A Different Perspective on How ECM Can Impact Workplaces

I recently was part of a team tasked with working on site to observe a client’s work process to determine what improvements could be made on this clients Process /Imaging system reduce end user pain points, help eliminate unnecessary redundant actions, and ways to streamline the workflow. 

I don’t want to name the client directly, but I can say that the client that we are working with is a government agency that provides direct services to its citizens, and at this time they are flooded with citizen requests for services.  Some of these requests are complex and require several different workers to evaluate the requests.  Also they are on strict time lines in which to process these requests.

In working with both end users and supervisors, we were able to gather enough information and devise several modifications that can be implemented on their system for an immediate and positive effect.  One of the most intriguing parts of working on this project was that growing up both of my parents worked for this agency.  My mother was even doing the same type of work that we were looking to help streamline, but back in the early 1980’s.  I recall the difficulty that this type of work entails and the amount of time it requires to do properly.  Growing up and seeing how this agency use to have to perform their normal business duties gave me what I feel is a unique perspective on how huge of an impact implementing an imaging and business workflow system had on this agency.

While I was growing up, I recall the office that my parents worked in as being filled with filing cabinets, some of these cabinets always seemed to have people filing and finding documents required for request processing.  If a request made to the agency spanned several regions or required several different departments in the agency to evaluate, there was a ton of lost time in sending documents back and forth.  Plus there was also the risk of misplacing or misfiling documents.

A central image repository, with a well structured indexing scheme, for documents drastically reduces the time in accessing documents and also provides a secure location for document storage.  With the addition of email, requests and the accompanying documents and almost instantly be transferred between the workers required for request processing.  I could go on and on about how this type of system can positively impact a business and reduce costs, but there are already volumes of documentation out there to look through.

I’ve been working with content management and business process systems for a while now, but this was the one moment that the overall impact that this type of system can have really hit home.  There was also a fair bit of gratification in the overall effect that helping implement this type of system with a client that directly touches so many lives.

Random McParks
Support Engineer
ImageSource Inc.

  

How To Perform Basic Web Troubleshooting for IPM Web

Web troubleshooting can be difficult and searching through Oracle Metalink to get information can be even worse.   I found this record in the Oracle Archives and thought it may help out other Acorde/Stellent/Oracle IPM/UCM users.  The following is a general guide for troubleshooting issues with the IPM Web service.  Hopefully reviewing the installation checklist and going through this troubleshooting guide will resolve most configuration issues with the web service.

Solution

Installation Phase

This phase encompasses all steps outlined in the install doc. If problems occur during or immediately following the installation, please review these steps:

1. How was the installation done?

At the console or through terminal services?

Terminal services has been known to cause serious issues in our installation of the web. It appears that when the install is done in this way, some files are not registered properly. Typically, you will see errors pointing to COM (login errors, plugin errors, etc.).

2. Were all the installation steps followed?

Check permissions, and verify that objects under the IBPMWeb and IBPMData folder all have the correct permissions. Reset all child objects under IBPMWeb and IBPMData. Make sure the correct web extensions are enabled.

3. Has the current problem been happening since the system was installed?

If yes, then you may need to review the install documentation.

4. Check the HKLM/Software/Optika/TRANSPORT/MANAGER_ADDRS

Make sure it points to the actual Request Broker machine (either the hostname or IP address). Also make sure the webserver can ping that address or hostname.

5. Is there a client or other services installed on the webserver?

If so, please understand that this is not a recommended configuration. In the event it is unavoidable, make sure that the services, (client and web) are all installed into the same location. For IPM web, the DLLs should be installed into C:\Program Files\Stellent\IBPM.

Startup Phase

This phase encompasses the process after installation or after an IISRESET.

1. Do the clients get the login screen?

If not, then we’re failing prior to getting all the ASP\DLLs loaded. Typically this points to either a permissions issue or a corruption in the IBPMWeb\OTInfrastructure\AcordeObjectHeaders folder. Delete all the files in that folder and do an IISRESET from a command prompt.

