Document Management: SaaS, On-premise | KnowledgeTree blogs

When less is more...

Evan Person — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:01:15 +0000

It was with interest that I scanned the list of essays in 37Signals founders', Jason Freid and David Heinemeir Hansson's, new book on modern work life: Rework

The section on competitors caught my eye and as a product professional the essay entitled “Underdo your competition” piqued my interest. The basic hypothesis of the essay is that it is futile to enter into a “features arms race” with your competition. This “following” approach to product development is costly and time consuming and doesn’t guarantee product success.

The wisdom of avoiding feature for feature duels with competitors is well established in product circles. While duelling doesn't guarantee product success, it does guarantee bloated sprawling products which are costly to support and maintain and that users are likely to find increasingly difficult to navigate to do the things they really need to get done.

New feature requests should be carefully weighed and evaluated with a healthy dose of circumspection. When considering new features it is always helpful to have the research metrics on feature use top of mind. The Standish Group’s 2002 Chaos Report on software project success and efficiency indicates that 45% of features developed are never used, while 19% are rarely used. So a whopping 64%, nearly two thirds of software features written are rarely or never used! Unfortunately more recent reports show these numbers looking worse rather than better.

In essence only 20% or one fifth of software features produced are frequently used. Ouch!

While Fried’s assertion that a features arms race is no way to go about developing a successful software product is nothing new, his proposed alternative is interesting: [Read more]

Bidding Farewell to Paper – the Long Goodbye

Daniel Chalef — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:56:36 +0000

I recently read the current report* from AIIM entitled Document Scanning and Capture: local, central, outsource - what’s working best? There were some interesting revelations in here, worthy of several posts, but one in particular stood out to me.

Although 78% of those surveyed have some form of distributed scanning via MFPs [multi-function scanner/printers], desk top scanners or branch-office scanners “many managers still consider it to be a scan-to-archive application, rather than opening up to the possibilities of scan-to-process.”

This says to me that people are predominantly scanning documents to get rid of paper file cabinets and archives – they’re scanning documents that are already “dead.”

Unfortunately, the real value from document scanning comes from those documents that are very much “alive” and that require action. About 57% of respondents identified “improve process throughput (productivity)” as an important business driver for document capture.

Yet, in reality only 37% of survey respondents are scanning over half of their inbound documents. Of those scanned documents, 57% are passed to archive rather than a business process.

In other words far fewer than half the organizations doing scanning are using less than half of those documents to power their business processes, while more than half of them think that improving productivity is important. So where’s the disconnect? [Read more]

KnowledgeTree Microsoft® Office Add-in Available Soon for Office 2003

martin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:10:11 +0000

The KnowledgeTree Office Add-in has been available for Office 2007 (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) since early 2009. It uses Office 2007’s Custom Task Panes to display a view into the KnowledgeTree Document Management System (DMS), allowing amongst other functionality quick-and-dirty downloads (both for view and editing) and uploads of documents straight from Word/Excel/PowerPoint 2007. This means that users don’t have to log into the web interface to interact with their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents!

Office 2003 does not natively support Custom Task Panes. However, a great number of users (including KnowledgeTree customers) still use this version of Office, and it became vital that we deliver the functionality offered by the Office 2007 Add-in to these users. But how to emulate the Office 2007 Custom Task Panes in Office 2003?

Add-in Express, the third-party library that IMHO is indispensable when creating Office Add-ins, have developed their own implementation of Task Panes that can be used in Outlook, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, versions 2000 – 2007. Using this technology, we were able to port the Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 functionality to Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2003. And to make the solution even more elegant, a single installer can be used for either Office 2003 or Office 2007, meaning we don’t have to maintain two different versions!

KnowledgeTree Office 2003 Add-in:

The same view from Office 2007:

UPDATE 09/03/2010: Please note that the KnowledgeTree Office Add-in 2003 has not been released yet; please watch this space for the release date!

Video: KnowledgeTree Explorer CP Alpha

Damien Williams — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:57:38 +0000

A while ago, we gave you a sneak preview of KnowledgeTree Explorer CP, the next generation of our KnowledgeTree Explorer desktop tool. Now you get the chance to see it in action!

