OpenText Documentum Reviews

We use this for documentation management. It provides possibilities for us to save documents and supporting the business process while doing so. It helps us with some of the overflow of documents, and that is very important for our company.

It helps us achieve enterprise content management. It is quite good.

It helps us with some of the overflow of documents, and that is very important for our company.

The biggest issue for us is the price of the product.

One to three years.

It is quite an expensive product. The price is very high. 

I would advise others that the best solution for enterprise content management is either Documentum or Microsoft SharePoint.

We use it for enterprise content management and we have many businesses which use it for business process content management. So we have two categories of users. The primary use case is lifecycle management or flow management and that includes the enterprise content management service.

We have several customers and each one has a different "flavor." So the benefits vary with each case.

The lifecycle management is valuable because many of our businesses create content and it passes through a lifecycle. Each state of the lifecycle means that your business has certain business rules, which are set.

It needs a better UI and it should also be cloud-ready. The UI has not changed in years. These are the two major improvements I would be expecting.

More than five years.

The stability is good.

The scalability is good.

Technical support is average.

I wouldn' say the setup was straightforward but it was also not complex. It's somewhere in between.

When selecting a vendor, the primary considerations are the cloud and that we need simplified solutions for all of our customers.

We use it for content management solutions and processes, such as credit, document lifecycle, etc., in the following verticals: banks, insurances, and so on.

It has reduced the amount of paper documents; reducing time and errors in the process. This has improved people effectiveness and avoided missing documents.

• Ability to build a solution without code.
• Build solutions based on process and content management.

It should provide:

• More Docker based solutions.
• More support to the cloud (AWS, Azure, etc.).
• More tools to help clients upgrade solutions based on Webtop.

More than five years.

Using Documentum products such as Content
Server, xCP, Captiva, 90+ large-scale Business Processes/Applications have been
successfully implemented for moving forward to be paperless organization. These
processes are fully integrated with our Oracle E-Business Suite (Financial Modules
plus HRMS) in addition to integration with custom enterprise systems built
in-house

Reduced request cycle time, along with enhancing request tracking and archiving. Moving towards a paperless organization, it has facilitated paperwork easily in a fast and elegant way.

Process Engine for handling over 90 large-scale business processes/applications. also Documentum Content Management System is very powerful.

Documentum xCP 2.3 is still has some drawbacks such as :

1• Dependent filtration among multiple drop down lists in Result list

2• Unable to access all user tasks from all processes in user inbox (not only the processes included within the application)

3• Unable to include task link in task notification mail automatically

Three to five years.

No.

No.

Seven out of 10.

No.

Straightforward, by following the installation document.

in-house

Reduced request cycle time, along with enhancing request tracking

Licensing according to organization scale. Captiva software in case of backlog archiving.

SharePoint, IBM, Oracle.

Make use of load balancing. Try simplifying forms as best you can to avoid performance issues.

In terms of sub-products/components, the most valuable features are definitely Content Server and DFC. The core components are the most valuable and trusted ones. These components help us make a solution that can manage documents and their metadata providing features such as permissions, auditing, transactions and debugging for when things get strange. Doing this from scratch may be a good option, but using Documentum we may be able to save some time.

WDK is also very useful. It's not the best web framework, but it is an acceptable one for most cases and it's directed for a Documentum solution.

For some users, Webtop can be a good solution. From my experience, a customized version, usually very customized, of Webtop is an optimal solution.

The organization needs to manage a large number of documents. Depending on the context or application, it produces from 50k documents a year to 200k documents a day.

We designed several solutions for several business contexts. The core of the solution design was the custom-made design specific for the organization, and not the fact that it depended on Documentum. Using Documentum helped in the development process. Application development would be more costly if it was from scratch, rather than using some basic Documentum features.

Performance could be better. But this is a generalization. We can achieve good performance with Documentum, but we need experience to understand several details about how Documentum works to avoid performance problems. Documentum, out of the box, could be better designed so that we wouldn't fall into these problems so easily.

Also, the permissions model could be better. For example, I don't understand why we don't have the concept of a read-only user enforced by content server. But I can understand it can be difficult to make a permissions model that can be simultaneously generic and functional.

Sub-products like RPS and Records Manager are really bad. But I wouldn't hope for improvement here. The mission here is difficult. Trying to make a product that can handle lots of records, millions usually, is a tough mission. We have to be able to apply customer rules you don't know yet, because they're the customer's rules (and exceptions).

I’ve been using Documentum for 11 years.

The core (content server and DFC) is very stable. Several sub-products, like RMA and RPS are really bad stability-wise and many other aspects.

The core (content server and DFC) are reasonably well scalable. Several sub-products, like RMA and RPS, are really bad scalability-wise and many other aspects.

