Presently CapGemini India is looking for experienced OpenText / LiveLink developer to work with us.

Please contact me at sarang.brahme@capgemini.com for further information.

I came to a point where i needed to update an string attribute, attached to a node’s category in Livelink 9.7.1

The tricky part was to find out,  for updateing the string value you need to pass LAPI_ATTRIBUTES.ATTR_DATAVALUES

in the AttrSetValues code.

The following example fetches the category from a given node, and updates a string attribute, called Description. You only need to modify the values.

import com.opentext.api.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class CategoryTest
{
	private static String Server = "localhost";
	private static int Port = 2099;
	private static String DFT = "";
	private static String User = "Admin";
	private static String Pass = "livelink";
	private static int ObjectID = 18614;
	private static String CategoryName = "Document Type";
	private static String AttributeName = "Description";
	private static String AttributeValue = "This is a new Description";

	public static void main(final String[] args)
	{
		/*LAPI Vars*/
		LLSession session = new LLSession(Server, Port, DFT, User, Pass);
		LAPI_DOCUMENTS doc = new LAPI_DOCUMENTS(session);

		LAPI_ATTRIBUTES attr = new LAPI_ATTRIBUTES(session);

		// catID will hold the info of the category, we work on (id, version)
		LLValue catID = (new LLValue()).setAssocNotSet();
		// catVersion will contain the category information and attributes
		LLValue catVersion = new LLValue();

		LLValue objID = (new LLValue()).setAssocNotSet();
		objID.add("ID", ObjectID);
		//objID.add("Version", 1);

		LLValue catList = (new LLValue()).setAssocNotSet();
		if (doc.ListObjectCategoryIDs(objID, catList) != 0)
		{
			System.out.println("ListObjectCategoryIDs Failed.");
			return;
		}
		else
			System.out.println("Retrieved Category Listing.");

		// get get the category's id which was attached to the document
		// by its name and add it to the catID object
		for (int i = 0; i < catList.size(); i++)
		{
			if ((catList.toValue(i).toString("DisplayName")).compareTo(CategoryName) == 0)
			{
				System.out.println("Got category id " + catList.toValue(0).toInteger("ID"));
				catID = catList.toValue(0);
				//catID.add("Version", 1);
			}
		}

		if (doc.GetObjectAttributesEx(objID, catID, catVersion) != 0)
		{
			System.out.println("GetObjectAttributesEx Failed.");
			return;
		}
		else
			System.out.println("Retreived objects cetagory version");

		// modify the attribute values we fetched from the node
		LLValue attrValues = new LLValue().setList();
		attrValues.add(AttributeValue);

		if (attr.AttrSetValues(catVersion, AttributeName, LAPI_ATTRIBUTES.ATTR_DATAVALUES, null, attrValues) != 0)
		{
			System.out.println("attr.AttrSetValues Failed.");
			return;
		}
		else
			System.out.println("Retrieved Category Version.");

		// store the modified category back to the node
		if (doc.SetObjectAttributesEx(objID, catVersion) != 0)
		{
			System.out.println("SetObjectAttributesEx Failed.");
			return;
		}
		else
			System.out.println("Wrote objects category version");
	}
}

If you don’t know about ILINX Capture, you should.

ILINX Capture is an amazing Web-based application that allows you to capture information any place, any time. This flexible product is designed to streamline business processes, and allow users to index quickly and accurately. ILINX Capture also costs significantly less than traditional scanning solutions, and because it’s browser-based, users can access it from anywhere in the world.

