La Websocket a été créée pour répondre à différents besoins dont celui d’ouvrir une connexion permanente entre le navigateur (client) et le serveur : chaque requête devient alors plus rapide et surtout plus légère. En prime, le serveur peut envoyer des requêtes au navigateur pour le prévenir d’une éventuelle mise à jour via des « notifications » (ce contenu a changé, un message est arrivé, l’autre joueur réalise telle action…) au moment où l’événement se produit.
IMPROVE YOUR ECM PLATFORM WITH ANSWERMODULES AND AEROW
How to improve users’ experience in order to optimize your Content Server Platform adoption and ROI ?
Discover the best solution to improve and simplify OpenText Content Server end-user interface by AnswerModules, one of the most innovated companies in the ECM market.
AnswerModules’ solution framework : ModuleSuite offers various features that help you make the best of your Content Server Platform by increasing possibilities, creating synergies, optimizing costs and many other additional benefits.
With ModuleSuite you’ll be able to :
- Reduce development time and expenses by up to 70%
- Increase the average level of end-user satisfaction by up to 80%
- Accelerate your delivery process
- Boost user adoption levels
And overall increase your value proposition.
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« ModuleSuite is the best solution for companies that need to create ECM processes easily and have found limitations in the standard OpenText modules. Several features are already implemented, leaving you to just take care of the setting up. If there are more specific requirements new features can also be developed using Groovy. We have access to libraries like Java, HTML and CSS, making the ECM more flexible and eliminating the need for Oscript developers »
Laurie Lepage, ANSWERMODULES Technical Expert, AEROW
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« What you would like to have on Content Server is a tool which extends features as standard modules do, but which also has the flexibility of specific development. This is exactly on this idea that the ModuleSuite has been built. By adopting ModuleSuite, you will be able to answer all your business requirements. At AEROW, we have been early adopters of the ModuleSuite and we strongly believe that AnswerModules is the future of Content Server. It gives you the flexibility that you should have on every enterprise software »
Éric Carbonel, ANSWERMODULES Senior Technical Expert, AEROW
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SUCCESS STORIES :
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The Fondation de France (“Foundation of France”) is an independent administrative agency established in 1969 in an effort to stimulate and foster the growth of private philanthropy and private foundations on the French territory.
Fondation de France is member of the Network of European Foundations for Innovative Cooperation.
More information : http://www.fondationdefrance.org/
Experience feedback by Joseph Behaghel, Project Manager at Fondation de France.
“9 years ago, we opted for the famous Content Server solution by OpenText, as part of our electronic document management relating to volunteers and employees. Despite the riches offered by the solution, users returns were quickly negative (Low intuitivism, design too complex…) hence the need to completely overhaul the structure of our management platform.
After learning of AEROW teams, we have been introduced to the ModuleSuite by AnswerModules, offering many features that could meet our expectations.
We have worked on several projects, the first being a project for indexing PDF documents using a particular OCC module offered by Content Server. The project was a true success thanks to AnswerModules and AEROW’s technical teams.
Faced with negative feedback from users, we had to undertake a second major project in order to provide an adequate solution to improve user experience. In May 2016 we chose (with the help of Laurie Lepage) to gradually revamp the user interface including Workflows, Volunteers Forms and Employees. The goal was to meet the needs of users in terms of convenience and functionality.
In the coming months, we will introduce a more complex project consisting of a complete change in the Content Server interface with the addition of new features including document access and viewing.
Integrating ModuleSuite gave us the opportunity to move from a negative user experience to complete user satisfaction. With this we ensure a bright future for our ECM and streamline related processes.
It goes without saying that we will continue to work with AnswerModules and AEROW’s teams which added the strong value necessary for the success of our projects. ”
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Healthcare Laboratory founded in 1945, nowadays Stago is an Industrial Company specialized in In Vitro Diagnostic (IVD) dedicated to the exploration of Hemostasis and Thrombosis.
More information : http://www.stago.com/
Experience feedback by Frédéric Authouart, Responsible for Project Monitoring and Controls at Stago.
