searches slowed down compared to previous versions. TRIM was stable with DCI itself, although it had its own bottlenecks.

We now have 2 proxies, 5 distribution servers and about 40 IDOL engines with tons of data on CEs. It is a scalable solution, but we see performance degradation and maintenance nightmares. Design could be improved to allow vertical build up as opposed to the horizontal approach, which is what HPE proposes now.

Technical staff/support is good. Some of them whom I deal with are pretty good and some of them are just smart spokespersonnel who could just confuse rather than convince.

Support staff overall rating in my view is 4/5.

TRIM is a reliable solution and has EDRMS compatibility, which others products lack. Hence, we never really looked at other products.

Initial setup was straightforward and clear.

It is expensive, especially the CM versions. But if you need it, you pay for it.

We evaluated Objective and SharePoint mostly.

Go for it. It works reliably for average-sized organizational structures.

The most valuable feature is the ability to search, sort and retrieve using metadata; in particular, the ability to create custom reports using the print merge functionality as per the requests that are issued from clients.

Official records are managed, thereby being able to identify information that cannot be disposed; managing the lifecycle; and locating our records.

The space management functionality, whilst incredibly useful to locate records, lacks the ability to perform a census of records. As a result, reports have to be printed and reconciliation of records on shelves conducted, which is incredibly laborious and time-intensive.

Also, the triggers and workflows could be improved upon. The system is difficult to navigate and understand the full scope of functionality available for end users to appreciate the value.

It is also challenging for end users to manage digital information in HPE CM, as physical records management practices and processes do not always translate to a digital environment.

Our organisation has been using HPE EDRMS solutions for well over 10 years. We introduced managing information in a digital format seven years ago but have since lost executive support for this to be our primary document management solution.

Our organisation uses VDIs instead of hard drives. Our experience has been that conducting simple tasks such as sorting by columns results in latency in the system, to the point of stalling it, despite having minimum people using the software.

The customer service and technical support is certainly better than going through a third-party vendor; however, there is still much to be desired. Often times when an issue is escalated to HPE, we are advised that it will be fixed in the next patch or release. However, this does not always eventuate.

The organisation did not use an EDRMS to manage records prior to implementing HPE CM. In the past, Access databases and catalogue systems have been used.

HPE CM is a highly customisable product. If it is rolled out ‘out of the box’, it is quite simple. However, like most organisations, we need it to do certain things. Defining record types, business classifications, security classifications, locations, additional fields will never be an easy task. If we were to have a do-over, I think we could have had a little more rigour around what was necessary and what was not, which could result in a much cleaner end product.

Our organisation employed a Records Manager technician to help in the design and configuration of the system. Over time, we have had upgrades to the system and engaged project staff to assist. This did have its pitfalls, however, in that the technical people were system-focused without a holistic understanding of what the Information Management specialists need to be able to perform their role.

On top of this, the technical team was a part of Information Management. As a result, they were defining the business requirements (without fully understanding them) and implementing them. Since then, the technical team have been moved into a different part of the organisation, which allows us more scope to define what the system needs to do and test it thoroughly prior to upgrades being performed.

It’s never easy to put a monetary ROI on an EDRMS. However, the value of managed information is becoming more evident to organisations and they can see the value in investing in systems such as HPE CM or Objective, for example.

It is worth doing the homework when deciding on where to purchase licences. Part of that research should include aftermarket support and any hidden additional costs that might be incurred.

I would advise any organisation to really define what their information management business requirements and end-user requirements might be, noting that they are not going to line up. Additionally, it's important to include in that assessment what the format of that information will be in. Accessibility and transfer of information are also highly important for some organisations.