We've prepared a quick video demonstrating its platform independence, powerful desktop integration, intuitive interface and more.

KnowledgeTreeLive – New Features and Updates

Evan Person — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:56:15 +0000

We're pleased to announce that KnowledgeTree's SaaS product, KnowledgeTreeLive, was updated last week. In addition to numerous performance and efficiency enhancements, the following features were included in the release:

Thumbnails in Column View
The thumbnail functionality released in 3.7 proved to be immensely popular. You can now view thumbnails of your KnowledgeTree content in the "Browse Documents" grid - you no longer need to select a single document to view its thumbnail. Clicking on the thumbnail launches InstantView so that you can preview, print or search the document. This functionality can be enabled in "Administration | Miscellaneous | Manage Views", by adding the "Thumbnails" column.
InstantView
InstantView has also been extended and now supports the popular file formats used by most browsers, including: .PNG, .JPG, .GIF and .TIFF file formats.
Search by Document Owner
It is now possible to search by document owner ("owned by"), which can be found in the advanced search.
Printing of Electronic Signature Audit Logs
KnowledgeTree supports electronic signatures as defined by FDA 21 CFR part 11. It is now possible to print these logs if required.

[Read more]

New Community Developments on the Horizon

Damien Williams — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:23:07 +0000

We're always striving to make things easier and more accessible for the KnowledgeTree community and we've got some great initiatives and plans in store for you. I'd like to take this opportunity to share some of the exciting developments ahead.

Within the next few weeks, KnowledgeTree.org will be home to a new reorganized wiki that will be the main focus for all things community (you might have already noticed a few minor structural changes to our websites to accommodate this). Here, you'll find a single point of access to a wider variety of relevant resources, tools, FAQs and other vital information.

We really value your feedback and we've already received excellent ideas on how we can improve our products on our forums, Twitter and Facebook. Now, we need your help and recommendations on how we can serve you better. Be on the lookout for an anonymous survey where we’ll ask your opinion on issues that affect the KnowledgeTree community. Now is your chance to be heard and there will also be great prizes offered to a few lucky survey respondents.

These are just a few of the great initiatives coming down the road. Watch this space as we keep you posted on more community-related news and updates.

Why We Introduced KnowledgeTree Repositories

prince — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:47:54 +0000

KnowledgeTree decided to partner with Zend Technologies for the release of version 3.7 of its on-the-premise commercial and open-source editions of its offering on Zend Server infrastructure. The combination of Zend Server, which includes a highly optimized PHP stack, with monitoring, ensures a boost in speed and performance of KnowledgeTree on our supported platforms.

As we prepared for the recent release of KnowledgeTree 3.7, one of the key issues that the engineering team had to think about was, how to deploy Zend Server with KnowledgeTree to all our customers on different operating systems seamlessly.

Well the answer to that was crystal clear, we had to change our deployment strategy and implement GnuLinux repositories for our latest offering. Thus, KnowledgeTree repositories were born. For more information on how this works have a look here.

What are Repositories you ask?

Well, there are literally thousands of software programs available out there to meet the needs of users on their preferred operating system. Many of these systems are stored in software archives commonly referred to as repositories. Repositories make it very easy to install new software on Linux systems while also providing a high level of security, as each software is thoroughly tested and built for each version of the Linux distributions. By harnessing the power of the operating system's software management tools already installed on the users system, a user would be able to, install and update KnowledgeTree over the internet, without the need for a CD or binary install scripts.

What does this all mean for us and our customers? [Read more]

Capture Integration Keeps it Simple for the Business

Tim Spink — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:24:27 +0000

Hi there, Tim the sales guy here again. We’re making it so easy for organizations to capture and store documents that frankly, you’d have to be crazy to keep dealing with paper. It’s so yesterday.

What’s happening today is that we’ve been working with CAPSYS® on an integration that lets an organization capture documents in one place and automatically send them for indexing and storage in another place without any additional infrastructure, programming or scripting. And guess where these documents go? Yep, right into KnowledgeTree.

