Proper usage of tools?

I represent a small team of Java developers working in a large company that has been given the responsiblity for supporting the rollout of Documentum 6.5 within the organization. We are slowly getting familiar with the available tools... and there are many.

Could someone validate our understanding so far of building a Documentum project, from a "which tool to use?" perspective:

1. We use Composer to design and build object types, permission sets, and alias sets.

2. We use Process Builder to design and install processes.

3. We use Forms Builder to design and install forms.

4. We use Taskspace to prepare a custom user interface, or at least more customized compared to Webtop.

5. We use Composer to deploy the project to different servers.

Is this how other people are using the tools? I imagine there are multiple ways to use the tools together, but I am hoping we are doing something that is reasonable, and supported by Documentum.

Thanks for any advice,

Ahmed.

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Comments

DCTM_Guru

1,2,3 and 5 look fine. I would change 4 to state the following:

TaskSpace is a highly configurable application framework that is desiged to support transactional operations in conjunction with Forms and Process Builder. Support for customizing TaskSpace is limited.

Webtop is a highly customizable application framework that is the "generic" UI for Documentum. You can almost customize anything in Webtop. However, configuring Webtop UI can be tedious; hence, TaskSpace was developed to address this configurable requirement.

aabdallah

Thanks for the information. Could you share your thoughts on alternatives for building "front-ends" for Documentum applications? If Webtop is the generic alternative, how do teams typically build specific user interfaces?

DCTM_Guru

It all depends on your requirements. If your requirements can be mostly satisfied with Webtop and only requires some customization, you can build multiple "flavors" of webtop and deploy them on the same app server if so desired. If your requirements require to customize Webtop a lot (eg to hide a lot of the features that are provided OOTB or to provide UIs that are not part Webtop), I would consider building app from scratch. The new trend is to build a custom web app and use DFS (Documentum Foundation Services) to make all of the appropriate calls back to the repository.

shailshah

To add to Johnny's response, keep in mind that Webtop and TaskSpace are not the only available front ends . If your application(s) UI/functional requirements are aligned to the other Documentum products that are specialized in nature such as compliance management (DCM), Digital Asset Management (DAM), eCTD( Submissions Manager) etc, then you can choose those and further customize them.You functional requirements can easily rule out or in the use of these specialized front end products (vs. generic). TaskSpace and Forms Builder, in my opinion, sometimes make even simple customizations more difficult if not impossible. You want to carefully evaluate your choices here.

You can also build your front end using WDK framework instead of building it from scratch. WDK framework provides you a set of UI controls and tag libraries that significantly reduce the development time.

While CenterStage is not released yet (D7), it will eventually replace Webtop and you may want to read up on it in order to understand where EMC is going for long term plans. If I am not mistaken, CenterStage is fully developed on top of DFS.

aabdallah

Thank you both for the valuable responses!