The benefits ILINX Capture offers are incomparable to other traditional capture platforms. ILINX Capture is also easy to deploy, taking only about a minute per desktop. This thin-client platform is also easy to maintain. Other benefits include:

• Minimal training
• Low total cost of ownership
• No page count licensing
• Supports distributed and centralized environments
• Improves accuracy of information delivered
• Image-enables line-of-business applications
• Configurable based on the user needs

ILINX Capture is also compatible with different ECM systems. The application can release information to your current line-of-business application, but i will also work with a variety of Enterprise Content Management systems, including:

• Microsoft SharePoint
• EMC – Documentum
• Oracle UCM and IPM
• OpenText – LiveLink
• IBM Content Manager
• FileNET P8 and Image Services
• It can also complement existing Input Accel or Kofax Capture implementations

To learn more about ILINX Capture, visit the ILINX Capture Web site. To learn about the entire line of ILINX products, visit the ILINX section of our Web site.

ImageSource will also be showing ILINX Capture at our annual NEXUS conference. To learn more about the event, or to register, visit www.NexusECM.com.

Kristina Parma
Corporate Communications Manager
ImageSource, Inc.

Most enterprise-class Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) systems can be expensive, cumbersome or even overkill for many organizations. Many don’t benefit from all the ELN’s features , and some never deploy and use the ELNs they have purchased because they do not meet their needs.

Before any organization invests in a commercial ELN, we recommend they take a step back. Consider how you can most cost-effectively and efficiently enable your researchers and scientists to focus on getting world-class products and ideas to market faster in a collaborative, workflow-friendly environment, with built-in intellectual property protection.

Chances are, if your organization already has an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system like Microsoft SharePoint or Open Text Livelink, an email system, such as Microsoft Exchange, a database application like Oracle or SQL Server, and Surety’s AbsoluteProof Data Integrity Protection service, you have all of the core components to meet the most common objectives of an ELN, without the overhead, costs and complexity of deploying yet another enterprise-class system.

By purchasing a commercial ELN application, you will spend as much, if not more money tailoring it to fit your needs and with integration. Why not leverage your existing investments in software and applications you already have deployed today and easily “customize” an ELN that meets your EXACT needs, and save time, money and resources as a result?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Learn by doing and write about the experiences… in a nutshell, that’s what you will find here.

I am planning to continue growing my knowledge of the Open Text Livelink, Microsoft SharePoint, and NextDocs products by creating a suite of small productivity and utility applications.  While doing so, I’ll be writing about the projects as they progress and sharing some learned best practices on subjects like OScript, LAPI, .NET, C#/++, and Java as they relate to Livelink, SharePoint, & NextDocs development and integration.  I have yet to determine whether I will market/sell these apps as of yet.

I will also be working on a full suite of Qualification Templates that can be used as a ‘basic’ starting point for Windows Server (2003/2008), SharePoint, Livelink, and NextDocs installations.  My plan is to primarily work on IQ/OQ templates to install/test each product in a controlled methodical fashion using industry best practice ‘defaults’.  I will also be producing a full suite of project documentation for the previously mentioned productivity/utility apps and will therefore be creating a set of blank ‘generic’ SDLC templates (URS/FRS/DS/IQ/OQ). Both blank and basic install templates will be made available at a reasonable cost.

Being a geek, I fix a lot of computers (both PC and Mac).  I don’t know what it is, people just flock to me when it comes to anti-spyware or virus help, hard-disk defrags, PC set-up/purchase, and the list goes on… Each request usually starts off like one that I have heard before, but almost all end up with researching some oddity I have yet to see and thus increasing subject matter knowledge.  I’ll be writing about those oddities along with some best practices and tools as they relate to computer repair/maintenance.

Having invested in powerful enterprise content management systems from Opentext and Microsoft, I would really like to exploit the benefits of capturing  and using quality ‘meta’ data and security classifications on all the documents that are stored in the content libraries.

We are having a close look at integrating SharePoint with Livelink to enable federated searching, simple archiving and records management compliance. The issues we have are what meta data is the most valuable to capture when saving documents, and how to make the most from information security classifications (public, internal, private & confidential).

How has your company solved the issues of enforcing the capture of quality meta data on your enterprise content? Have the benefits from information security classification been realised?

Look around this place to keep an eye out about Livelink…

Hey folks,

Just a quick post to let you know that the issue about permissions lost during copy operations, which I talked about previously,  has been bypassed.

