• content server,  ot core

    OpenText Updates Core for iOS to Version 16.0

    Today, OpenText and the Core team, released version 16.0 of the Core for iOS client.

    Enhancements in Core 16.0 include support for new document upload targets, document metadata (Enterprise subscriptions only), new upload file size limited (Enterprise subscriptions only) and performance improvements.

    For those who don’t know, Core is the web-based version and cousin to OpenText’s flagship document and information management and collaboration system, Content Server.  Core subscriptions start at $5/mo for businesses and teams.  A free tier is also available so you can try out Core without having to worry about timed trial deadlines.

    For more information, visit the Core Website.

    Disclaimer: I am a long time OpenText customer and administrator for Content Server, Archive Server, and ECM Everywhere. I use the free version of OpenText Core.

  • content server,  document management,  enterprise connect,  microso,  records management,  windows

    Troubleshooting Enterprise Connect Client Issues

    Earlier today I was asked to help troubleshoot an OpenText Enterprise Connect client issue in a pre-production quality assurance environment.  It appears that testers were experiencing issues trying to open or edit documents stored in Content Server with the new desktop client.  Today, the QA team was testing Enterprise Connect 10.5.2.178 with Content Server 10.5.0 and Enterprise Connect module 10.5.2.

    The error being raised was:

    Method ‘PrepareEditOpen’ not implemented for repository ‘CSTest2’

    There was no problem accessing the test documents from the Content Server 10.5.0 web UI or via WebDAV.

    Since the issue was showing up on the clients, I decided to turn on error logging in Enterprise Connect

    Enabling Enterprise Connect Logging

    1.Right-clicking the Enterprise Connect desktop icon.

    2. Choose “Options” from the pop-up contextual menu.

    3. When the Options window appears, click the “Logging Options…” button.

    4. On the Logging Options page, check “Log Enabled” and select “Error” from the “Apply to All” drop down menu.

    5. Set the “File Location” field to which ever folder works best for you.

    6. Click the “Apply” and “Exit” buttons.  Close the Options window.

    7. Logout of Windows and login in again to activate logging.

    At this point, I reproduced the error trying to view a document in Content Server using the Enterprise Connect client.  when the error was reproduced, go back into the logging options and disable logging.

    On my test machine, three logs were created: uc_explorer.log, uc_ucscore.log and uc_ucsync.log.  Open the uc_ucscore.log file in your favorite text editor.  I suggest Notepad++ over Notepad.

    Scroll down to the bottom of the log to see the errors.  I found the following:

    08:15:18.41 [UCSCORE    ](4588): ERROR: Could not get service.
    08:15:21.58 [UCSCORE    ](4588): ERROR: Can’t query Office Editor Documents: Could not find a part of the path ‘C:\Users\[WindowsAccountName]\AppData\Roaming\OpenText\OTEdit\[CSInstanceName]\c2149\’.
    .
    .
    .
    08:16:27.62 [    ](4588): ERROR: WebEditRequest.GetDocumentInfo: exception.type=System.NotImplementedException; exception.message=Server not capable of Webedit.Unreserve;

    During my investigation, I noticed that the \c2149\ folder was not created on my client.  Don’t get fooled by that error message.  The real clue was the next line:

    exception.message=Server not capable of Webedit.Unreserve;

    This error says that the Content Server webedit module can’t do it’s job.

    To verify the problem was with the Content Server instance and not the Enterprise Connect client installed on the PC, I added another URL connection string to Enterprise Connect for a disaster recovery instance and tested the ability to open documents.  Enterprise Connect was able to open a copy of a test document that was in the DR instance just fine.  So, the problem was at the QA Content Server.

    Taking a look at the installed modules, I quickly discovered that the OpenText Enterprise Connect, Email Services and Content Server Web Edit modules where all at version 10.5.0.  The Enterprise Connect client being tested as 10.5.2.

    To finally resolve the issue, I backed up the OTHome directory (the path Content Server is installed into) and the SQL database and performed the upgrades to each of the modules to bring them up to version 10.5.2.  Once that was complete, the QA test clients were able to open, edit and update documents without further trouble.

  • content server,  ecm,  livelink,  opentext,  records management

    OpenText Adds Full Folder Sync to ECM Everywhere iOS Client

    Earlier this week, OpenText released an update to their iOS ECM Everywhere client to version 10.5.21.

    The new update will allow ECM Everywhere users to quickly mark all of the files in a single folder for offline access.  If you want to sync a sub-folder and it’s contents for offline access, you will need to drill down to that level and manually mark the folder offline.

