Marg OpenText ECM

The audit feature is probably the best feature of ECM (which most programs have already. This feature shows you who has accessed, downloaded, and viewed certain files / folders. Their desktop application is also a great feature, allowing you to drag and drop files into ECM. The best way to re-organize files is through the ECM desktop application.

Security in terms of adding and removing privileges is terrible. Part of this is due to the setup of our current environment. If you want to update permissions for a specific folder, you have to push those privileges down to all files, which in some cases can take hours. When you attempt to push these permissions, a window pops up which cannot be closed or it'll stop updating permissions.

The groups in ECM don't make that much sense either. SharePoint has the right idea with groups. When I create a group, I should be able to enable users to create folders under that group. I shouldn't need special permissions to create folders.

Lastly, moving files is a pain. It's a difficult experience to re-organize files and folders. If you don't have the desktop application installed, it is not worth attempting to do. Drag and drop feature doesn't always work and sometimes ECM just fails to upload files with no error. Multiple people attempting to edit files, doesn't work. Multiple copies of the same files will show up sometimes.

Review other solutions before going with ECM.

New fileshare system integrated with SAP.

The UI/layout is a bit more usability-friendly as compared to other ECM products in the market, but the core features are pretty much run of the mill and not really distinct from the rest of the ECM/DCM players out there.

Their product support is very passive and slow to respond to customer queries and requests for extended support. Their SLAs for support tickets tend to lag for days before any significant feedback/analysis is provided. A lot of their out-of-the-box features will only address 60% to 70% of your organization's core business ECM requirements and when you request even consultation on how to expand the features (or even explore configuration/customization, they would already state that this is out of scope and would upsell you to pay additional premiums for these. To be more specific, in terms of detailed layering of user permissions to access certain content, managing access for internal and external users...the out of the box features of OpenText are quite limiting and getting the features to handle special use-cases unfortunately require configuration that can only be addressed by tech support (services at cost. There were also lack of available trained/learned professionals who can provide internal/contracted support.

Won't really recommend it. Too costly, too limiting and not enough trained resources available to support

It only solved basic, high level enterprise content management requirements but as to the deeper, more granular use cases of our requirements, it didn't really address them with the out of the box features. Our organization had to shell out hundreds of thousands of $$ to extend the capabilities of the ECM solution.

OpenText Content Server covers all of the bases if you are looking for a truly enterprise class document management system. The system provides tight security control, extensive auditing and version controls, and fully support document retention schedules. The system is easy to use when configured properly and scales to very high workloads. The system can be architected as a distributed system with remote cache servers allowing a single URL domain name which serves the entire system. One great feature is that every item (document, folder, other can be easily accessed if you know its unique ID number in the system, or a nickname that it has been given.

The support costs are rather high when compared to newer offerings. While the system nails document management, I would not consider it a collaboration platform. I would also not consider using it as a development platform.

Centralized document storage and collaboration across the enterprise.

It was set up for us by Consultants approx 8 yrs ago.

it was relatively clunky to use and not very intuitive at the time. Add-ons were pricey so we weren't able to take advantage of all the bells and whistles we saw in training.

shop around to see if OpenText meets your needs

we moved to Adobe

Good bundle of products such as content lifecycle management, records management

Requires strong technical and knowledge

Good for records management , not easy for ECM

Records management , ECM