Introduction to IBM FileNet Content Manager
IBM FileNet Content Manager (P8 Content Manager) provides full content lifecycle and extensive document management capabilities for digital content. This chapter introduces P8 Content Manager and describes its features and functionality to demonstrate how P8 Content Manager makes an excellent foundation for enterprise content management solutions.
We discuss the following topics:
1.1 Industry challenges and IBM solutions benefits
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) uses technology to simplify and bring consistency to entering, creating, storing, managing, retaining, and deleting information.
ECM technology alone does not ensure that a company follows good document management practices. To be successful, companies must develop good working practices and embed them into the implementation of the ECM technology.
To facilitate this approach, the ECM technology must have the right flexibility and toolset to implement and maintain these practices, and prevent turning your ECM implementation for managing documents and content into a never-ending development and support project. A successful ECM implementation follows step-by-step processes or a building block approach for designing and implementing the desired solution. Building a solid base allows the solution to be expanded to meet additional business needs as they arise.
Figure 1-1 illustrates the types of building blocks that can be included in a fully featured ECM solution. The IBM portfolio of ECM products and solutions provides the building blocks to help organizations implement ECM successfully.
Figure 1-1 ECM implementation
1.1.1 Industry challenges
In the quest for increased efficiency and profitability, organizations strive to incorporate more and more relevant information into their business processes in order to make the right decision at the right time. Corporations want to enable their employees to search, retrieve, and review information in context, to limit exception handling and manual processing, to reduce costs, and to improve service. It is important to have all the information needed and make the right decision that satisfies clients, partners, suppliers, and shareholders:
•Oil and Gas
According to industry experts, the top business challenge facing the Energy Industry today is regulatory compliance. To be compliant in this highly regulated industry, an organization must ensure that all relevant documents are available whenever and wherever required, vital information is archived, and unstructured content, process workflows, and collaborative workflow systems are managed, all within a central repository.
Refining organizations continue to investigate tools that allow for the revision and markup of CAD drawings while integrating with their ECM repository. The ability to search for drawings based on information contained in title blocks and markups is instrumental to engineering operations.
•Insurance
Saddled with IT infrastructures built years ago, health insurers also lack centralized control capabilities and automated processes. Most processes are inefficient, manual, and paper based, which drains profits at an alarming rate. Health insurers must explore new technologies that empower customers with immediate, real-time access to their policies and claim status via the web. They need customer-centric business models that match their customer needs. This is essential for acquiring new customers and for retaining existing customers.
•Finance
Many financial institutions handle their client requests by using paper-driven processes. Replacing the paper with electronic forms and documents and routing the tasks automatically to the user desktop provide more efficient responses to customer needs.
The progression from immature, chaotic document management practices to a mature, well-managed enterprise content management process starts with the understanding of where you are and where you need to be. You need to decide how far and how fast to move, because transitioning an established culture is much harder than delivering technology.
One of the other challenges facing global companies is that there are no common legal requirements and regulations. So, a company that is operating in different countries has to fulfill different obligations. Therefore, gathering all legal requirements is a fundamental step in implementing an ECM solution.
1.1.2 Information lifecycle governance
It used to be that when IT infrastructures were being put in place, the cost of storage was considered inexpensive, so putting in place policies and tools for removing content was a low priority. But with the volume of data being generated today, the cost of storage is no longer trivial, and neither is the task of managing all this content.
In addition to managing how much data is kept, it is also important to categorize the content appropriately so that it can be retrieved easily and quickly.
Information governance is the discipline of managing information according to its legal obligations and its business value to enable the defensible disposal of data, as well as to meet the needs of clients who are using the client to perform their daily tasks.
A formal Information Governance framework establishes chains of responsibility, authority, and communication. It describes the roles of people involved in the production cycle of content, their responsibilities, the ways in which they interact, and the general rules and policies about the production of content.
Electronic information systems are generally more complex than paper information systems. The requirement to manage the system to ensure the integrity, reliability, and authenticity of the information for the long term is not readily apparent.
Good information governance requires specificity and transparency on the legal and regulatory obligations and the business value of information. This relates to the people tasked with actually managing information, and establishes measurement, policy, and control mechanisms to enable people to carry out their roles and responsibilities. Information Governance is an essential part of any ECM strategy and is necessary to realize the full extent of business benefits derivable from a corporation’s information management activities.
