Welcome to Kraft Kennedy

On most nights, I manage to go home with an empty inbox. The 50 or so e-mails that I receive during my commute home and into the evening are almost always gone before my head hits the pillow. While I know lots of people who receive more e-mail than I do — I usually get between 250 and 450 messages per day — I manage to maintain a perfectly empty inbox without deleting a single e-mail, without filing a single e-mail, and while retaining the ability to find any e-mail I’ve ever sent or received in a matter of seconds. How do I do it? It’s actually pretty simple.

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SharePoint Designer 2010 allows you to easily create a new edit or display form (as an aspx page) for a list or document library.  You just browse to a list or library in SharePoint Designer, and then click the “New” button next to Forms.  You’re then given the option of what type of form you want, and which content type to use it for.

This works great with lists, as the new form is populated with all of the fields from the content type, and you can easily modify the XSL to choose which fields are displayed, as well as the layout.  However, the form will be a lot more empty if you try this with a document library.  For some reason, the new document library forms include the data view web part for the library, but do not start off with any of the fields included.  But the fix for this is pretty easy.  Just follow the steps below to get the data view web part to include all of the available fields:

1) In Designer, create a new edit form and pick your content type

2) Click the form to open it

3) Click to the right of the “created at” field.  This should show “Data View Tools” in the ribbon.

4) Open the Design ribbon, and check “Sample Data.”  That should be it–that puts all the fields into the form.

After that, you should be able to modify the layout, as well as the fields in the XSL.

Autonomy (HP) recently released WorkSite Server 8.5 SP1 Update 6, with a new enhanced server-side email duplication detection technology.  Previously, the FileSite client would evaluate duplicates based on the MSG_ID value from Exchange.  This often caused problems with forwarded messages, or certain Outlook forms that share a MSG_ID.  Update 6 enables server-side duplicate detection based on the message send date and message subject, in addition to the MSG_ID.   So this now means that forwarded messages are NOT duplicates, and would also be filed – a little something to keep in mind when it comes to expected storage on your file servers and indexers.  More emails will be filed with the new algorithm.

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So you’ve decided to add Enterprise Search to your firm’s ECM arsenal.  You should all be familiar with the many benefits of Enterprise Search:  search consolidation, knowledge management, and quick, global search results, resulting in improved productivity and efficiency of the work staff.  You should also all be familiar with the drawbacks:  cost and complexity.

Let’s leave those drawbacks out of the equation for now, and focus on what should be a benefit:  the ease of finding documents across the enterprise.   How could this be bad, you ask?  The Enterprise Search utilities are designed to respect the security of whatever system the content lives in.   That’s good, right?  Well, what if the documents aren’t secured in the source repository?   Some older systems make it inherently difficult to find documents with the native search interface/engine.  Since it may be difficult to find documents, users start to skip the step of securing documents.   Their thinking is, “Well, no one can find the document anyway, so why do I need to waste 45 seconds and add security to it?”.   These unsecured documents could be financial statements, HR documents, or any other content that should be secured.

Enter Enterprise Search. Once Enterprise Search is introduced, that open level of security would now be apparent to all users of the system.   This could cause headaches in the enterprise, and put a black-mark on the Enterprise Search tool — even if it’s not the Enterprise Search tool’s fault.   This is just one example of the implications of adding new ECM functionalities to an environment.   The security example here can be alleviated by scripting a security update to the source repository prior to the deployment of the Enterprise Search; essentially resolving the issue before it can become a security nightmare.

While I was on vacation, there was some big news in Legal IT: HP announced their purchase of Autonomy for $10.2 Billion in cash. First of all, that’s a lot of cash, and with ATMs allowing a max of only $2,000 cash to be withdrawn per day, it will probably take a while for the deal to finalize.  All kidding aside, this is just another shake-up in the long list of shake-ups along both the iManage as well as PC DOCS/DM/eDOCS lines. Like other major announcements, it will take time to see any real changes in the marketplace. I do wonder though if this will make iManage customers feel smaller, as they are now under an even larger umbrella. I’m not quite sure what to make of it yet, but look forward to finding out more about it at ILTA 2011 in Nashville, TN. Please see our ILTA post for details on where we’ll be and what we’ll be up to at the conference this week!

Workshare just announced the release of Workshare Professional 7.  A quick read through the press release notes that the installation process has been streamlined and is easier to deploy in the enterprise.  This is a welcome improvement, as previous versions required a PHD in Workshare to deploy properly.   Among the enhancements is a feature that is already present in the Workshare Point product for SharePoint.   From the press release:

Another significant new feature in version 7 provides automatic detection and comparison of changes when attachments are sent, modified and returned through email, alerting users directly in Outlook. By identifying changed documents and launching a comparison as modified documents arrive, Workshare Professional 7 improves efficiency, making document collaboration a more seamless process.

