Wisdom SharePoint 2010 Integration Version 3 – Installation and Configuration

 

The feedback from users using version 2 of the Wisdom / SharePoint integration was that the installation process was complex and the configuration was inconsistent. With version 3 this has been addressed. The setup has been split into two MSI. The SharePoint Server MSI and the Wisdom Server MSI

To install the Wisdom Components you just run the MSI, nothing else.

To install the SharePoint components you run the MSI and this will create a folder with a PowerShell script and the WSP package (Plus some other dependency's such as the RBS MSI)

Just run the PowerShell Script :

If you look at your SharePoint solutions you will see Wisdom.SharePoint.Integration.wsp and you will have the following features :

Web Application Features

• Wisdom Record Centre
  Allows SharePoint users to navigate the Record Centre
• Wisdom Identity Provider
  Loads the Wisdom Identify provider in order to allow wisdom to determine the user.

Site Collection Features

• Wisdom Site Collection Settings
  allows the following to be configured
  • Wisdom Global Field Mappings
  • Wisdom Automatic Registration Rule Types
  • Wisdom Automatic Registration Rules

Site Features

• Wisdom Document Library
  Document Library with Wisdom features
• Wisdom Document Library - Ribbon Buttons
  EDRM Ribbon buttons, eg declare

Once these are active you will see configuration options at levels that you would expect. You can customise your auto declare rules at the site collection but use them on the site :

All configuration is done from SharePoint admin / settings screens such as :

Wisdom SharePoint 2010 Integration Version 3 – No longer all on one server.

 

The feedback from users using version 2 of the Wisdom / SharePoint integration included the fact that wisdom was required on the SharePoint server and SharePoint was required on the wisdom server presented a problem.

Wisdom on the SharePoint server added lots of unneeded components; such as Wisdoms Message queues, its services and the main web app. SharePoint on the Wisdom server creates an overhead for the Wisdom server and is a licencing concern. With version 3 you can chose to have ‘it all on one box’ or you can have Wisdom and SharePoint on their own servers.

The following diagram shows a typical environment :

To make this possible the Audit and Job Queue services have been refactored so they are not needed on the Wisdom SharePoint server. We have also made significant changes to the way the configuration works. You now have a configuration server and other servers requiring the wisdom API can load the configuration from the central server.

Wisdom SharePoint 2010 Integration Version 3 – Automatic registration / declaration of documents

 

With every release of the SharePoint integration the registration of documents has been improved.

The first release required a user to ‘chose’ the location for the document when registered in Wisdom. The user was presented with a picker :

The feedback we had from users was;

“We don't want to have to pick the file plan location”

“Users don't understand the fileplan”

The next release allowed the location to be ‘saved’ against a document library. This gave a one to one mapping.

This did work but it had to be setup on each document library.

The next release allowed the location to be driven from metadata and could be saved against the site :

The location can be derived from metadata on the site or list item. This allows unstructured SharePoint documents to automatically become part of a structured FilePlan and have retention policies applied to them.

This allows a user to register a document with the ‘Quick’ register option :

Or they can go via the wizard :

Although this did work some customers didn't want the users to have to ‘register’ or ‘declare’ documents. It should be automatic. The Wisdom Auto-Registration Feature allows documents to be registered or declared based on rules. Feedback from users was:

“Our SharePoint users don't want to have to click declare or register”

“We don't want to have to create custom code to do this”

“User should never see the eDRM or even know its being used”

For example, you can have all documents that are saved into SharePoint registered in Wisdom and once certain metadata requirements are met they document could be ‘declared’ .

This allows users / administrators to create workflows that could set metadata that would trigger the declare and the creator of the workflow does not need to use any extra actives or code.

Wisdom SharePoint 2010 Integration Version 3

 

The is the first blog in a series around building Wisdom SharePoint integration version 3

Version 3 of the Wisdom SharePoint integration is scheduled for release February 2012 and at the time of writing this blog this is on schedule.

The development team have just completed the work that allows Wisdom to consume SharePoint documents via RBS. This is a fully support way for Wisdom to managed the documents that are in SharePoint Document Libraries.

Please note, RBS was not a feature in SP2007 and the version 2 of the integration was built on SharePoint 2007.

With the new model, documents have 3 states :

unregistered document
Documents that are in SharePoint but also are not in Wisdom, the electronic blob is managed by Wisdom’s RBS provider and stored in the Wisdom document database in much the same way as if it was stored in the SharePoint content database.

registered document
SharePoint document that has been registered in Wisdom, these documents are in SharePoint but belong to the Wisdom FilePlan. Only one copy exists. The document is now subjected to Wisdom ERDM and retention applies.

declared document
Same as an registered document but now declared as a record and it locked now no more edit are allowed.

A new quick register feature has been added. If the configuration has all the details to allow the document to be register without any user input the quick register will allow the user to register the document in Wisdom with a single click.

With this new architecture you can now use first class features of SharePoint which include; taking documents offline, concurrent editing and web based editing of documents.