As I told you, we have here the workflow extension module installed. And once I received a version updated to be 9.7.1 compatible, I designed a workflow that simply copy a folder in a livelink other folder. Remember that you have an option with WF extension where you can choose to keep source permissions.

Now, I will improve the Workflow to automatically name the copy folder following attributes set by WF initiator. It’s another possibility given by workflow extension module.

To write this entry as it forced me to the owners of a link, arguing that the “to pick on”: / 

    I decided to check on exactly how many pages, which appear like my “positioning” links in the system of fixed exchange links, to “empty” taking place only punkty.Jak it is important that the system effectively wyłapywał any fraud unless you do not need anyone to translate. 

      I checked three systems, which have an active account, these are two Polish systems LiveLink, LinkMe and the most popular in the world system of permanent links – Link Vault.

      At this point, mention that I am not a supporter of the parties only by positioning systems. In my opinion they should be useful only as a supplement to what we do. As we know it is different, some are “pozycjonerzy” for which it is the only way of obtaining and links to them is primarily governed by the text, but not only. 

      Testing was done in two stages. 

First, check the script, written specially for this purpose. The script looks in the page address of the site, which is a link that should be there, do not anchor because it could obscure the result. 

The script report as “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows NT) with timeout set to 30 seconds. 

      The second step is to check the manual page labeled as “no link”. 

  For parties that do not open or give 404, 500 or script errors contained therein, checked a copy of Google, if I did not find a copy of sub-assumed that the link is there. 

  Unfortunately, after counting all noticed that he committed a small mistake does not zapisałem the number of pages on which I was not able to determine “is / is not” but such cases were not many, bodajże at 3-5 for the Polish system and 1 for LV . 

LiveLink 

      Reviewed 264 pages, I did not find a link to the 55 units at a 20.83% – not enough is not it? 

For most of the system simply was not the links, I saw a few pages from a 301 redirect from the sub, which was listed on the homepage. Several sub did not exist, despite the fact that the party work and its structure has not changed, most were catalogs, where entry has been removed, so subpage disappeared. 

But, interestingly, I found a flower, which is parked domain, with a copy indicating that this state has been going on since the week.

I think that this system powianiem spider to catch a long time already. 

      Do not hide that, for the first system of checking the action moved almost two months ago, unfortunately, despite the declaration by the detectives’ side have not been removed, and a relatively large amount of re-wyłapana was not as Issuing links. 

LinkMe 

      Reviewed 210 pages, I did not find a link to the 28 pieces which gives 13.33%. As for the% is already a better situation, spider system is a little more effective than the LiveLink. 

     Here, in the same way most simply was not “my” link, were non-existent and the sub-301 Was not without a “flower”, which turned out to be zbanowana domain on Google.

Seo through ban domains … hmmS. 

   Unfortunately I’m not able to determine when it was, so there is a chance that np days sooner and bot that system did not have time to throw away. 

Link Vault 

      Reviewed 226 pages, I did not find a link to the 12 pieces which gives 5.31%. 

      As you can see in this system loses the least points to the “empty links”, the positioning of the system will be more effective. 

      The fact is that I thought that this system will be less of these pages. 

I did not find here any interesting links on the case and just did not happen. 

      While reviewing these systems, I established that the upper limit of tolerance, missing links, to 3-5%. I bet too that I am not an isolated case, because I think that looking at the system as a whole, the percentages, not much has changed. 

Unfortunately, none of the systems in this limit does not fit. 

LV was a close as you can see, the system is control from the best developed. 

     Percentages are unfortunately Polish systems for high-owners Administrators gentlemen! 

13.33% is already appalling, but 20.83% is already a nightmare. 

For every 1,000 links 133szt. or 208szt. simply does not exist. The worst is that these quantities, often allow for the positioning of the next phrase, or the strengthening of the back-end. 