The content server could be more scalable if it didn't depend so much on dm_sysobject. The design overuses dm_sysobject without much need. Lightweight objects can be a way of solving this issue. Table partitioning can be useful also, but table partitioning can be a lot of work for solving a design problem.

I rate technical support 1/5. Whenever I wanted help from Dell EMC, it wasn't for trivial issues. I wanted help from people that have a high degree of knowledge in Documentum and, in some cases, have access to information that I don't (like something I could only know by reverse engineering).

For sure, some people in Dell EMC have knowledge and can be really helpful, but usually when we submit a case or question, we have to pass through some people that know less than what we know. This makes us lose lots of time asking irrelevant questions for information we already gave. Sometimes we give up before getting to someone with knowledge.

Other times, our issue really gets to someone with knowledge (after quite some time), and only a percentage of those times the support is helpful. Also, Dell EMC doesn't support Documentum's versions for a long time. You quite often see Dell EMC personnel saying Dell EMC does not support old versions when, for most situations, we can see the issue would not be any different in the most recent version.

Initial setup was complex. Several times we started with a solution. Then, in production, we started to get problems concerning performance or complexity, because we tried to use a product that needs to be generic to our customer specific solution. Then usually, when we address the problems, we figure out that replacing some Documentum-specific features with a customized feature (usually a simple one) can be a huge improvement.

I'm not an expert on this but from what I know, the pricing and licensing model is strange and I'm not sure how well it is controlled. For example, paying by user capability (consumer, contributor, coordinator) makes sense when the user application is Webtop. But we can have a WDK solution or any other web-based solution where the user capability is completely irrelevant.

I was not involved in product evaluation. The organization evaluated FileNet as one option, but I can't say much about it.

Stick to the core (Content Server, DFC)! I don't want to say WDK because Dell EMC is/was always saying it was going to end it. Otherwise, it was something to consider.
Dell EMC made DFS, which was a logical approach. But for several users (like myself), if you design web services by yourself using plain DFC, you’ll get better web services and it's not that complicated. Of course, you're not going to provide all the functionality DFS provides, but you won't need it.

Make it simple when possible! When you need something more complex regarding specific functionality or great performance, consider custom development. Don't assume that because Documentum has a feature addressing what you want to do, you should use it. Do the pros and cons first.

You would want to block the generic interfaces and customize your solution, unless:

• Your solution needs to manage only a few documents.
• Your users are IT people that understand what they should or should not do with an interface as generic as Webtop or CenterStage.
• You use DFS services without being very careful (performance-wise, for example).

Lifecycle management

We use it as a repository of our records.

The interface is not user-friendly, new meta data classes are not easy to create.

6 months

Not too stable.

Customer Service: AverageTechnical Support: Average

Complex. We needed external help to set it up.

Through a vendor team.

Version Tree Branching. Bulk document edit. Hierarchal navigation. Document annotation. At the time webtop was an integration point we wanted into our products CM.

We were able to meet ISO 9001 QMS Standards and add a more robust CM integration to our product base.

After implementation, I was pleased with the functions of the application. Design and newer functionality should always be evolved.

I used this solution for approximately 5 years.

Yes, system deployment was complex and very tedious.

No, after the deployment, we found the system to be reliable. Not the fastest system, but stable.

Never had to scale to meet demand.

Customer Service: I would rate the service below average. This was three years ago, so maybe it has improved since.Technical Support: Support was average. My involvement was not only user level, but development integration level also. I had more difficult questions I am sure than the average user.

We had integrations to several content management applications. We ended up not choosing this option in-house as we felt it was too much. Just not a good fit for us.

The initial setup as per their install guide was pretty spot on. As we customized, it became more complex. This could be due to our unique business rules or because we were building an integration to the software.

Ours was an in-house implementation. We did lean on support a few times and it was average support if we were not dependent on a time line.

Be sure that you can invest the time for implementation on this also, use their technical services team. The software does what it says it does, but make sure you have considered cheaper options.

We use the platform across various sectors like healthcare, life sciences, banking, and insurance for document repository and application purposes.

The platform's integration capabilities with internal workflows and external systems are crucial.

While generally secure, some noted security issues need consideration. The installation process for on-premise setup needs improvement as well. 

I have been using OpenText Documentum for approximately 20 years.

I rate the product stability an eight. 

I rate the product scalability a nine. 

Technical support varies by product, but generally, it's efficient for critical issues though less urgent tickets can experience delay. 

Neutral

I rate the initial setup process a four. 

The product is expensive. 

The platform excels in scalability and performance for large-scale implementations compared to more flexible but less scalable solutions like SharePoint.

OpenText Documentum is a robust choice for enterprise-level document management. I rate it an eight.