CAPSYS CAPTURE™ is a web-based, SaaS application with just a thin client that is easy to install.

So, say I’m in a remote office, just me, my scanner and a million receipts because I’m always procrastinating on my expense reports. The old way, I’d scan pages and pages of receipts and then have to upload each file from my PC into KnowledgeTree. I could probably use Hot Folders or Bulk Upload, but I’m not real clever that way, so it is a manual process for me.

Now, instead of integrating with my desktop scanning software, my scanner integrates with the CAPSYS CAPTURE client on my desktop. When I scan all that stuff in, it’s going up into the cloud into the CAPSYS CAPTURE Server for processing. And because CAPSYS CAPTURE has an easy graphical process flow feature, I was able to tell it to send my documents into KnowledgeTree without needing to know how to write a program or script.

And this is just a fraction of what CAPSYS CAPTURE can do. It also does all sorts of processing for bar codes, OCR and handwriting recognition. It will also capture faxes and emails for input right into KnowledgeTree.

So, if you’re like me and want a fast and easy way to get documents into KnowledgeTree, then you need to look into CAPSYS. Have a look here for more information. http://j.mp/kt-capsys

Featured KnowledgeTree Community Project: "KTGPLClient" by Jeremy Smith

Damien Williams — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:00:40 +0000

It's always great to see new and exciting projects being actively developed by the KnowledgeTree community. This month, we'll be featuring the KTGPLClient by Jeremy Smith.

Briefly, could you describe this project and what it entails?
The KTGNUClient project is a desktop scanning tool for Windows that is designed to allow scanning of multi-page documents, which can be used to upload documents to KnowledgeTree from within a single application.

What inspired you to create this project?
I found that using the built in Microsoft "Scanner and Camera Wizard" tool for multi-page documents was tedious and painful.

What business problems were you looking at solving specifically with this project?
I was hoping to solve critical business issues of saving valuable time and maintaining consistent document formats in the repository.

What other KnowledgeTree projects have you been involved with?
None, this is the first project that I have developed for KnowledgeTree.

What are the benefits that you experience from your involvement with KnowledgeTree?
KnowledgeTree has help me to increase our data access, data organization and enhance my activity communications.

What would you say to encourage additional community participation?
If any community edition users have a need, there's a very good chance that other community members do too! Everyone should try and solve their business problems and share these solutions with others. Whether its sharing tips/hints/guides, participating on the forums or developing tools/plugins.

With KnowledgeTree 4.0 on the road-map, which KnowledgeTree feature would you most like to see included in the next major release? [Read more]

SugarCRM/iNetDocs making sales more efficient

Tim Spink — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:24:05 +0000

Hi there, Tim the sales guy here again. This week, my marketing people want me to talk about the new integration between SugarCRM and KnowledgeTree that was developed by our French partner, iNet Process. It’s called iNetDocs, and it’s very cool.

As a sales guy, this is pretty exciting stuff for me! Basically, it means that a sales person — or account manager, or anyone who depends on a CRM for most of their daily work — can access all the documents they need without ever leaving the CRM work space.

So, say I’m a sales guy (did I mention I’m in sales?). I get a lead assigned to me in SugarCRM and want to send out a data sheet. In the old days, before iNetDocs, I would have to go searching on my hard drive, or a shared network drive for a data sheet that I hope would be the latest version to send to my lead. I’d spend 15 or 20 minutes trying to figure out whether I had the right document.

With iNetDocs, I simply switch to the tab within SugarCRM that acts as a window into the KnowledgeTree repository. I navigate to the marketing folder and find the data sheet I need. I know it’s the latest version, because we keep all our current collateral in the DMS. Then, I attach the document from KnowledgeTree directly to the email that I’m sending to my prospect from within SugarCRM. The whole operation takes less than 2 minutes and I move on to the next activity that will boost my commission.

