Microsoft SharePoint and Integration with ECM

Advanced ECM
Until now, Enterprise Content Management products, such as FileHold, have been deployed primarily as a point solution or as a component of a line-of-business application. The trend is that many organizations are seeing their environments evolve into shared services frameworks and the
centralization of content management is one of the driving factors. It is important to point out that Microsoft typically does not develop vertical or point solutions; they develop applications, platforms and tools.

At first glance, Microsoft SharePoint appears to have functionality of an advanced ECM system. In many cases there are redundant functions with Commercial off the Shelf Electronic Document Management Software. However, extensive work is typically required to create an ECM solution from scratch on top of the SharePoint platform to obtain the functionality of an "out of the box" ECM solution.

FileHold Adds Value to a Deployment of SharePoint
FileHold's deep integration into Microsoft architecture means you already know how to use it. FileHold uses the familiar Explorer view paradigm and mimics your current office filing structure of Cabinets, Folder Groups, Folders and Documents. FileHold's "ease of use" results in a broader base of users using advanced content management functions with greater control and management of content.

FileHold "OUT OF THE BOX" provides:
Image Capture and Indexing
Library Services
Document Workflow
Security and Compliance

Things to Consider
FileHold recognizes the power of SharePoint but also realizes that more robust record management requirements are likely going to require a more mature tool for the foreseeable future. It isn't likely that Microsoft will grow SharePoint into a true enterprise content management system. ECM vendors will continue to dominate in the areas that SharePoint is not prepared to address.

Backing up FileHold Document Management Software

It has been a very busy last few weeks here at FileHold. We keep busy helping customers configure FileHold software and get the most out of their document management systems / software. We welcome questions about document management, document imaging and scanning or other IT, security or implementation questions you might have that are related to FileHold and document management in general.

In today's post I wanted to put some focus on the FileHold backup procedures PDF document that is available to any customer and is provided with our product materials and installation applications. Today's blog post is only to highlight the scope of backing up FileHold. It is not meant to replace the document itself. As always, test your backups and simulate disaster on a regular basis. The sales team at FileHold can sell a backup/test server license of FileHold to help you with your disaster planning efforts.

Items to back up in FileHold:

1) Document Repository storage folder structure
- Daily is recommended
Example: D:\DocumentRepository


2) Full Text Search folder structure
Example: D:\FullTextSearch\DTSIndex
- Daily backup is recommended


3) Backing up ADAM Repository
- Using the NTBackup/backup tool supplied in Windows Server 2003 you will want to backup the entire Microsoft ADAM folder structure - typically at C:\Program Files\Microsoft ADAM\FHURM\data
- Daily backup is recommended
- ADAM contains the users and group objects of your system
- ADAM can also contain Active Directory information if you are using Active Directory user/group synchronization which is optional.
- Microsoft wrote an interesting case study of our implementation of MS ADAM in FileHoldThis link opens up a Word document from the Microsoft site.


4) Backing up FileHold web application folder structure:
- A periodic backup of the ...inetpub/wwwroot/FH/FileHold web folder structure
- backing this up a few times a year is suggested.

5) FileHold Databases
- Finally - we recommend nightly backups of the 5 FileHold databases that start with ch_

ch_fulltextsearch
ch_documentrepository
ch_librarymanager
ch_userrolemanager
ch_workflowpersistencestore

Summary:
- We recommend that you do these backups at the same time - usually scheduling on a Saturday night or something is the best idea.
- We recommend that you stop the FH App Pool or web server services - this can all be done with Scheduler on the server to automate this. More on this topic is covered in the FileHold backup and recovery procedures document we provide.
- Obviously, there are more advanced ways of backing up a document management system like FileHold.
- There are server imaging products like Acronis True Image.
- Many of our customers use virtualization products like VMWare Corporation's virtual server technology to run FileHold and to simplify disaster recovery.

Let us know if you have any questions by commenting on this blog post or logging into the support system if you are a FileHold customer and opening up a help ticket.

Thanks.

Cameron Siguenza
VP Services
FileHold Systems Inc.

FileHold Document Management Software Blog Topics

We will cover a variety of blog topics:

1) Spotlight on FileHold web site and FileHold help system content
- There are hundreds of pages in the FileHold web site and help system, on a frequent basis we will look at various topics that are frequently asked about.

2) Best Practices in Document Management
- In this we will look at various FileHold customer case studies, generally with customer names removed to protect confidentiality. We will examine how the FileHold library was setup, what challenges were overcome, and showcase the results. I always enjoy reading and learning about how people do things, usually this helps me with thinking of new ways to organize and structure document library's, metadata and a variety of documents.

3) Backup and Recovery of FileHold Application Data
- Far too often we read and hear about companies and organizations around the world that do not backup their various IT systems often enough, or not at all. Losing critical business or customer data is a serious risk. We provide detailed documentation covering a variety of backup and recovery scenarios. It is also a good idea to regularly schedule the testing of these upgrades, as well as patches and updates from Microsoft on a test FileHold server. Many of our customers elect to purchase a special backup and recovery license of FileHold to perform these tasks. Some customers use virtual machine technology from VMWare and other vendors that allow them to roll back after applying a patch or update from Microsoft. We will cover a variety of topics in this area.

4) Document management related technology news
- Occasionally, we may refer to interesting articles, news items or other external web sites that relate to the fields of imaging, document and record management.

This is a work in progress. We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions.

Welcome to the FileHold Document Management Software Blog

The FileHold Document Management blog is another way FileHold Systems is trying to communicate with customers and potential customers.

I am your host, Cameron Siguenza, and I manage global support and implementation here at FileHold. I am happy to work with a great team comprised of developers, engineers, quality assurance, and sales personnel. We care about quality, and about making our customer's lives easier when it comes to simplifying document scanning, imaging, document and record management implementations. Ultimately, it is my responsibility to ensure that FileHold is installed, configured, and successfully deployed by working with customer IT and business/end-user representatives. We are lucky to work with a great group of customers around the world.

You may find it useful to subscribe to this blog via XML web feed to your XML RSS or Atom based Newsreader, iGoogle home page, My Yahoo, Microsoft Live home page, or via Internet Explorer 7 or the FireFox browser's built in XML news reader systems. There are many other ways to subscribe and read blogs that make it easier to stay involved. Many of these methods are more efficient than using browser bookmarks and going through them manually.

I have an iGoogle home page with 9 tabs arranging news feeds from current events, IT news, blogs, IT security alerts, hobbies, and various friends and family blogs. It makes knowing what is new and interesting across hundreds of web sites and blogs a highly efficient 10 minute process.

You can read more the links above, or in this explanation from google about ATOM and RSS feeds if you are interested in using these handy and time saving technologies.
Google News Reader - ATOM and RSS Feeds Explanation

We have a variety of topics to cover that will range from IT to scanning to library administration and configuration to end user questions. We are open to feedback and welcome commentary and questions.