1.1.3 Benefits of IBM ECM solutions
The ability to make decisions better and faster is a real competitive advantage that IBM Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions can help provide. The IBM ECM portfolio of products improves workforce effectiveness by enabling organizations to transform their business processes, access and manage all forms of content, secure and control information related to compliance needs, and optimize the infrastructure required to deliver content anywhere at anytime.
IBM ECM helps organizations make quick, smart, and cost-effective decisions, right at the moment that it matters the most.
IBM ECM solutions provide the following benefits:
•Active content
Delivering information that is unified, accurate, and in context with critical business processes and policy management
•Business agility
Providing the right information to the right people at the right time in the right context to enable better decisions faster
•Enterprise compliance
Managing risk and automating compliance with records management, legal discovery, and intelligent content archiving
•Content anywhere
Managing content on any system without requiring content migration
•Pervasive and persuasive
Accessing, collaborating, and influencing business decisions in new ways by making content a first-class source of decision-making insight
1.2 IBM FileNet P8 Platform
The IBM FileNet P8 Platform family of products is part of the IBM ECM product suite. The IBM FileNet P8 Platform includes back-end services, development tools, and applications that address enterprise content and process management requirements.
The IBM FileNet P8 Platform is a unified content, process, and compliance platform that offers maximum flexibility, accelerates application deployment, and lowers the total cost of ownership. It is an integrated platform that provides interoperability to a wide selection of database, operating system, storage, security, and web server environments. It serves as the core content management, security management, and storage management engine for the IBM ECM family of products. It is an integration platform that can be extended by adding additional components as needed and integrating it with other line of business (LOB) applications.
1.2.1 Platform components
The IBM FileNet P8 Platform includes the baseline components for enterprise content management solutions:
•Content Platform Engine
•IBM Content Navigator
•ECM Collaboration Services
•FileNet Content Search Services
•FileNet Content Federation Services
•FileNet Rendition Engine
•FileNet Content Manager Information Center
These components address enterprise content management and are (except for ECM Collaboration Services and FileNet Content Federation Services) described in Chapter 3, “System architecture” on page 37. Some components are included in the base platform offering and some require additional licensing.
All IBM P8 Platform capabilities are inherited and make a foundation for IBM ECM solutions. Additional components can be added to a system to enable additional capabilities.
The IBM P8 Platform capabilities can be leveraged for a wide range of enterprise scalable solutions, including case management, automated content collection using the IBM Content Collectors and Datacap, Image Manager, IBM Enterprise Records, and Information Lifecycle Governance (ILG) portfolio of products and more. Figure 1-2 illustrates the interaction of some of the ECM portfolio of products with P8 Content Manager.
Figure 1-2 Major platform components
1.2.2 Enterprise capabilities
The IBM FileNet P8 Platform family of products provides a variety of enterprise capabilities for organizations, including open and extensible environment, high ingestion and large storage capacity capabilities, and scalable architecture.
Open and extensible
To promote an open and extensible environment, IBM P8 Platform provides APIs for developing custom applications.
The IBM P8 Platform offers Java and .NET APIs that offer objects and methods to handle creating, retrieving, updating, and deleting objects, folders, and documents. Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) and Web Services are also supported.
Content Platform Engine provides an extensible Object Model that includes a set of predefined classes and the ability to create new custom classes.
High ingestion and large storage capacity
Content Platform Engine is designed to handle high volumes of information. Performance studies show that P8 Content Manager can handle both high ingestion rates (millions of documents per hour) and large amounts of stored information (over a billion objects in a single repository).
Scalable architecture
Content Platform Engine achieves excellent performance rates with a scalable architecture, offering both vertical and horizontal scalability solutions.
IBM Content Platform can be farmed (scaled horizontally) or can be scaled vertically by either running multiple instances on a single box or configuring a single instance to use multiple servers.
Multiple servers can be added in load-balanced configurations to handle increasing transaction loads. This architecture makes the Content Platform Engine an ideal candidate for large corporations, government agencies, or any client with large information management requirements.
1.3 IBM FileNet Content Manager
IBM FileNet Content Manager provides full content lifecycle and extensive document management capabilities for digital content.