    ECM Everywhere is the iOS, Android and BlackBerry client for OpenText’s Content Server 10.5 and 10.0 content management systems.  ECM Everywhere is a free download from the Apple App Store, Google Play Store and BlackBerry App World.

    For more information on OpenText ECM Everywhere 10.5, visit the OpenText.com website.

  • content server,  ecm,  upgrade

    The Incident at RetentionUpdateOrder [UPDATED]

    During an upgrade of a quality assurance (QA) instance of OpenText Content Server 10.0.0 SP2 Update 12 to Content Server 10.5.0 Update 2014-06 I ran into an incident at the RetentionUpdateOrder table.

    [01/14/2015 04:25:31 PM] : Applying the database schema upgrade
    [01/14/2015 04:25:31 PM] : Error executing statement
    [01/14/2015 04:25:31 PM] : create table RetentionUpdateOrder ( … )
    [01/14/2015 04:25:31 PM] : Error: Error executing an Sql statement.
    [01/14/2015 04:25:31 PM] : Error: Error executing an Sql statement.
    [01/14/2015 04:25:31 PM] : The Module Upgrade Failed Due To Errors

    The error, as it turns out, was caused because my database already had a table called “RetentionUpdateOrder” in it.  Great, now what?

    A quick look at my QA and production Content Server 10.0 databases revealed that the table in question existed in both.  This was not a table that I added, altered, or otherwise modified, so it had to come from the core installation of Content Server or one of the modules that my employer has elected to install.

    I needed to know how big the scope of this problem was.  As it turned out, RetentionUpdateOrder was not alone.  Three of it’s friends were also giving me a little bit of heartburn during the upgrade; they are: RetentionUpdateOrder, RetentionUpdateRetry, RetentionUpdateFailed, and RetentionUpdateLog.

    WARNING: This post talks about modifications to your Content Server database.  You should only directly alter your Content Server database under the supervision of a trained OpenText engineer.

    Once I knew which tables involved in the upgrade, I used the following SQL to figure that out how much data was going to have to deal with.  Thankfully, using the following SQL command, the results all came back as zero rows.

    use [yourContentServerDBName]
    go
    select COUNT(*) from RetentionUpdateOrder
    go
    select COUNT(*) from RetentionUpdateRetry
    go
    select COUNT(*) from RetentionUpdateFailed
    go
    select COUNT(*) from RetentionUpdateLog
    go

    To workaround this issue, wrote a short little SQL script to backup the tables in my database, and then drop the original so I could restart the Content Server database schema upgrade process and have it finish successfully.  Here’s the rough utility SQL script that I wrote to clean up the table situation.

    use [yourContenServerDBName]
    go
    select * into RetentionUpdateOrder_CS10_5_Backup
        from RetentionUpdateOrder
    go
    if OBJECT_ID(‘livelink..RetentionUpdateOrder’,’U’) is not null
        drop table RetentionUpdateOrder
    go
    select * into RetentionUpdateRetry_CS10_5_Backup
        from RetentionUpdateRetry
    go
    if OBJECT_ID(‘livelink..RetentionUpdateRetry’,’U’) is not null
        drop table RetentionUpdateRetry
    go
    select * into RetentionUpdateFailed_CS10_5_Backup
        from RetentionUpdateFailed
    go
    if OBJECT_ID(‘livelink..RetentionUpdateFailed’,’U’) is not null
        drop table RetentionUpdateFailed
    go
    select * into RetentionUpdateLog_CS10_5_Backup
        from RetentionUpdateLog
    go
    if OBJECT_ID(‘livelink..RetentionUpdateLog’,’U’) is not null
        drop table RetentionUpdateLog
    go

    To jump start the database schema upgrade again, in my browser, I navigated back to the admin home page at ?func=admin.index and then jumped over to the database upgrade page at ?func=admin.dbupgrade.  (You may be prompted to log back in as ‘admin’.)

    Once I restarted the database schema upgrade, it was a few short minutes until I got the following message back from my Content Server 10.5 instance:

    [01/16/2015 05:45:03 PM] : Applying the database schema upgrade
    [01/16/2015 05:45:03 PM] : Applying the data upgrade
    [01/16/2015 05:45:03 PM] : The database upgrade completed with no errors.

    Outstanding!  Your results may vary from mine. It is always to have a good set of backups, rollback plans and we should always test upgrades in test instances before moving on to QA, DR, and production.  If you get into trouble, or have questions, don’t forget to contact the OpenText Support Team.

    UPDATE:

    After talking to OpenText support, two important bits of information have surfaced about this issue.  They are:

    1. The four RetentionUpdate tables discussed here are for the Archive Storage Provider module and NOT the Records Manager module.