“The goal was to replace our document management tool that no longer met the 21 CFR Part 11 requirements (pharmaceutical context). During the design of the new solution, we reached many blocking points : lack of flexibility in workflows, few automations available, complexity of users’ interface, weak documentary checks and performance issues (more than 30 minutes to load a file).
With the help of Éric Carbonel from AEROW, we were introduced to AnswerModules, and more particularly to the ContentScript Module, which completely reversed the situation. We were then able to automate and simplify many workflows steps, dynamically manage access rights; handle unique references, link different document processes (publication, reading for application, review and archiving of applicability) and also to accelerate our processes.
AnswerModules’ team was flexible and reactive, which was a part of the project’s success – The only frustration we had was the inability at the time to invest in purchasing licenses for all our user base.
The next step is to review the workflow interface entirely using the Beautiful Forms included in the ModuleSuite. The goal is to provide the users with a simple and modern interface, and at the same time to add the required documentary checks that cannot be achieved with the standard interface.
AnswerModules saved our project, and was our only way to success.”–
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SAP BI4.0 ou comment améliorer l’expérience utilisateur
En 2011, l’éditeur SAP mettait sur le marché une première solution de restitution de données en version client léger : SAP BI 4.0
Si cette version présentait quelques restrictions par rapport à celles proposées en client lourd l’éditeur a mis en place plusieurs innovations afin d’améliorer l’expérience des développeurs et des utilisateurs. Les différentes évolutions apparues sur BI4 depuis la première version avaient toutes un but commun : effacer les nombreuses restrictions de la version Beta.
En 2016, SAP propose une nouvelle version de cette solution, beaucoup plus aboutie pour ses clients : SAP BI 4.2
Ce nouveau produit offre de vrais avantages aux équipes de développeurs et aux utilisateurs.
Dorénavant, les développeurs peuvent compter sur la fonctionnalité « élément partagé », qui permet de mutualiser un objet (ex : une variable, un tableau, un graphique…) d’un rapport à un autre. Cette innovation facilite donc grandement la maintenance et le développement des documents sous Webi.
Cette nouvelle version propose également une fonction « Administrateur » relativement aboutie, avec la possibilité d’échanger des notifications. Les équipes d’utilisateurs peuvent donc communiquer beaucoup plus simplement que dans les versions antérieures.
Par ailleurs, cet outil propose une version améliorée du mode HTML, qui facilite le développement de rapports. Il n’est donc plus nécessaire d’installer la JRE pour travailler en mode JAVA, puisque le mode HTML offre des possibilités similaires.
Un article rédigé par Mohamed Legraa, Consultant décisionnel au sein d’AEROW Decision, filiale du groupe AEROW.
How to meet your business requirements with Content Server
Content Server (CSP) is a great platform to manage documents. You have everything you can expect from a document management system, such as collaboration features, strong permission management, powerful search and clever storage management. If the platform has been well designed and users well supported, Content Server can achieve great things.
However, nowadays, more and more tools have advanced document management features and it put a new pressure on Content Server. For instance, ticketing systems, intranet portals, collaborative/social tools or even PLM platform have now basic document management features. Even harder, there is a strong competition with SaaS applications, such as Box or Dropbox, which are very simple to use and offer advance document management features.
This is why users and clients are always asking more and more of their Content Server. They want to feel that there is huge gap between Content Server abilities and the other tools they have access to. They want more automation from their everyday work. They want a personalized and extremely simplified interface (which is what OpenText will offer with the upcoming Content Server 16). And more generally, they want their documents to be fully integrated in their business processes.