2. Can the user successfully login?

If not, this means that we are not getting a COM connection open to validate the user. Typically we will see a 29515 error appear stating we were not able to reach a service. In this case look at the permissions on the HKLM\Software\Optika registry key. Another item to look at is to make sure that if for some reason we have a client on the webserver that it is installed into the same folder as the IBPMWeb. Installing elsewhere will cause the web problems when it goes to register DLLs.

3. Is the error in the workcenter or elsewhere?

If after login we see an error on the workcenter, this points to an issue with the AcordeObjectHeaders folder. Rebuild that directory.

If the error happens in another window or frame then we’ll need to investigate those individually.

4. Is the client machine following a shortcut that points to a file below IBPMWeb?

In the past we have seen issues where a client will follow a shortcut that they created when at the login screen of the IPM Web. Doing so causes certain startup processes to be bypassed and can cause problems later because they may be using outdated connection information or other bad data that can cause varied problems.

Post Startup Phase

This phase encompasses any issues that occur after a successful installation and login. These errors typically come from problems with COM or from the connection to the backend servers. If these errors occur after an upgrade to the OS then check to make sure that any firewall or antivirus changes have been deactivated temporarily until we can determine if one of them is the cause.

Plug-in related Problems

For issues related to the plugin, look at the following:

1. Does the Messenger virtual directory contain an ISAPIMsgr.dll?

If not, then the Messenger virtual directory is pointed to the wrong location. Delete and re-create the Messenger virtual directory and point it at C:\Program Files\Stellent\IBPM

2. Does IUSR/IWAM have full control to the IBPMData folder?

If not, correct the security settings and then reset all child objects on that directory.

3. Are the users accessing the web with the hostname or IP address?

If they are using the hostname, you may want to adjust the Web Settings so that it uses hostname over IP (Login with a Web Administrator, click Administration -> Choose Web Settings -> Change the first section to use hostname and specify hostname.domain.com in the text box->Save the settings.)

4. Is there a proxy between the clients and the webserver?

If so, use the explanation for #3 and change the setting to hostname.

5. Are we seeing a *.opt file get created in the IBPMData\IBPMSessionData\<sessionid> folder?

If so, is the file larger than 4k? If so, open the file in a test editor and see what the message is. If it is larger than 4k we can assume that the images are getting to the webserver from export. This would indicate an issue with the plugin loading the image from IBPMData.

6. Check the IIS log and see if ISAPIMsgr.dll is listed as being accessed.

The log can be found at C:\Windows(orWINNT)\System32\LogFiles\W3SVC(number of website)\ and will be named after the date in which it was created. This file is helpful in troubleshooting different problems when you need to see if certain items are being requested from the web server.

How to do a complete uninstall of the IPM Web:

1. Use Add/Remove Programs to uninstall the web

2. Delete the Program Files\Stellent folder

3. Open Regedit and delete HKLM\Software\Optika and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Optika

4. Remove the entries in the IIS Administrator for IBPMWeb, IBPMData and Messenger virtual Directories.

When all else fails…

o When all else fails, get another machine and install the web on it temporarily. Does it exhibit the same issues?

o Was the web installed via Terminal Services? If so, re-install from the console.

o Was the IPMWeb uninstalled and re-installed, or just updated over the older version?

o Was the web installed over a network share? If so, try installing from the CDROM.

If you are still unable to resolve the issue, get the following information:

1. What OS version and service pack does the webserver have installed?

2. Does the webserver also have other applications installed (besides IBPMWeb) and are they running under the same website?

3. What version of IBPMWeb are they installing/using and does that version match the backend IPM servers?

4. Is the customer using custom web applications? Were these recently implemented or altered?

5. Does the customer have Antivirus scanning the IBPMWeb and IBPMData folders? If so, have them exclude these directories for the real time scan.