This is a great opportunity for everyone involved:
• I get to sell KnowledgeTree to SugarCRM users who want this functionality.
• SugarCRM gets to sell their application to KnowledgeTree users who need a CRM.
• And iNet Process gets to sell the integration and support.
• Finally, anyone who’s currently using SugarCRM and KnowledgeTree gets an affordable way to make them work seamlessly together. [Read more]

Sneak Preview - KnowledgeTree Explorer CP

martin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:06:11 +0000

When we sat down to architect our next generation KnowledgeTree Explorer, we agreed on several design and business principles that we regarded as must-have, fundamental cornerstones of our new product: cross-platform availability, component re-use, maintainability, Rich Internet Application (RIA), thin client architecture.

A sneak preview of our new KnowledgeTree Explorer (running on a Mac no less):

Platform independency
We realized very early that “desktop” is no longer synonymous with “Windows”, and saw from our diverse customer base that users require client (desktop) applications that run on Linux and Mac as well as on Windows. The most obvious choice of technology to deliver a truly cross-(OS) platform desktop application was Adobe AIR (http://www.adobe.com/products/air) since AIR applications run on any platform and operating system that support the AIR runtime (which includes Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows).

AIR implements WebKit (http://webkit.org), an open source web browser engine, which allows desktop applications to run in a scaled-down browser on the desktop. And since this browser is platform-independent, KnowledgeTree Explorer can run on any OS that supports the browser.

Rich Internet Application (RIA) [Read more]

KnowledgeTree 3.7 Commercial Released - Faster, Easier, New Tools

Daniel Chalef — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:43:18 +0000

We're proud to announce the availability of commercial editions of KnowledgeTree 3.7. This release comes jam packed with new features, enhancements and support for new operating systems:

Deployment on Zend Server
Thumbnail and Instant View Functionality
Cross Platform Repository Explorer
Microsoft Windows 2008 Server, IIS 6 and 7 Support
Native RPM and DEB packages
New web-based Setup Wizard
New Date, Large Text and Multi-select field types
CMIS 0.61 Interface
OpenSearch Interface
Indexing of Microsoft Outlook Emails

Visit the KnowledgeTree What's New page for details.

If you're interested in trying out KnowledgeTree 3.7, download an evaluation of the software or sign up for an online demo.

KnowledgeTree Community Edition 3.7 is now also available for download.

Follow me on twitter: @danielchalef

KnowledgeTree Tip - Browse Documents Faster with FastestFox for Firefox

craig — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:12:03 +0000

Do you have a large number of files or folders stored in a single KnowledgeTree folder? If you want to quickly browse through these folders or files without paging through all of them, download a Firefox plugin called FastestFox. The plugin enables you to browse documents and folders even faster by stitching all the pages together to create a single web page. See below for a screenshot of the plugin.

Passing the Open Core Transparency Test

Daniel Chalef — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:54:19 +0000

It always feels good to pass a test – even one that you don’t know you’re taking. I don’t ever recall thanking someone for giving me a test, but I will thank Matt Aslett at the 451 Group for giving KnowledgeTree passing marks on his Open Core Transparency Test.

Since we agree with Matt (and others) that transparency is a vital component of the open core model, it’s important to us that we’re viewed as upholding that standard. We appreciate being recognized for our efforts! Thanks, Matt.

KnowledgeTree 3.7 Community Edition Released

Damien Williams — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:01:16 +0000

KnowledgeTree is pleased to announce the release of KnowledgeTree 3.7 Community Edition (Release Candidate).

New features and enhancements in the Community Edition include:

Deployment on Zend Server for enhanced performance
Document thumbnail preview functionality
Support for Microsoft Windows 2008 Server, along with IIS 6 and 7
RPM and DEB packages for Ubuntu and Red Hat Linux
Additions to the types of document properties provided out of the box
Support for open standards, including CMIS and OpenSearch
Setup Wizards that assist you during all phases of installing, configuring and upgrading KnowledgeTree
Spanish, Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese translations

For more information on the release, please view the release notes.

Download KnowledgeTree version 3.7 Community Edition now!