From this analysis, we can note some of the most frequent business requirements:
- Having very controlled workspaces where:
- Metadata are enforced and follow some specific business rules
- Documents are automatically named and have a unique number (partially based on their metadata)
- Document creation is eased and supervised (automatic document generation from templates and metadata / automatic merging of several linked documents)
- Review and publication process are highly controlled and monitored
- Smart and clear notifications
- Action triggers can automatically initiate workflows and complex updates
- Various powerful reports are available
- Having a simple and contextual user interface where:
- The interface displayed depends of the user profile;
- The interface displayed depends of the action / process being executed (I only see the very few features which are related to what I’m currently doing)
- It can be access from any kind of devices
- Integrating Content Server with multiple third party tools:
- Being able to retrieve and process information from external systems, such as an ERP or CRM tools (which is what OpenText is doing with its Extended ECM suite)
- Offering REST APIs on all Content Server features (current REST APIs have a limited access to Content Server features)
- Offering ready to use REST APIs (using one API call instead of dozen API calls)
Obviously, that is a long list of requirements and it is a tough job to tackle all of them. Depending of your context, you may have solve some of the requirements with some OpenText additional modules, such as Automatic Document Numbering, Active View or Extended ECM. The use of additional modules can greatly improve your Content Server experience and some of them, such as Extended ECM for SAP, are completely outstanding the current competition.
Nevertheless, when you looked at all the requirements we described above, you won’t be able to solve all of them with only additional modules. Many of your needs are probably too specific to your context to be answered by a standard module. You need something more flexible.
This is usually where specific developments come into play. They help giving the flexibility you can’t reach with simple settings. Sometimes, tremendous achievements can be made through specific developments. If you keep them small and simple, they can fix key issues you may encounter for a reasonable cost.
However, as you probably have many requirements, it is hard to restrict the number and the size of the specific developments. And the more of them you have, the more drawbacks you will encounter: undesirable side effects, high maintenance cost (especially when upgrading your platform) and increasing cost of developments. In addition, as developing in OScript is complex and OScript developers are a scarce resource, it can cost quite a large amount of money to make these developments.
Therefore, what you would like to have is a tool which extends features as standard modules do, but which also has the flexibility of specific developments. This is exactly on this idea that the Module Suite of AnswerModules has been built. It offers in particular two components:
- A scripting engine:
- This engine makes it possible to create scripts which modify the behavior of Content Server (as a specific development would do)
- However, this engine is much more efficient than OScript developments:
- It is using more than 1 500 APIs which makes it possible to reach nearly all Content Server features and in a much easier way than you can do with OScript
- You do not need to restart Content Server to deploy a new script (in contrary to a module installation)
- The scripts are built with Groovy, an open language based on java and with a huge community around the world, which makes it easier to find a developer
- Scripts are supported by the Module Suite and therefore do not modify the core code of Content Server. Therefore, you won’t encounter side effects and you won’t need additional efforts when upgrading your platform: you will only need to install the new version of the Module Suite
- In addition, the scripting engine APIs can be easily extended to communicate with third party systems (creating external APIs to consume information from external systems or offering specific REST APIs to provide specific information to external systems)
- A form framework:
- This framework makes it easy to create modern and beautiful forms, which can be used in multiple situations in Content Server
- You no longer need to do HTML coding to create forms: you only need to drag & drop the fields you want to have and choose how to display them
- Your form is fully responsive design and therefore can be displayed on any devices
- It can be combined with the scripting engine to automate certain actions and to automatically filled some fields
If you use these two components (and some other AnswerModules features I didn’t describe here), you should be able to answer all your business requirements. At Aerow, we have been early adopters of the Module Suite and we strongly believe that AnswerModules is the future of Content Server. It gives you the flexibility that you should have on every enterprise software.
With this module, you can even go further than “just” improving your Content Server. You can even create complete applications, such as a training application, a photo library or a ticketing system. It will probably be not as powerful as a dedicated tool, but it is still possible to create pretty useful applications.
If you want a more concrete view of how far you can go with AnswerModules, you can have a look at the two kickstart applications (a purchase management and a vendor invoice management applications) that AnswerModules have developed. It will give you a better view of what the scripting engine and the form framework are.
If you are interested by what I have described above, you can come on the 9th March at the OpenText Innovation Tour (workshop at 3.35pm). AnswerModules and Aerow will held a session together and we will describe a concrete use case of the Module Suite.
Wrote by Eric Carbonel, Senior Consultant – AEROW