I think attorneys will love this feature as it saves clicks and steps.   Additional performance improvements have been made in the Workshare Protect meta-data removal module.  What’s more valuable than an attorney’s time?  Kraft Kennedy is a member of the Workshare Alliance Network.

Depending on the configuration, users are sometimes prompted for credentials when opening Office documents from SharePoint, even when Windows integrated authentication is turned on, and the SharePoint site is in trusted sites or the local intranet zone (and auto logon is enabled).  Often, the user can simply cancel the authentication prompt, and the document will open just fine.  Other files, such as PDFs, also open without a prompt.  The reasons for this are complex, and you can read a good background on how Office opens documents from a web server in this KB article:
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If you’ve worked with legal software at all, you probably know that many of the applications out there were likely started by the stereotypical “two guys in a garage”.  Years go by, and their technology gets bought and sold by bigger and bigger companies. Twenty years later, and the technology is owned by the largest software companies in the world. But keep in mind that a lot of the database schemas and core code functionality are just plain old. The GUI may improve (then again, maybe not), but the wizard behind the curtain is still old and probably just as buggy as any program I could write with my buddy in my garage.

Sometimes the flashy new features and modules that plug into the old code can cause issues. Maybe they are stretching what the product can do. Who knows? Too many times have I seen new releases and service packs get caught in a seemingly long and drawn-out Beta test or QA testing. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad vendors are trying to fully test their software before a general release, but I’ve seen many estimated release dates come and go. Updates get released, then pulled back into QA.  Eventually, things usually work out.

My advice to clients is usually the following:

1. Wait it out a bit. Especially when that major new version or service pack gets released, don’t rush to implement unless absolutely necessary. Give it a few weeks to see if they release a “new patch” to fix issues with the old patch.
2. If you have a development or test environment, try the new release there first and really bang away at it.  If you have the time, perform some tests over a period of a couple weeks to check ongoing stability.
3. Keep an eye on any vendor support forums or social groups on LinkedIn for any feedback from the guinea pigs.

These simple steps could save you a few migraines.

We recently came across some strange issues with virtual machines in a domain, where the SQL and SharePoint Servers were joined to the domain, however they were not authenticating regular domain users correctly.  Domain users could log onto the machine, however the SharePoint people picker, SharePoint managed accounts, and SQL itself could not authenticate anyone except the administrator account.  You could browse to SharePoint locally from the SharePoint box, but could not get past the authentication prompt from any remote boxes.  We also saw the following error in certain places in SharePoint:
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With eDOCS DM 5.3 gaining traction among our clients, I wanted to take this opportunity to share my overall experience with the latest version and the upgrade process.  I recently upgraded a client from DM 5.2.1 CU5 to DM 5.3 Patch 1.  The back-end upgrade went remarkably well, as have all my recent experiences with Open Text eDOCS for the past year or two.   In testing the updated client, I couldn’t be happier that Open Text embraced MSI technology for the installation and deployment of the DM client.  With a simple single command line, I was able to customize a complete client install, without having to run through the DM Extensions Server Setup on the DM  server itself as with previous versions.  The MSI properly upgraded the previous version without any apparent issues or error messages.   Adding the MSP patch to my installation script was also tested without any errors.

In testing our pilot deployment, one issue was apparent.  The ODMA integration between Adobe Acrobat and DM was broken!  I checked the Open Text Knowledge Center on the proper steps to integrate Adobe with DM, and verified that yes, the API file is in place, and yes the PassiveODMA registry value is in place.   Upon opening a support ticket, I was informed that ODMA integration is gone with DM 5.3.  In fact, starting with DM 5.2.1 CU4, Open Text was not including the ODMA integration with Adobe.   That seemed strange, since it was working with our 5.2.1 CU5 client just fine.  Turns out that if the API file and PassiveODMA registry key are in place from a previous installation, it will still work with CU5 and CU6.   However, with 5.3, ODMA integration is no longer in the code, so if you have the API file in place, that DM menu option in Adobe is there but that does absolutely nothing.

In double-checking the release notes for DM 5.3, I found that this integration change was mentioned, but as the 4th footnote on a page — definitely not prominent.  And no mention of this change with 5.2.1 CU4  in the Knowledge Base or in the Application Note titled  “eDOCS DM 5.2.x – How to Successfully Integrate Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader”.

This leads to two valuable lessons for any product integrator:

1. Be sure to read all Release Notes, including footnotes!
2. Before deploying a software upgrade, deploy to a small pilot and test all integrated applications.

Regarding the Adobe integration with DM 5.3, the DM Interceptor is needed.  This is actually documented as an option in the Application Note referenced above, but is a requirement starting with DM 5.3.