Integrating SharePoint & Open Text eDOCS

As SharePoint adoption spreads, organizations are looking for possible ways to combine the collaborative tools of SharePoint, with their eDOCS enterprise content management (ECM) system.

The Importance of Integration

There are a series of potential risks and benefits to deploying SharePoint in a eDOCS environment. The main areas of concern are ensuring that eDOCS users can efficiently find access and manage information, and that content remains protected. A stable, supported product that integrates SharePoint and eDOCS is the best approach for mitigating potential risks.

The Risks of Unmanaged Coexistence

Open Text eDOCS provides a centralized, universally accessible repository, providing users with access to content intelligently, according to role and function. As a SharePoint environment begins to accumulate content alongside eDOCS, users can become frustrated with more time spent searching and less confidence that search results are complete.

Users may begin to favor one interface over the other, manually duplicating content from eDOCS into SharePoint. This duplication of content further adds to the confusion of content searches, and worse, strips content of its metadata, and may jeopardize permissions and security for the duplicated copy.

In short, both SharePoint and eDOCS have respective strengths and weaknesses. Unmanaged co-existence tends to diminish the strengths of both systems, creating a confusing user experience, and placing content metadata and security at risk. Managed integration, however, allows SharePoint and eDOCS to play to their respective strengths, complementing each other – while providing a common user interface to all enterprise content.

The Integration Experience

Using SeeUnity’s out of the box integration products, companies can easily configure an integrated environment that combines the flexibility and collaborative tools of the SharePoint interface, with all of the rich metadata and ECM control of the eDOCS platform. In this integrated environment, eDOCS users can find, access and manage all enterprise content – directly from SharePoint. This includes the ability to navigate eDOCS libraries and quick searches, conduct native searching, and manage content using native eDOCS controls – all from within SharePoint.

By leveraging SeeUnity’s Archiving & Distribution product, companies can further tighten the integration between SharePoint and eDOCS. Documents and discussions can be archived natively or as PDF, to eDOCS as documents of record. Archiving can be done manually, or automatically. Similarly, content can be published from eDOCS out to SharePoint, potentially becoming available to a broader audience. With the ability to archive and distribute using file copying, linking or synchronization, companies retain full control over their information assets.

With the ability to integrate security between eDOCS and SharePoint, organizations can ensure that information remains centralized, secure, and accounted for. SeeUnity can help ensure that processes remain compliant, and that SharePoint environments benefit from eDOCS’s robust ECM assets.

Realizing the Benefits of Integration

Once SeeUnity is implemented to integrate eDOCS and SharePoint, organizations can realize immediate and lasting benefits.

  • The confusion, overhead, and security risks of SharePoint’s decentralized approach to content storage can be eliminated.
  • Users become more efficient as they spend less time searching for content, and more time working with search results.
  • eDOCS licensing costs can be optimized to lower total ECM cost of ownership.
  • Automated processes can help enforce corporate content management policies.
  • Automated archiving brings SharePoint into the content lifecycle, allowing server costs to be optimized, and reducing database overhead.
  • Content publishing and distribution can enable content to be served to a broad audience of external users.
  • Orchestrating a managed integration between eDOCS and SharePoint reduces internal IT support demands.

Taking the Next Step

For Open Text eDOCS customers that are considering adding SharePoint, or have already introduced SharePoint to their eDOCS infrastructure – content integration is a necessity. Integration protects content, empowers users, and reduces the overall cost of ownership.

SeeUnity is a leading developer of Enterprise Content Integration and Migration solutions that enable users to search, access, and manage all enterprise content from a common interface. Our products bridge content platforms, and remove the barriers between content silos. SeeUnity brings content together.

To learn more about how integrating eDOCS and SharePoint works, contact SeeUnity using our online form, or by calling us directly at 970.232.3332.

Copyright 2009 SeeUnity, Inc. SeeUnity and the SeeUnity logo are trademarks of SeeUnity, Inc. eDOCS and Open Text are registered trademarks of the Open Text Corporation. Microsoft and SharePoint are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.