Will the Real Office Software Please Stand Up

Daniel Chalef — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:08:43 +0000

Kudos go to our friends at Zoho for standing up to Microsoft with style, humor and chutzpah! Responding to a comment from Microsoft that Zoho and other cloud-based office productivity applications offered “fake Office capabilities,” Zoho seized the gorilla by the…um…horns, and quickly launched www.fakeoffice.org.

This decisive marketing coup was accompanied by a well-produced video and I’m looking forward to seeing some of the additional mileage that Zoho gets from Microsoft’s latest gaff.

It’s also amusing to think about Microsoft’s own “fake” efforts. How about the fake iPod (Zune) and the fake PlayStation (Xbox)? Now, of course, there is the fake search engine. One could also argue that Excel was the fake Lotus 123 in it’s day, and Word was the fake Wordperfect. And dare we say that Internet Explorer was also the fake Netscape? We could play this game for a long time given that the basic premise for office productivity tools has been around for a long time and there have been generations of them by now (anyone remember Harvard Graphics?!)

I hope that some similarly creative folks out there will make the most of this opportunity. Although Microsoft is incredibly easy to ridicule, it’s certainly more fun when they set themselves up for it so adroitly. Do let me know if you’ve managed to join in the fun!

P.S. KnowledgeTree's Software as a Service offering, KnowledgeTreeLive, integrates very nicely with Zoho Office, providing customers with web-based editing of documents in the KnowledgeTree repository.

Follow me on twitter: @danielchalef

What happens when you assume something?

Tim Spink — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:09:43 +0000

The recent and highly publicized failure of T-Mobile’s Sidekick (hosted in the Microsoft/Danger cloud) has again called into question the safety, security and reliability of cloud computing.

According to Jon Stokes on ars Technica, “This outage and subsequent data loss is just the latest, and probably the most dramatic, black eye yet for "cloud computing," since users falsely assumed that if data was "in the cloud" then it was stored with enough redundancy and fault tolerance to render such a massive data loss impossible.”

Look closely at that statement – “users falsely assumed” that their data was safe in the cloud – and evidently, Microsoft, T-Mobile and Danger did as well. I would argue that this is not as much a black eye for cloud computing as it is for those companies that take cloud-based storage for granted without additional backup and disaster recovery plans.

No backup system is 100% reliable; that’s why IT departments often implement multiple strategies, such as magnetic tape, redundant servers, etc.

We rightfully get asked by customers all the time about the safety and security of their data in KnowledgeTreeLive, our cloud-based (Amazon EC2) document management system.

Well, not only do we rely on the massive redundancy of the Amazon cloud, but we also have gone to great lengths to ensure that documents and data stored in the cloud can be recovered in the event of a system failure. For KnowledgeTreeLive customers, we take daily snapshots of working data and keep a rolling 7 days worth of these snapshots. We also keep a rolling weekly snapshot for a minimum of 4 weeks. This ensures customers have a 4-week history of backups. [Read more]

KnowledgeTree 101: Getting Started with KnowledgeTree

Damien Williams — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:16:58 +0000

New to KnowledgeTree? Well, we've put together a brief and informative video to help you get the most out of your KnowledgeTree experience. In this video, I'll walk you through some of KnowledgeTree's key features: working with documents in KnowledgeTree, using workflows, collaborating with team members and many more.

View the video below or have a look at our resources page for more great videos!

Open Source Software – Vive La France

Philip Arkcoll — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:59:46 +0000

Mon Dieu! I’m still amazed by the vibrancy and ardor of the French open source community, as evidenced by their participation in the recent Open World Forum in Paris. Granted, there was a home field advantage at work, but I was still swept up in their excitement over the growing use of open source for both enterprise and SMB.

One item of particular note is that many French systems integrators are focusing purely on open source applications. Even those that were traditionally proprietary software implementers have established open source departments or practice groups. For example, Accenture was a sponsor of the event – not really a company that we think about as having a stake in open source, but there they were. At least in Europe, Accenture is seeing supporting open source as a very viable business opportunity.