      One, a plus for the LiveLink is to export links to the pdf. Really makes it easy to automatically check for it in LinkMe, I have the impression that, after dividing the list 10pcs. on the sub is deliberate action to impede verification. Copy these links took me several minutes if I wanted to check in 2000 to probably zniechęciłbym quickly. Maybe I would have done to time but not cyclical. 

Unfortunately, LV is not better than LinkMe in this respect, the fact that I’ve created a list faster, but only through the Firefox extension “Web Developer” + cleaning with unnecessary things. 

     At the end I would like to add that it does not assess the effectiveness of these systems in terms of positioning. The fact is, however, that if the number of pages that do not emit links were lower to those systems would be even more effective. 

      I encourage everyone to independently verify their mailing lists, and to report this to the systems, will certainly contribute to the increase in the value of your points.

Many organisations that use Livelink get kind of nervous when I mention a specific problem can be solved by developing a custom Livelink module in OScript. And of course, they are right to have some concerns. (Over-) customization is a risk for your Livelink (or any other!) system. A heavily customised system will be more difficult to support and to upgrade.

This is absolutely true, but what is the alternative? An enterprise-wide system such as Livelink will, out of the box, never cover all functionality that is required by every department/process/user in your system. So what are you going to do? Tell your users to work in a different (less-effective?) way? Change their business processes because Livelink doesn’t support theirs? Or perhaps buy a standard add-on module from Open Text or a third party? This last one may seem like a good idea, but being a standard module, it is generic in nature and will most likely still not solve your specific business needs completely.

So perhaps we should consider customisations after all… Let’s take a closer look at what the fears and risks really are, and how they can be managed. Most heard fears is that a new, custom Livelink module might be hard to maintain and upgrade and could have a bad influence on performance…

It´s not that scary

One general fear that I want to take away first, is the fear of the unknown. The fear that this scary, obscure customization will make changes everywhere to the core system and that you will from then on always be dependent on one of these hard to find, expensive OScript developers to keep your system alive.

Specifically when talking about maintenance and upgrade problems, it is important to realise that a custom module is not at all that exotic. What clients typically don’t know, is that Livelink’s modular architecture, makes it possible to customise the system in a good way. It’s not the case that Livelink itself is a big, robust, single system and that any customisation is just an add-on that hacks into this big system. The functionality of Livelink itself is made up from separate modules. Technically, there is no real difference between Livelink’s own ‘Discussions’ module and a custom module.

Even when you need to modify standard functionality, Livelink’s approach of orphaning and callbacks gives you the possibility to make your changes in a separate module, without modifying the original code. Impact is typically low; the customisation can be undone by simply uninstalling the module (assuming no database modifications have been made).

Document your fears

For a client it is important to identify the risks or concerns you have and then make sure they are part of the requirements specification and the design documents. Too often I see that even though some fears or doubts exist, the requirements are only aimed at the functionality of the application. The non-functional requirements such as maintainability, reliability, performance, etc, are too often forgotten in the requirements specifications, or not seriously dealt with in the functional and technical design documents. A lot more non-functional requirements (or ‘quality attributes’) exist that you may want to include in your specification document. For example, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirements or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_System_Quality_Attributes.

Code quality is important

Still, sometimes it will be necessary to make changes that go beyond the standard options that Livelink provides. If this is the case, it is up to the developer to clearly document where this happens (and up to the client to demand such documentation from the developer). I always provide a standardised ‘Quality Assurance’ form with any customization I make. This form lists important information such as database schema changes (including uninstall behavior), overridden/patched features, mapped html files, list of error messages, etc. Such details have proven to be very valuable for the system administrators.

Support contracts

A support contract with the system integrator can lower the risk even further. This could ensure you will have no compatibility problems in the future. Still, it may complicate things when an issue arises that cannot directly be connected to the customisation. Who will be responsible for doing the support? The best solution would be to have the customisation certified by Open Text and then be included in the existing OT support contract.

