Delivering Content for Customized Apps

by Lowell Rapaport

Proprietary business applications can present complex problems when integrating with content management systems. Align Technology (www.invisalign.com), the Santa Clara, CA-based maker of Invisalign orthodontic appliances, recently confronted this situation. Align relies on a special internally developed application to guide the manufacture of its clear plastic "aligners,"removable alternatives to conventional braces. The company needed a customizable content management system that could be integrated with this proprietary software.

Align's overall goal was to support its internal manufacturing processes with a secure intranet tied to manufacturing facilities on several continents. Prior to moving ahead with a content management system, the company kept track of jobs using a carefully constructed directory tree on a Linux server. "This system worked well for us at first," says Andrew Earl, a programmer/analyst at Align, "except that every now and then there was a deviation from normal procedure. As the number of jobs increased, so did the number of deviations. This made it harder to keep track of files and jobs associated with designing and supporting products in the field."

Align receives molds of each patient's teeth and accompanying records directly from orthodontists. The company's proprietary application turns these molds into high-resolution, digital 3D CAD files that range from 5 to 15 megabytes. Accompanying patient records are scanned, entered electronically or filled out by orthodontists online.

The manufacturer had a very specific list of features it wanted in its content management system, including strong version control and a workflow system that would allow managers to weed out superfluous files at every stage of production. "This [latter feature] was important for us because our software generates large files," Earl explains. "We had to have a mechanism for deleting or archiving files that were no longer in use."

Reflecting the company's penchant for using Linux, the content management system had to be portable to different platforms. Align also wanted a system that would support high availability. The company routinely transmits 3D CAD files and supporting records to factories in Pakistan and elsewhere, and it needs to ensure successful delivery.

"We considered a variety of content management systems and found most were overly complex or too expensive for our needs," says Earl. The survivor of Align's selection process was the e-Content Management Platform from Quickstream (www.quickstream.com), Colorado Springs, CO. The e-Content Management Platform is a Java-based product developed specifically for customized use by OEMs, integrators, corporate developers and application service providers. The software offers customization potential at nearly every level, from reskinning to custom application development through its application program interface, component architecture and Java server page (JSP) front end.

The e-Content Management Platform from Quickstream is aimed at OEMs, integrators and large corporations that typically customize the architecture and Java server page front end.

The e-Content Management Platform was a good fit for Align since, according to Eric Westercamp, Quickstream's president and chief technology officer, "It is similar to a document management system in that it treats content files as whole units rather than as documents to be broken down into components. However, we share many attributes with Web content management systems such as support for JSP and XML."

Java and XML gave Align the cross-platform portability it wanted, while the document management features supported the version control and workflow features it required. In addition to furnishing the e-Content Management Platform software, Quickstream performed custom software development while Align's in-house programmers developed their Java programming skills.

The deployment of Align's content management system followed a less than typical development path. Most companies and system integrators try to develop all the specifications for a project in advance. This is a good practice because changes to a project during development usually create cost overruns and delays, especially if large portions of a system have to be scrapped and rewritten.

In Align's case, however, many of the electronic processes were developed during deployment. "Align had two goals," said Westercamp, it was "looking for a product that could be immediately usable and could be customized over the long term."

Align immediately placed content on the system once it was installed, but then Quickstream went to work on customizing the system. Three main projects had to be completed to make the system fully functional. First, Quickstream had to integrate Align's custom software with the content management system.

Align's software creates "bite files" that are used to show how a patient's teeth are to be changed as part of the treatment process and guide the manufacture of Align's invisible brace replacements. Each bite file is accompanied by supporting documentation about the patient, the orthodontist doing the work and the treatment's progress.

"We were able to bring these files into the e-Content Management Platform using XML," says Westercamp. XML tags ensured that a search for a particular bite file would also bring up its supporting documentation.

Second, Align needed to be able to transmit files to factories in faraway locations using less than reliable TCP/IP connections. Using Swift MQ, an implementation of the Java messaging system, Quickstream developed a module that would dispatch a bite file and its accompanying documentation to remote locations and then verify the transmission's quality.

The system's third and core customized piece was an unusual workflow system made to Align's specifications. "We created a state-oriented task controller instead of a traditional workflow," Westercamp explains. "Where a workflow guides jobs from one person to another, the 'stateflow' we developed for Align guided jobs from one workgroup to the next."

A "stated" system is one where user access is continuous; that is, all users can access all content all the time, but the content changes as work progresses. The job's state can change from moment to moment. According to Andrew Earl of Align, the system supports the company's "pull-based" manufacturing system.

"Our approach pulls jobs from state to state," Earl explains. "It is radically more efficient because it eliminates the wait times inherent in a push approach."

At this writing, Quickstream was completing the bite file dispatching (transmission and validation) module. It has, thus far, spent two to three person-months on development (over the past five months). The final cost of software and custom development work is expected to be between $300,000 and $400,000. The content management system has, according to Earl, put an end to problems of lost files and missing records, while the workflow and other custom features will support a customized, highly efficient manufacturing approach.