P8 Content Manager combines document management with readily available workflow and process capabilities to automate and drive content-related tasks and activities. It provides a unique active content capability to proactively move content and content-related business tasks through a business process without requiring human initiation. In addition, P8 Content Manager streamlines document management tasks by providing mature versioning and parent-child capabilities, approval workflows, and integrated publishing support and is designed for large-scale enterprise content management initiatives:
•Content Manager is designed for high volume environments.
•Content Manager is adept at managing active content.
•Content Manager is tightly integrated with the IBM ECM suite of supporting applications.
•Content Manager is a library for electronic content. It can store simple objects, such as documents and images, as well as more complex objects, such as workflows, email streams, and corporate records. It is designed as a central repository for any type of electronic information. Some other types of electronic content include audio files, web content, XML files, rich media, and fax. Content Manager provides a rich set of content management services, tools, built-in features, and programmable functionality that system designers can use to meet enterprise content management goals.
1.3.1 Basic capabilities
P8 Content Manager provides enterprise content management services, tools, built-in features, and programmable functionality that system designers can use to meet enterprise content management goals.
P8 Content Manager by default supports ultimate reusability by creating or reusing shared components. Such architecture incorporates different design patterns and eliminates redundancy, allowing a quicker time to delivery, reducing issues in development and lowering the end maintenance costs.
By using P8 Content Manager, the documents are stored in a repository where they are available to all users based on the security model.
P8 Content Manager offers flexible tools that coordinate the revision, routing, and processing of objects stored in the repository. A powerful feature of P8 Content Manager is the support for active content. Active content is electronic information that changes according to a document lifecycle or business process. Document lifecycle is a feature of P8 Content Manager. It consists of a sequence of steps. Business processes, however, are executed by the IBM Case Foundation (previously known as IBM FileNet Business Process Manager). Business processes typically contain branching logic. In essence, both are a series of steps, with each step representing an event or process that acts on the object content.
P8 Content Manager features event action scripts that can be triggered when objects are created, modified, or deleted in the repository. Event actions can launch workflows or execute Java applications. Events, and the actions that they trigger, are the mechanism that enables active content.
When designing an ECM solution, document retention can be addressed and implemented by using the retention management features, including the sweep framework and event-based retention.
IBM Content Navigator is a ready-to-use, standards-based user interface that delivers intelligence and control of collaborative content across the organization.
1.3.2 Enterprise foundation
P8 Content Manager is a foundational building block for IBM ECM solutions. The tight integration with the IBM P8 Platform components increases operational efficiency by reducing the number of products and vendors across the enterprise.
This foundation can be expanded from basic document management support to enterprise-wide applications by adding additional components and capabilities.
Next, we provide examples of how P8 Content Manager can be used as the foundation for policy document management, invoice processing, and compliance support.
Policy document management
Policy lifecycle management represents one of the common business activities across many organizations. From the creation of policy papers, to their edits, approvals, retrieval, storage, and archiving, policy touches every employee within the organization.
A robust ECM solution can address the challenges associated with policy lifecycle management through the adoption of centralized and standardized processes.
Policy professionals can develop policies by working in a collaborative environment to more effectively execute the tasks involved in policy management. There are a range of common activities that are typically undertaken in the policy development process, including creating a policy document as a draft, and moving it through the typical document revision process for review and approval. The policy document is usually published on the organizational website at the end of the process.
In the policy document management solution:
•The document becomes active content as it moves from state to state according to the document lifecycle.
•A single trusted policy document source with versioning control, standard classification, and reliable search results is established across the organization.
•A role-based access model is established to support secure and efficient policy management publication and access.
•IBM Case Foundation is used to automate the review and publishing processes.
Invoice processing
A major challenge for the account payable process is the ability to process a large number of paper-based invoices, and place them into the system for tracking and control invoice processing.
The solution must enable the processing of invoice transactions using a structured, automated process. This process should secure content associated with each invoice, providing stakeholders with visibility to the process steps. A content management platform integrated with an accounts payable process also enables the continuous improvement of internal business operations over time by managing each payment case, its associated content, and reporting on the efficiency of the business process.
The solution includes the ability to extract invoice data from paper invoice documents during scanning and indexing, applying advanced lookups against business applications and systems of record, and creating an invoice in the Accounts Payable application. A robust document capture solution, such as that provided by Datacap, supports the required high volume ingestion rates. Within the process, the invoice is used to support day-to-day activities, storing electronic copies of the documents as records of evidence.