To sum it up. A custom Livelink module does not need to be that scary. It can be an effective (and perhaps the only) way to optimise your system with improved usability and the ability to handle your specific business needs in the best way possible.

A lot of Livelink implementations are not 100% successful. Typically, an unsuccessful implementation results in either an ECM system not being used at all, or a system used in such a way that your users (and your content) are out of control. The first one, is the one I see the most.

Nowadays there is a lot of focus on the change management aspect of an ECM project. This is extremely important when looking at user acceptance, but my thoughts are on the system itself. Many organisations roll-out a very basic system and plan to add more features later on. However, by that time, a lot of damage has been done. On such a limited system, it is very hard to convince end users why this system is soo much better than the network shares they were using before, as most arguments seem to benefit the organisation itself, but not the end-user directly.

So here are the 10 things you should have in place before you roll out your Livelink system (in no particular order by the way). Without these, it will be more difficult to win the hearts of your users.

1. Directory Services
   No discussion possible. You need single sign on from the start!
2. Office and e-mail integration
   Livelink will be the central storage for the content your users create, so make it easy for them to add content to the system.
3. Explorer integration
   For the same reason as #2, your users will need either Livelink Explorer or WebDav (or a combination)
4. e-Link
   E-mail enabling your system greatly enhances productivity, but perhaps more important, your users will love it.
5. Workflow
   Workflow is often not implemented in ‘phase 1′ of the ECM roll-out. However, workflow is a great way to get things into your system in an organised way. You users will quickly see the benefits of the ECM system compared to a fileshare ’system’.
6. WebForms
   Even if you’re not using them for a business purpose at the start of your Livelink roll-out, you can create one that your users can use to request access to specific areas or functionality of the Livelink system itself. This is just another way of giving your users something extra, something they didn’t have before.
7. WebReports
   WebReports can be used to make your LiveReports more attractive, and once you start using them, you will find out many, many more uses for them. WebReports can also be used turn your Enterprise Workspace into an attractive dynamic homepage.
8. Appearances and Customviews.
   Add some corporate branding to your Livelink pages using Appearances and spend some time creating attractive customviews for the main folders in your Livelink system. Add a few lines indicating the purpose of the folder and add an icon or small image to make it more attractive.
9. Object Importer
   You don’t want to start with an empty system. You will have many documents to bulk-load from existing systems. Object Importer is the perfect tool for this. Make sure you have some Excel templates ready which can be used to generate the XML you need easily.
10. A good viewer
    The ‘View as webpage’ option is simply not that good. A viewer like Brava can be a nice (but expensive) replacement with a lot of additional options you may use later on (markups, limiting downloading/printing of classified documents). It especially becomes a ‘must have’ when you have engineering drawings in your system.

Hi, welcome to my ‘Livelink thoughts’ blog. I’ll be posting my thoughts on Livelink related matters here from now on.

But first, let me tell you who I am. My name is Rick Breemer, born in 1976, living in Dordrecht, the Netherlands. I have been working with Open Text Livelink since 2000. I have specialised in Livelink software (OScript) development for Open Text’s flagship product Livelink Enterprise Server. Over the years I have worked with many different Open Text products and have played many different roles in a variety of client environments.

From this experience I will be posting my thoughts on approaches, tools and techniques that I believe are most successful. My target audience? I guess anyone who is interested in Livelink!

LiveLink has decided to put the Fitna video back on their site, and have released this message:

On the 28th of March LiveLeak.com was left with no other choice but to remove the film “fitna” from our servers following serious threats to our staff and their families. Since that time we have worked constantly on upgrading all security measures thus offering better protection for our staff and families. With these measures in place we have decided to once more make this video live on our site. We will not be pressured into censoring material which is legal and within our rules. We apologise for the removal and the delay in getting it back, but when you run a website you don’t consider that some people would be insecure enough to threaten our lives simply because they do not like the content of a video we neither produced nor endorsed but merely hosted.