6. What version of IE is installed on the clients?

7. What version of the J2RE is installed on the clients?

8. How many users are accessing the IBPMWeb at any given time?

9. How much RAM is installed, and how fast are the CPUs along with how machine CPUs are present.

10. Enable IBPMWeb logging. Login into the web with a user which has been granted the Web Administrator Policy; Click Administration; Choose Web Defaults; Check m_AcordeWebLogging; Save, and do an IISRESET. A log will be produced at the root of C drive called AcordeWeb<date>.log. After the error is reproduced and a log is created, turn web logging back off because logging is not thread safe. Supply this log to ImageSource tech support and it will be analyzed for it any info it can provide.

Leigh Woody
Program Manager
ImageSource, Inc.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM): Best Practices for Backfile Conversion

The 2 main aspects of Backfile Conversion are Security and Quality.  Security within the document scanning process is tracking and maintaining records for each document through the workflow.  If a conversion workflow is tracked and accounted for efficiently, a quality product will be the result. 

In addition to maintaining records of documents it is not uncommon that someone will want to view one of the documents that are in the workflow.  If an itemized inventory list (tracking log) was created at the beginning of the conversion workflow and an entry to the tracking log was made every time the document was processed, it should take minutes to locate where the document is and provide either the hard copy or the imaged copy of that document for the individual looking for the document.

The conversion workflow process usually consists of incoming inventory, preparation of documents for scanning, scanning of documents, indexing, releasing of images into the Document Management System and outgoing inventory.  When an entry is made to the tracking log, the name and date should be included in the entry.  This will assign that technician the responsibility of the document during this stage in the workflow.  The goal with assigning responsibility is to add incentive for the technician to make sure the document is imaged clearly and indexed accurately.  Accountability ensures quality of work being produced.

Through the use of a tracking log documents are secure in that they know where they are at all times.  Technicians are held accountable for their work. 

 

Jeff Martin

Conversion Services Project Coordinator

ImageSource, Inc.

  

Monitoring Server Performance

Does your ECM server seem to have performance related issues?  Are requests to your ECM software taking longer than normal?  If so then you may have a few choices:

• You can always add some extra physical ram, this may help but may not get you to the root of the problem.
• You could maybe add a processor or two and hope for the best, or you can figure out why your ECM server is running so slowly. 

There are several different things that can cause ECM system performance degradation.  In this article we will explain how you can use Performance Monitor aka “PerfMon” a Microsoft Windows built in diagnostic tool to help determine the cause of your ECM server’s bottle neck.

As with any other diagnostic tool Performance Monitor is a running process and like any other process, Performance Monitor may consume things like CPU cycles, system memory, and potentially hard disk resources.  This will slightly lower the amount of available system resources reported by Performance Monitor then when performance monitor is not running.  Even with that Performance Monitor is still accurate enough that it can be used to help IT staff determine system bottle necks that are causing performance related issues.

When running Performance Monitor we recommend turning off all of the default counters.  This will allow you to add the counters and attributes that we are going to discuss below.

• % Processor Time
  • This counter will show you what percentage of the available CPU cycles that are being consumed by the system. For example if the % Processor Time counter reads 40, then the CPU is working at 40% capacity.  If your processor is exceeding 65% capacity then this will be a problem area.
• % Disk Time
  • This counter’s average value should be as low as possible. An average value of 70% or above indicates that the hard disk can’t keep up.  Adding more spindles or faster hard disks may be required.
• Current Disk Queue Length
  • This counter will show you how many I/O operations are waiting for the hard disk to become available.  Our recommendation is that the average disk queue length should be 4 or less.  Adding more spindles or faster hard disks may be required.
• Cache Bytes
  • This counter monitors the amount of memory being used for the file system cache.  Anything over 10 MB would be considered too much. If this is the case it is recommended that you add more physical memory.
• Pool Non-paged Bytes and Pool Non-paged Allocations
  • Another way to test for memory leaks is to monitor these two counters. The Pool Non-paged Bytes counter counts pages of memory that can’t be moved to virtual memory, these will stay in physical RAM.  Most likely, if this value is too high, you’ll have to add more physical memory to the system.  You can also watch the Pool Non-paged Allocations counter to see how many calls are being made to that portion of the memory. If the number of calls does not seem to correspond with the number of memory pages, you may likely have a memory leak rather than an insufficient amount of physical ram.
• PAGES/SEC
  • This value counts the number of times per second that the system is accessing virtual memory rather than physical memory. A value above 20 is considered to be high, and it may indicate a problem with the way your virtual memory is configured rather than a problem or shortage of physical memory.