Users (whether internal or external) are able to perform work from within the data processing application. The content associated with the data systems is stored in the repository.
The solution provides the following capabilities:
•Enables the ingestion of both scanned paper and digital content, whether submitted by internal or external users, and the automatic classification of the content.
•Provides access to the content as an integrated capability of the Accounts Payable interface, ensuring that access to the invoices is seamless to the client.
•Allows you to add and relate additional content to a specific invoice throughout the invoice lifecycle.
•Provides notification to clients if an invoice requires special attention.
Compliance support for insurance claim processing
Claims service is a key differentiator for insurance companies. Claims processing is supported by documents, such as medical assessments, police reports, and estimates. Information is processed and stored in electronic format and available for Claims Adjudicators to view, annotate, and redact.
A content ingestion solution provides the scanning, recognition, and indexing capabilities that support efficiently processing both paper and electronic documents and uploading them into an ECM repository. Content Management support for Electronic Claim File provides an enterprise solution for electronically stored claim information and digital media, which are integrated with the core claims administration application. The Claim Adjudicator can retrieve and present, in a single view, claim and policy documents from different sources.
Corporate retention schedules are applied to all claim data and supporting documents. When the required retention period expires, the electronic claim data can be automatically deleted.
The solution is intended to support the following key business functions:
•A centralized repository for a variety of media types, including email, to support claims adjudication.
•Interactive process for claims processing, including common content services functions, such as adding, searching, and retrieving data.
•User access to claims processing from a single user interface.
•Extensibility to support additional capabilities and capacity.
•Compliance by ensuring all claim data is automatically disposed of based on any corporate or legal retention requirements.
1.4 IBM FileNet P8 and related products
The IBM FileNet P8 family of products is based on P8 Content Manager and the Content Platform Engine. In addition, there are many other IBM ECM offerings that integrate with P8 Content Manager. The products can be grouped into the following categories:
•Content products
Enabling companies to activate content with processes to add value and transform their business.
•Ingestion products
Used to add documents into a repository by copying, moving, or linking to source documents, as well as index and classify the content.
•Process products
Automate and optimize complex processes across the enterprise using effective content and compliance.
•Compliance products
Ensure content is kept as required and deleted when no longer needed.
•Collaboration products
Provide an environment where people can work together to achieve business goals and streamline processes.
1.4.1 Content products
The portfolio of content products that integrate with P8 Content Manager:
•FileNet Image Manager
•IBM Content Federation Services
•IBM Content Search Services
•IBM Content Navigator
•IBM FileNet Integration to Microsoft Office
There are many content products in the IBM ECM portfolio. It is beyond the scope of this book to introduce all of them. However, to help you better understand what these products can do for your corporation, we briefly introduce several of them here.
IBM FileNet Content Federation Services
IBM FileNet Content Federation Services (CFS) enables content stored in different repositories, such as OpenText and Documentum, to be used in P8 Content Manager applications. This capability can be used to give a single access point to content in multiple repositories and to utilize the records management capabilities provided by IBM Enterprise Records. The content can stay in the external repository and, if appropriate, can also be migrated over time into a P8 Content Manager repository.
IBM Content Navigator
IBM Content Navigator is a ready-to-use, open web-based standards user interface that provides a modern user experience for working with all forms of content. It supports all content management use cases, and is configurable to the needs of an organization without requiring a development effort for basic customization.
IBM Content Search Services
IBM Content Search Services (CSS) is a tool for indexing both the content and string metadata of documents to support the use of content-based retrieval.
1.4.2 Ingestion products
The portfolio of ingestion products that integrate with P8 Content Manager:
•IBM Content Collector
•IBM Content Federation Services
•IBM Datacap
To help you better understand what these products can do for your corporation, we briefly introduce two of them here.
IBM Content Collector
IBM Content Collector can be used to ingest content from these sources:
•Email servers
•File shares
•Microsoft Sharepoint servers
•SAP
Based on the configuration of the connector to the ingestion source, IBM Content Collector, in addition to adding the content to a P8 Content Manager repository, also performs other tasks:
•Creating stubs to the document in a manner transparent to existing client applications
•Declaring content as records
•Deduplicating content, which is especially important for email attachments
IBM Datacap
IBM Datacap is a scanning and indexing solution that is integrated with Content Platform Engine. This product features a complete suite of document indexing capabilities, including automated document identification and text recognition. Datacap automates the input of data from documents to reduce cost and accelerate document process efficiencies.
