Like to know more about how TechnologyOne Enterprise Content Management (TechnologyOne ECM) actually works?  Read on for further technical detail, including:

 Database Options
 User Interface Options
 Deployment Options
 Integration Services
 Levels of Integration

Database Options Back to top ^
TechnologyOne ECM has been designed to be database independent and offers an application able to operate on multiple databases including MS SQL Server and Oracle.

User Interface Options Back to top ^
The initial development of TechnologyOne ECM commenced in 1994 using Microsoft Visual Basic and C++ and was designed to meet Microsoft Windows development and screen design standards. By designing TechnologyOne ECM in a consistent manner to other MS Windows based applications, TechnologyOne aims to provide users with a familiar look and feel and therefore minimise training requirements. This has resulted in an enhanced user interface providing a Windows 2000 and XP like experience for users.

Since 2000, TechnologyOne has undertaken development using X-forms and W3C standards allowing for the deployment of a browser based version of the product. TechnologyOne ECM has been broken into various functional components allowing for functions to be deployed within an intranet or browser environment. The Webflow module combines workflow and the ability to create browser based screens without the need for programming skills.

Deployment Options Back to top ^
Whether your organisation has multiple offices, branch offices, depots or wants to engage more efficiently with business partners, TechnologyOne ECM is able to be deployed in the following environments: Classic, Browser and Citrix Metaframe. The Document Application Server allows for the management of documents from disparate and remote document stores via a central database and caters to each organisation's unique operational environments.

Integration Services Back to top ^
TechnologyOne ECM provides the ability to link a document, customer contact and workflow components to your core business functions. The tight integration provided by TechnologyOne ECM with external applications or data sources enables your organisation to use data - especially unique keys - created in third party products to register, manage and process documents more efficiently. By delivering tight integration, TechnologyOne ECM ensures the terminology used to index the documents mirrors the terminology used by your core business systems and users are able to seamlessly move between systems without the need to re-key data. Integration of your core busienss systems also eliminates the need to conduct nightly or periodic up-loads of information held in separate systems and ensures your organisational information remains up to date and in sync.

Tight integration is one of the major features of TechnologyOne ECM which separates us from our competitors.

TechnologyOne ECM operates independently of industry-specific applications and of any particular infrastructure application. This enables TechnologyOne ECM to integrate to the following applications:

• Server-based industry-specific applications such as land information services and name and address registers
• Customer-based industry-specific applications such as geographical information systems and hospital systems
• Server-based infrastructure applications such as Exchange, Lotus Notes, SQL Server, Oracle and IIS
• Customer-based infrastructure applications such as Outlook, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer

Levels of Integration Back to top ^
There are three application levels at which integration can occur: the Data-Level, the Process-Level and the User Interface-Level.

Data-Level integration involves the direct importing and/or indexing of data from an external application or data source into TechnologyOne ECM. The three data-level integration technologies currently supported by TechnologyOne ECM are multi-database support, data loads, and trigger-based data feeds. The key to TechnologyOne's ECM's ability to integrate at the data-level to any other application is its canonical database design. One of the main advantages of data-level integration is that it allows the viewing of any data as TechnologyOne ECM data. This allows the registration of documents against data from other systems, and cross-reference data from multiple systems without the need for the user to re-key data.

Process-Level integration involves a TechnologyOne ECM server requesting an external server to perform some operation, or vice-versa. For instance, a form may be submitted via the web into TechnologyOne ECM and registered as a document, the next step in the workflow extracts specific detail and sends a request to another system to register the form. Alternately, the other system may receive the form first and send the document to TechnologyOne ECM for registration.  The interrelated process-level integration technologies we support are COM (and related technologies), message queuing and XML.

User Interface-Level integration involves interaction between the user screens of different applications. The two related technologies that we currently support are Windows client and web-based.  Windows client is where TechnologyOne ECM communicates with another Windows application. Users can be in one application and with a quick key-stroke, jump to a different application. Details on the screen in the first application will trigger a certain function or search in the second application, which will bring up related information. Thus the two applications act, in some respects, as if they were one. Web-based interaction describes where users interact through a web page to engage with your systems. For example, a TechnologyOne ECM registration page will come up when a user clicks a button in another application's web page, before allowing the other application to bring up its next page.