A recent market survey by research firm, Markness, in France shows that 96% of the public sector is using open source. Next to running databases and web sites, open source is mostly used for IT administration. Markness expects that in 2011 some 63 percent of firms and organizations will use open source office applications.

Already, many municipalities are moving away from Microsoft-based environments toward a Linux OS and FOSS, like OpenOffice.org. The French Gendarmerie has saved 50 million euros since 2004 by adopting Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org in lieu of Microsoft Windows and Office. [Read more]

Kofax announcement in sales terms

Tim Spink — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:35:32 +0000

Hi there, Tim the sales guy here again. This week, my marketing people want me to talk about a new capability that allows documents scanned by Kofax Capture to go directly into the KnowledgeTree repository via our Hot Folders.

What this basically means is that organizations that are already using Kofax Capture for bulk scanning have an easy way to get those documents en masse into KnowledgeTree along with the document properties (metadata) that describe them. This is because the Kofax Capture Release Script (that our partner Red Eagle Consulting provides) exports that metadata in XML that the Hot Folders understand.

So to break it down, if an organization already has a license for Kofax Capture and wants to use KnowledgeTree to store the scans, the release script makes it a no-brainer. We’ll sell you the KnowledgeTree license, and Red Eagle will sell you the release script. Of course, call us first and we’ll make it easy for you to get both.

If you don’t already have Kofax Capture, but want to implement it along with KnowledgeTree, then we can help with that too. Red Eagle is a Kofax Gold Certified Reseller, and they’ll implement the Kofax side of the solution and work with you to configure it.

Any organization that is paper-intensive needs a bulk scanning, capture and document storage solution. Reducing paper is smart business that cuts costs and increases efficiency. Plus, it’s good for the environment, since the average worker can use up to 10,000 sheets of paper per year!

KnowledgeTree Hot Folders and Kofax Capture Release Script

Philip Arkcoll — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:46:07 +0000

Earlier today we announced the availability of a KnowledgeTree Release Script for Kofax Capture. As discussed in our announcement, the script outputs processed documents and their properties (metadata) in a format accepted by KnowledgeTree Hot Folders. The result is an end-to-end solution for document capture and management. Scan your paper-based invoices in at one end, let Kofax's OCR, barcode recognition and other imaging technologies extract the properties, and output everything to a secure, and centralized document repository for processing and storage.

KnowledgeTree Hot Folders is a simple, high-volume integration interface for third party applications, such as back-office document imaging workflow applications and fax servers. It is a Windows service designed to monitor and automatically process content copied or moved to a specified Windows file share.

KnowledgeTree already provides a number of easy-to-use interfaces for importing content but there are two distinct advantages to using KnowledgeTree Hot Folders: [Read more]

Featured KnowledgeTree Community Project: "Wemag Online Document Viewer" by Aart-Jan Boor, Wemag Consultancy

Damien Williams — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:24:10 +0000

The KnowledgeTree community is extremely fortunate to have members who are actively involved in developing and supporting open source software.

For this month's featured KnowledgeTree community project, we'll be showcasing the "Wemag Online Document Viewer" plugin by Aart-Jan Boor from Wemag Consulting.

DW: Briefly, describe this project and what it entails?
This KnowledgeTree plugin allows users to view the content of documents without downloading the document or having any special software installed on their computer.

DW: What inspired you to create this project?
Often you simply want to view a document quickly and this is exactly what this plugin allows you to do. We just wanted to support the KnowledgeTree community by adding even more functionality to the KnowledgeTree application.

DW: What business problems were you looking at solving specifically with this project?
The software has not been developed to solve a specific business problem but it is useful in many business situations. For example, if you need your users to be able to read documents on PC’s without relying on Microsoft Office software, you can use this plugin to view the documents. [Read more]

New Document Preview Features in KnowledgeTree 3.7

megan — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:08:56 +0000

The next release of KnowledgeTree is in the pipeline. During our planning we took a moment to think about what we could do for our customers that would make their lives easier. We realized that the one thing KnowledgeTree could do better was to provide better document previewing functionality. The only available option was to use the inline viewer, however, this only supports a small set of document types. With this in mind we set about adding two new features.