Document libraries with versions enabled are now supported, and SharePoint versions are synchronised with Wisdom.

As with the version 2 integration metadata changes are also synchronised.

The Wisdom team feel that this is a big step forward to a truly transparent integration with new SharePoint 2010 features and Wisdom eDRM.

Wisdom EDRM and context aware storage

The wisdom development team have just gone code complete with the a new feature that allows context aware document storage.

This means you can have your social care records stored on your SAN located in your secure onsite server room and have your non social care records stored in the cloud.
When the record is stored in Wisdom, Wisdom can decide what storage provider to use. This can in turn use a SQL RBS provider.
Having RBS as an option gives you more storage options.
Any RBS provider created for SharePoint will also work for wisdom.

The diagram below illustrates this.



A document store selector can use the following metadata to decide on what storage to use; Ref Path, Document Metadata, Document Type, Container Metadata and Container Type.

With more complex configuration you could move less used documents / records to low cost cloud storage that charges when you access the document.

Integration Options with Wisdom EDRM

Introduction

When implementing Wisdom there are many integration options available.  This blog intends to help make a decision as to what technology to use to integrate. This is not limited to ingratiation to the Wisdom product as the same challenges apply to almost any enterprise system.

What is Wisdom?

For this blog it does not matter what Wisdom is. But Wisdom is an enterprise document and records management system. Please see Wisdom for more information.

Integration Options

Diagonal recognise two main ways to integrate with Wisdom: Direct or via a messaging hub such as BizTalk. Each of the methods has other options. We will be discussing: Direct, BizTalk Point to Point, BizTalk orchestration and BizTalk ESB. Of course wisdom can present its integration points in many ways. This document assumes the use of the WF (Windows workflow) as an integration option and assumes that the workflows will be accessed via WCF (Windows communication foundation).

Direct Wisdom Calls (Direct)

The external system can call the Wisdom Integration point direct. This would mean that the external system would consume the web services that Wisdom exposed.

This approach is cost affective as only the wisdom web services need to be created. However this approach is very ‘tightly coupled’ . If the web service needs to change to accommodate other systems then the existing system will break. Problems will also arise if the Wisdom server is not online or not available.

Call Services Exposed via BizTalk (BizTalk Point to Point)

BizTalk can expose Wisdom services. The external system could connect to BizTalk and consume web services. These web services could connect directly to Wisdom. 

This approach requires a BizTalk licence. External system are just connecting to web services and don't need to know that BizTalk is ‘in-the-middle’ . If Wisdom is unavailable then messages are held until Wisdom is back online. This approach works well until your solution needs to scale or react to change. Any changes require the services to be republished and having lots of external system means lots of BizTalk ports. This can be hard to manage.

Call Services Exposed via BizTalk (using Orchestration)

This is the same as the previous but message routing is done with orchestration.

This approach also requires a BizTalk licence. Orchestration has a performance overhead when compared to  point to point but it is much more flexible. Orchestration should not be used just to route messages; this can be done much more efficiently using “Send Port Filters.”  This aside it does have its place. If decisions are needed then Orchestration can be used. Note, Orchestrations can be invoked from ESB so read on.

 

The above diagram does not really illustrate a difference between Orchestration and point to point. For the purpose of this blog we are not really going into what extra things can be achieved with Orchestration.

Integration via the ESB

ESB is an architecture pattern, Microsoft released the ESB toolkit to allow the implementation of this pattern with BizTalk. 

Using this pattern requires a BizTalk licence. The ESB Architecture pattern has the concept of all messages arrive via one service (On Ramp) and the message has routing hints or full details included (itinerary). The message can load its itinerary from a database or it can be included with the message. The itinerary can invoke BizTalk rules to route and transform the message.

This approach is very flexible and can easily react to change. It does require more initial investment but it saves time in the long run. This ESB toolkit also provides an exception handling framework that if used can also save on development time.

Summary

If you just need very simple point to point integration then Direct Integration will work. If you already have a BizTalk hub in-place and its point to point then point to point is fine. If you have not yet created your hub then ESB is the best fit. If you can migrate your point to point ingratiation to ESB then this would also be a valid option. ESB does require more learning as it extends BizTalk.

Wisdom to Support Open Search

The wisdom team have been working on making Wisdom more searchable. This means Wisdom now supports the open search standard. This allows users to search Wisdom from Windows 7, IE7/8 , Firefox or any technology that supports the open search standard.


As well as open search the Wisdom team also added support for searching wisdom via Office 2003 and above. Office does not support the open search standard. (This may change in future versions)

Open search allows users to search from most modern browsers and Windows 7. It also allows other search technologies that you may use within your business to federate searches to Wisdom.

Please feel free to contact the team if you have any questions around open search and how you may want to use it.

You can find out more about the search extensions by reading this white paper.

for more infomation about the Wisdom product please visit http://www.diagonal-consulting.com/

Diagonal website version