We recommend monitoring these counters over a day or more to document and establish a baseline.

Co-Authered  by:
Jon Sutherland
Senior Systems Engineer
ImageSource, Inc.

Bryan Wilhelm
Senior Systems Engineer
ImageSource, Inc.

Integrating Legacy Systems with ECM

I’ve been working on a project that required scraping values from an IBM Terminal Emulator and using them for updating indexes in an Oracle IPM imaging repository and was lucky enough to have the ILINX AIK tool to work with in accomplishing this task.

The first challenge was in dealing with the values that we were gathering from the Terminal Emulator Screen.  The way that the data was served to the terminal emulator was not parsed into separate values.  The AIK allowed us, through VB Script, to parse the data into a form that we could use.  Once the data was massaged into a usable form, we used the values to update indexes in Oracle IBPM.  The ILINX AIK natively comes with connections to Oracle IPM for searching.  However, updating index values on documents that already exist in the system can be a challenge.

To overcome this obstacle we used the ILINX AIK to map the data into an executable.  This option was used for performing the Oracle IPM Index updates, and we were able to accomplish this by mapping the data to an executable with the mapped index values as arguments, and having the executable perform the index updates.

In the distributed final project, end users select the line on the Terminal screen that holds the data they need to update in Oracle IPM , click a button (one of the event choices for telling the AIK when to perform the action you designated for it), and are able to move on to their next task.

The flexibility of this product is one of its strong suites.  Out of the box it comes with connectors for everything from Terminal Emulators to .NET windows, it gives you the ability to set scripts in each project if needed to correct issues that could be present with the data pulled.  Additionally, it has a wide array of choices for triggering data pull events.  If one of the many options native to the AIK for mapping your output data won’t work, it has the flexibility to allow you to create your own output method thus, giving System Engineer’s and Project Managers endless possibilities when setting up systems and processes where a client would like to scrape data from a screen and have it stored in another location.

The first challenge was in dealing with the values that we were gathering from the Terminal Emulator Screen.  The way that the data was served to the terminal emulator was not parsed into separate values.  The AIK allowed us, through VB Script, to parse the data into a form that we could use.  Once the data was massaged into a usable form, we used the values to update indexes in Oracle IBPM.  The ILINX AIK natively comes with connections to Oracle IBPM for searching.  However, updating index values on documents that already exist in the system can be a challenge.

To overcome this obstacle we used the ILINX AIK to map the data into an executable.  This option was used for performing the Oracle IBPM Index updates, and we were able to accomplish this by mapping the data to an executable with the mapped index values as agruments, and having the executable perform the index updates.

In the distributed final project, end users select the line on the Terminal screen that holds the data they need to update in Oracle IBPM , click a button (one of the event choices for telling the AIK when to perform the action you designated for it), and are able to move on to their next task.

The flexibility of this product is one of its strong suites.  Out of the box it comes with connectors for everything from Terminal Emulators to .NET windows, it gives you the ability to set scripts in each project if needed to correct issues that could be present with the data pulled.  Additionally, it has a wide array of choices for triggering data pull events.  If one of the many options native to the ILINX AIK for mapping your output data won’t work, it has the flexibility to allow you to create your own output method thus, giving System Engineer’s and Project Managers endless possibilities when setting up systems and processes where a client would like to scrape data from a screen and have it stored in another location.

 

Random McParks
Support Engineer
ImageSource Inc.