The first feature creates a thumbnail of the first page of the document. The thumbnail is displayed in the left panel of the document view page, in addition a thumbnail column can be added to the browse view for easy scanning of documents and images. Clicking on the thumbnail produces the second feature (also available as a document action), a flash-based preview of the full document. Full navigation around the document is provided, zooming is enabled and the document can be full-screened for easier viewing. If the document is an image then it will display in a modal window.

The new flash-based preview allows the full document to be previewed online without needing to download it. It will be available in the KnowledgeTree 3.7 release.

The European Systems Integration Community: Diversity Drives Vibrancy

Daniel Chalef — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:39:42 +0000

The vibrancy of the European systems integration community is very evident at the Open World Forum in Paris this week. Companies exhibiting at the forum include NXC, Smile, solinux, and the sizable Bull. Many of these companies are quite large, with hundreds of employees and distinct practices (which often include ECM-related services).

What is interesting about these companies is their focus on open source and their significant customer engagements. These firms, and many like them, are actively contributing to the open source communities that they participate in.

What is driving the growth of this SI community? Or perhaps more importantly, why don’t we see a similar groundswell in the UK?

Yes, government policy, in particular the preference for spending locally and on open source, is driving money towards SI’s. Many of these policies are however in place in the UK and we don’t see a similar effect. Additionally, most of the SI’s I have spoken to have very many private sector customers, with some of the SI’s earning more revenue from these contracts than from public sector engagements.

So why, compared to Europe, is there such a dearth of private sector demand for open source in the UK? I asked Matt Aslett from the 451 Group, an analyst firm, and he had a rather interesting answer: language and culture. He believes that in the UK, it is just too easy to purchase English language proprietary products and associated services, many of which originate from the US. The European desire to localize and customize for local norms is both supported by open source and drives open source innovation, to the benefit of all.

The Performance Dilemma

Tim Spink — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:28:38 +0000

It’s always tricky from a sales and marketing perspective to talk about performance improvements to a product. Implicit in the statement about making performance better is the underlying thought that maybe performance wasn’t as good as it could have been all along.

In my experience, software companies that take significant steps to improve performance underplay them, for fear that users, analysts and pundits will jump to that implied conclusion. So let’s set the record straight on KnowledgeTree’s switch to Zend Server. It will improve product performance. Period.

As far as I’m concerned, no matter what guise this message takes, it’s good news for customers. Not only is Zend Server improving the application response time by close to 40%, it also means that KnowledgeTree is now running an enterprise-grade version of PHP with support from the experts at Zend.

Hey, I’m a sales guy. I don’t always say what my marketing people want me to say. But I think that any improvement in application performance is good for customers and helps me sell more product.

The Zend stack will be available with KnowledgeTree 3.7 — coming soon! For more information visit http://www.knowledgetree.com/knowledgetree-boosts-performance-using-zend or to arrange a demo, contact sales@knowledgetree.com

Why PHP Doesn’t Suck

Daniel Chalef — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 08:08:40 +0000

From its original design as a way to create dynamic web pages, PHP has evolved into a language (and supporting environment) that is particularly well suited to rapidly developing web-scale applications. Examples of these include Facebook and Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, its genesis prevented it from being taken seriously as an enterprise-grade language and environment, especially when compared to the incumbent 800 pound gorilla, Java.

PHP is enormously popular, with some estimates putting the number of internet domains running PHP at over 28 million. PHP’s popularity largely stems from how it, as an interpreted language, supports rapid development cycles, and the ease with which novice developers can learn the language.

Until only a few years ago PHP lacked strong object orientation and other features of modern development environments. PHP’s low barrier to entry also led to much of its criticism: developers just coded, often with no separation between presentation and business logic. The result: badly architected and unmaintainable applications.

