Integrating OpenText Content Server 2010 with SharePoint 2010

By: Bruce Miller, RIMtech Inc.
       www.rimtech.ca
      bruce.miller@rimtech.ca

As we all know, OpenText Content Server 2010 (CS 2010) is mandated as the EDRMS platform for electronic recordkeeping at the Government of Canada. Shared Services Canada (SSC) has developed a more or less standardized implementation of CS 2010, known as GCDocs, which Treasure Board hopes will be rolled out at some larger departments within the next year or so.

Many of these same large departments have also implemented SharePoint 2010 as a platform for collaboration and document production. However, SharePoint cannot be used to manage Government of Canada Records. SharePoint is non-compliant with GC recordkeeping requirements (see this report). CS 2010 is mandated for recordkeeping use, yet SharePoint is increasingly being deployed for collaboration. Departments with both platforms are going to need a way to somehow use CS 2010 to manage the records they produce and store in SharePoint.

Enter OpenText’s new solution called AGA, or Application Governance & Archiving. AGA allows the two platforms to be integrated such that records in SharePoint can be moved (archived) to CS 2010 to be managed as records in a fully compliant recordkeeping environment. AGA is a core component of OpenText`s Better Together strategy for integration with Microsoft products.

AGA is a sophisticated offering that allows a document to be moved from SharePoint to CS 2010 where it can be managed as a record. It provides for manual (what OpenText calls “Interactive”) and Process-driven (what OpenText calls “Automatic”) modes of operation. There are no less than 6 different ways and means of transferring documents to CS 2010, depending on how SharePoint is being used, and whether or not the document is a record.

The product is extremely thoroughly designed and well thought through. Keep in mind that a document is not just a document in a modern EDRMS platform such as SharePoint or CS 2010. A document has security permissions, metadata, and audit data associated with it. Each of the two platforms has a different format and protocol for each of these three critical document elements. Therefore it’s not as simple as it might sound to just “move” a document from one to the other. To their credit, OpenText has taken all of these compatibility differences into account. This can make the integration of the two rather complex at times, due to the platform differences that must be accounted for, which leads to a rather dizzying number of integration permutations that must be handled.

The bottom line is that the tool is sufficiently comprehensive to get the job done. Thanks to AGA there is a way that a department’s SharePoint records can be managed via CS 2010. The job of the Records Manager just got a little more complex and a little trickier for sure, but welcome to the modern world of EDRMS!

Bruce Miller