Document Management Via Documentum

Harsha,

You will need to configure an integration between Appian and Documentum to transfer the files. There are several ways this can be done based on your version of Documentum and what integration options are configured in your environment (e.g. Java APIs, Web Services, etc). You don't have to put middleware in place for the integration, but that architecture would work as well.

I would suggest having a conversation with your Documentum administrator to help determine what configurations are available to you and if there are any size limited on the Documentum side. Once you have that, determining the Appian configuration options will be much more focused.

Harsha,

You will need to configure an integration between Appian and Documentum to transfer the files. There are several ways this can be done based on your version of Documentum and what integration options are configured in your environment (e.g. Java APIs, Web Services, etc). You don't have to put middleware in place for the integration, but that architecture would work as well.

I would suggest having a conversation with your Documentum administrator to help determine what configurations are available to you and if there are any size limited on the Documentum side. Once you have that, determining the Appian configuration options will be much more focused.

Thank you so much Eric for making me understand very clear about the documentum way of transferring files. however I have some couple of questions which I think it would be definitely known to you :)

1.is there any size limit from Appian end to send the documents.... like if say the document is of size greater than X mb it will fail....
2.according to you which is the best way to send the documents to documentum.
3.Understanding that there is minimal need of the middleware in between, will there be any performance issue while fetching the data back .....
4.we are thinking of the following options...
a. SFTP smart services
b. advanced call web services.
c. consuming APIs from Documentum End and use integration Smart service.

Could you please tell me if there are any options other than this.

I would really appreciate the help you made and please provide me these inputs too...

TIA :)

Hi,

I agree with ericg,for uploading the documents you have to integrate using smart services,etc. As per my knowledge there is no other option to upload the documents into Appian Document system

Hi,

I agree with ericg,for uploading the documents you have to integrate using smart services,etc. As per my knowledge there is no other option to upload the documents into Appian Document system

I am not talking about Appian document system I am trying to integrate with Documentum system.

1.is there any size limit from Appian end to send the documents.... like if say the document is of size greater than X mb it will fail....

The out of the box file size limit for documents stored in Appian is 1 GB. There is not a transfer size restriction on the Appian side, but if you think you will be transferring large files or do a large number of transfers I would suggest running tests to make sure you don't hit any performance, network, or other issues.

2.according to you which is the best way to send the documents to documentum.

Most teams I have worked with have looked into CMIS or web service integration first. I have also seen several integrations utilizing custom plugins with Java APIs. Custom plugins will work, but I would recommend avoiding it if possible. It is a lot more work to stand up and maintain.

I haven't personally done a SFTP integration to Documentum, but utilizing SFTP within Appian is really straight forward and shouldn't be an issue if your Documentum system can take files that way.

3.Understanding that there is minimal need of the middleware in between, will there be any performance issue while fetching the data back .....

Is your goal to store documents in Documentum after processing them in Appian or are you trying to use Documentum for content management, but still display and access documents in Appian? If you plan to store documents in Documentum and display them to end users in Appian your performance will depend on several factors including network, infrastructure, integration design, and Appian interface design. It is hard to say if you will run into performance issues without knowing more about your use case and specific setup.

1.is there any size limit from Appian end to send the documents.... like if say the document is of size greater than X mb it will fail....

The out of the box file size limit for documents stored in Appian is 1 GB. There is not a transfer size restriction on the Appian side, but if you think you will be transferring large files or do a large number of transfers I would suggest running tests to make sure you don't hit any performance, network, or other issues.

Harsha: I will check on the size of the documents which we are actually passing to documentum and based on that I can take a call.
One QQ about the documents ...... in my case any ways I am passing it to documentum. can Appian behave like surfacing platform where it can only share the document to documentum rather than storing it in Appian.

2.according to you which is the best way to send the documents to documentum.

Most teams I have worked with have looked into CMIS or web service integration first. I have also seen several integrations utilizing custom plugins with Java APIs. Custom plugins will work, but I would recommend avoiding it if possible. It is a lot more work to stand up and maintain.

I haven't personally done a SFTP integration to Documentum, but utilizing SFTP within Appian is really straight forward and shouldn't be an issue if your Documentum system can take files that way.

Harsha: I have checked with my documentum administrator, and he says that the version 7.3 actually has the API calls which doesn't need most of the work done from their end but I can also check with him whether how to consider using SFTP.

based on the performance issues we might also use a middle layer which also does the same.

3.Understanding that there is minimal need of the middleware in between, will there be any performance issue while fetching the data back .....

Is your goal to store documents in Documentum after processing them in Appian or are you trying to use Documentum for content management, but still display and access documents in Appian? If you plan to store documents in Documentum and display them to end users in Appian your performance will depend on several factors including network, infrastructure, integration design, and Appian interface design. It is hard to say if you will run into performance issues without knowing more about your use case and specific setup.


Harsha: Our main intention is to store the data to documentum and get the details back in Appian screen. how ever I might look on the above mentioned problems.

Lastly I will post if any questions regarding documentum here, request you to have a look in free time :)

Hi Eric,

Just a quick thing, As per the discussion which we had we are planning to send the documents from Appian to Documentum Via Integration Layer (IL)

So here is my question.

1. Appian sends the file to IL using SFTP smart services so here I can mention the remote file path which is to be present in the IL layer.
2. But I also need to trigger or send the data to the IL that .... the IL has to put this document in documentum.

How can I achieve the point 2 as I am wondering how to send the location in documentum to the IL from Appian.

Basically what I mean is Appian has to send the location in which the file has to be placed into documentum to the Integration Layer.