1.4.3 Process products
The portfolio of process products that integrate with P8 Content Manager:
•IBM Case Analyzer
•IBM Case Manager
•IBM Forms
•IBM Case Foundation
To help you better understand what these products can do for your corporation, we briefly introduce them here.
IBM Case Analyzer
IBM Case Analyzer can analyze, monitor, and report information at both the process level and case level. It allows you to identify dynamic trends and monitor the case processing in real time. The captured data can be used by tools, such as IBM Cognos® Real Time Monitor.
IBM Case Manager
IBM Case Manager is a platform for case management with advanced capabilities for rules, events collaboration, social software, and analytics. The Case Manager functionality and user interfaces allow business analysts to easily design and build case solutions.
IBM Forms
IBM Forms provides an electronic alternative to paper forms. With an easy to use visual design environment, the electronic forms support easy data entry, can be used to perform calculations, and can be integrated into business processes.
IBM Case Foundation
IBM Case Foundation (previously known as IBM FileNet Business Process Manager) is tightly integrated with P8 Content Manager to provide tools for defining, optimizing, and processing business processes.
1.4.4 Compliance products
The portfolio of compliance products that integrate with P8 Content Manager:
•IBM Content Analytics
•IBM Content Classification
•IBM eDiscovery Manager and eDiscovery Analyzer
•IBM Enterprise Records
•IBM FileNet Compliance Framework
•IBM Global Retention Policy and Schedule Management
To help you better understand what these products can do for your corporation, we briefly introduce a few of them here.
IBM Content Analytics
IBM Content Analytics is an advanced analytics platform that enables better decision making from the enterprise content regardless of the source or format. Content Analytics solutions can understand the meaning and context of human language and rapidly process information to improve knowledge-driven search and surface new insights from your enterprise content.
IBM Content Classification
IBM Content Classification categorizes and organizes content by combining multiple methods of context-sensitive analysis. Content Classification enables clients to focus on higher-level activities by consistently and accurately automating content-centric categorization decisions.
IBM eDiscovery tools
IBM eDiscovery Manager and IBM eDiscovery Analyzer focus on the needs of collecting and processing unstructured data for legal discovery, automating applying legal holds and collections processes by holding data in place, and collecting evidence from data repositories.
The tools automate the identification of unstructured data by searching for relevant data by keyword or date-range, as well as archive and deduplicate email and attachments, and dynamically classify and declare records of collected emails through integration with IBM Enterprise Records.
eDiscovery Analyzer enables legal professionals to analyze, sort, and cull evidence immediately after it has been collected rather than by performing manual document reviews.
IBM Enterprise Records
IBM Enterprise Records is a complete application that securely manages the declaration, classification, security and access, auditing and monitoring, authenticity, preservation, and destruction of electronic and physical records.
IBM Enterprise Records utilizes unique “Zero Click” technology to reduce the burden and costs associated with proper management of an organization’s records and integrates directly with Content Platform Engine to allow repository objects to be managed as records.
Use IBM Enterprise Records with the other compliance, process, and ingestion tools to provide an end-to-end records management solution that covers the capture, management, and destruction of records.
IBM Global Retention Policy and Schedule Management
IBM Global Retention Policy and Schedule Management is a single, cohesive retention management system with natively integrated workflows and analytics for information governance stakeholders.
1.4.5 Collaboration products
The portfolio of collaboration products that integrate with P8 Content Manager includes ECM Collaboration Services.
IBM Connections (formerly Lotus® Connections) and IBM ECM Collaboration Services provide collaborative authoring and sharing of business content. In particular, a social collaboration environment unlocks enterprise content and makes it accessible across the corporation. Content can be selectively placed into the ECM repository for safekeeping. There is support for many of the typical social collaboration features, such as comments, tagging, and download counters.
1.5 Conclusion
The unified content and process architecture of Content Platform Engine provides inherent capabilities to integrate content with applications to provide integrated support for data transactions and to coordinate business processes.
IBM core ECM provides the foundation for delivering robust solutions across the enterprise.
In the next chapter, we provide detailed examples illustrating the use of P8 Content Manager as part of an ECM solution.
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