Java’s rich ecosystem of frameworks, libraries and application servers (from Spring to JBoss) have underpinned enterprise use of the language. Frameworks provide architectural patterns and scaffolding, leading to rapidly developed, maintainable code. Application servers provide robust and rich environments for enterprise applications to exist within. [Read more]

KnowledgeTree Drop Box 1.1 Released

Philip Arkcoll — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:30:49 +0000

Earlier today we released a new version of the KnowledgeTree Drop Box, our quick and easy tool for uploading content from the Windows Desktop to your personal workspace folder. After a successful beta period of over a year, we feel that the Drop Box has reached a stage of maturity justifying the dropping of the "Beta" tag from the release name.

This release includes an overhaul of the session management mechanism, as well as a few patches for issues found in the previous beta editions. For more information please see the relevant release notes.

KnowledgeTree Drop Box 1.1 is available with both KnowledgeTree Commercial and Community Editions.

KnowledgeTree CMIS Snapshot and Drupal Module Released

Philip Arkcoll — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:21:52 +0000

Over the past couple of months we have been slowly chipping away at a PHP-based implementation of the draft CMIS specification. Today we’re releasing an early snapshot of KnowledgeTree, containing the first parts of our working CMIS interface. Our intention being to give you, our community, a chance to download, test and send us feedback on the implementation.

In addition to the snapshot, we are also publishing the first version of the KnowledgeTree/Drupal module, which Paul Barrett mentioned in his blog a few weeks ago. This early version provides basic document browsing functionality, from within Drupal, and should give you a great idea of the type of integration made easy by CMIS. It also provides a strong base for future integration with Drupal and will hopefully fuel further development in months to come.

For more information on our CMIS implementation and a list tested clients, see the KnowledgeTree CMIS Interface primer on our wiki and the KnowledgeTree-Drupal project page. To download the snapshot, visit our Community Edition download page or just retrieve the latest source from our github repository.

Featured KnowledgeTree Community Project: "iNETAutocompletion" by Pradip Patel, iNETProcess

Damien Williams — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:55:09 +0000

Once again, it's time to showcase yet another awesome KnowledgeTree Community Project! Every couple of months, a KnowledgeTree community project will be featured to acknowledge the outstanding contributions made by members of the KnowledgeTree community.

This time, I interviewed Pradip Patel from iNETProcess, about their project, iNETAutocompletion.

DW: Briefly, describe this project and what it entails?
The project name is iNETAutocompletion. This plugin simplifies assigning tags to a document and gives users the freedom to select from available tags, which are suggested automatically. As a result, the user does not need to visit the ‘Dashboard’ to identify tags that have been previously used.

For example, when user begins to specify a tag, after typing two characters, a box will open suggesting existing tags that matches the tag being typed. It is extremely useful when adding or editing the document tags and it's completely Web 2.0 compliant.

DW: What inspired you to create this project?
First of all, we are developing plugins because, as KnowledgeTree partners and resellers for over two years, we enjoy working with the product, and developing additional functionality to support the KnowledgeTree ecosystem. After working with a few clients and identifying their needs, the company has decided to create this plugin that, we hope, will help simplify users' everyday tasks. [Read more]

Help! Is it Relevant?

carolyn — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:28:33 +0000

Scott Abel at The Content Wrangler recently wrote a timely blog on relevance. We profess, says Scott, that we "… understand relevancy, but when it comes to actually creating relevant content, [we] fail to deliver". The post includes a MediaSauce video that does a great job explaining why we should be communicating smarter, not harder.

Help docs are the software Cindarella. Arguably, they can give a product an authentic voice. But what about relevance? After all, communication is a two way stream, and effective communication assumes the value of the message for the intended audience. Relevance.

In his post, Scott asserts that "... the age of relevance is upon us". The classic ‘Ages of Man’ idea assumes a successively degenerative experience – Gold, Silver, Bronze, then Iron. Whether we are still ‘progressing’ backwards is anyone’s debate. But there is another perspective. The philosophy at self-proclaimed ‘connections company’, MediaSauce, is that '…with broadband access, robust Internet applications, and mobile devices that are computers, we have moved out of the Information Age and into the Interconnected Age, [representing] a fundamental shift in how we connect, communicate, and collaborate'. [Read more]