    2. If you have an aversion to writing SQL, you can avoid all of this by installing the Archive Storage Provider 10.0.2 module update before attempting to upgrade to Content Server 10.5.0.  Naturally, this is the method preferred by the OpenText Support team and I agree with them.  If you chose to use the backup/drop table method I described here, that is a viable workaround.  Any updates or alterations of a Content Server/Livelink database should be done only with guidance from Support.

  • brava,  content server,  crm,  ecm,  eim

    OpenText Announces the Acquisition of Informative Graphics Corp.

    Yesterday, OpenText announced that they have entered into a deal to acquire Informative Graphics Corporation.

    Waterloo, ON – 2015-1-5 – OpenText™ (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC), a global leader in Enterprise Information Management (EIM), today announced that it has acquired Informative Graphics Corporation (IGC), a leading developer of viewing, annotation, redaction and publishing commercial software. As a valued OpenText partner for more than a decade, IGC technologies will be further integrated into the ECM product portfolio and extended into other OpenText Suites.  

    With the acquisition of IGC, OpenText strengthens its capabilities for secure access to any content, on any device, on premises and in the cloud. Having already deployed more than 250 joint customers and more than 300,000 seats of Brava!® for OpenText Content Server, OpenText can now extend the reach of IGC offerings to more OpenText customers globally. 

    “With a proven record of success as an OpenText partner, we are excited to welcome the IGC team into our company,” said Mark J. Barrenechea, president and chief executive officer of OpenText. “As customers make the shift to the digital workplace and the cloud, document viewing and mark-up on any device will enable organizations to leverage their information and drive growth and success in their organizations.”

    Content Server administrators should be pretty excited about this acquisition.  Brava! is a well known mark-up module for CAD documents stored in Content Server.  I’ve seen and talked to the folks from IGC at past Enterprise World conferences and have always been impressed with their software.  With OpenText’s acquisition, the software should become even more tightly integrated into the Content Suite of software.

    You can read the full press release on the OpenText website. CEO Mark Barrenechea also a blog post up about the acquisition.

  • android,  content server,  dcm everywhere,  enterprise connect,  ios,  livelink

    Livelink Upgrades Through the Years

    After having attended last week’s OpenText Enterprise World 2013, I though it would be fun to take a look back at the upgrade path of the various versions of Content Server.

    Content Server wasn’t always “Content Server.”  It has also been known as “Enterprise Server”, or for us old timers, “Livelink”.
    I started with Livelink 3.1.16.  The software was delivered on 3.5″ 1.4MB floppy disks in 16 and 32-bit flavors.
    For the next upgrade, Livelink 4.0.1, I made the jump to CD media.  Life was good back then – no more floppy disks!  Check out that OpenText logo.  This version of Livelink was pretty heavily customized and we skipped Livelink 5 and 6.
    For Livelink 7.0.1 I shifted technology platforms from Digital’s OpenVMS and Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) to Windows NT Server 4.0 and SQL Server 6.5.  For the upgrade to Livelink 7.2, I started pulling out the customizations.
    Next up as Livelink 8.0.1, 8.0.2, and 8.1.5.  This would be the last media set that would sport the old Odesta “sun” imagery as seen on the right side of the CD media.
    Next up was the Livelink 9-series.  Shown here is Livelink 9.0.0, 9.1.0 SP1, and 9.1.0 SP3.  Yes, there was something before Livelink 9.7.1!
    Here’s Livelink 9.2.0.  Did anyone actually convert to UTF-8 for this release?  I tried it and couldn’t get it to work with the command line tools.
    For Livelink 9.5, the name changed to Livelink ECM, or Enterprise Content Management.  The logo and corporate imaging also changed.  This would be the last physical disc I would receive from OpenText.
    After Livelink 9.5, it became trendy to call Livelink “Enterprise Server” for the Livelink 9.7.1 release.  Livelink 9.7.1 was the first all digital release for me, and I downloaded all of the software from the OpenText Knowledge Center.  And that UTF-8 conversion?  Much easier with the UTF-8 conversion module.
    With Livelink 9.7.1 installed and patched up, a year later the Records Management modules were installed.
    A year ago, I completed the upgrade from Livelink 9.7.1 with Livelink Explorer 4.8.6 to Content Server 10.0.0 Update 7 and Enterprise Connect 10.2.1.  There were lots of problems with Enterprise Connect, so earlier this year, I upgrade to Content Server 10.0.0 SP2 Update 9 and Enterprise Connect 10.3.0 Patch 1.
    For 2014 I’m working on the Content Server 10.5.0 and Enterprise Connect 10.5 upgrade and a rollout of ECM Everywhere 10.0.0 for iOS and Android clients.