P8 Platform Emphasizes Integration & Processes

by Doug Henschen

Released in late January, FileNet P8 gets its name from the simple fact that it is the eighth technology platform in the company's 20-year history. But the "P" in P8 could just as easily stand for "process."

The consistent theme in this next-generation enterprise content management (ECM) product is supporting business processes with tight integration and what FileNet calls "active content."

Offered in four prepackaged suites, P8 is three parts state-of-the-art J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) and XML-enabled content platform and one part legacy imaging technology brought into a modern architecture. The first three parts, which evolved largely from the company's Brightspire platform, are the P8 Content Manager Suite, the Business Process Manager Suite and the Web Content Manager Suite, all of which share the same code set and unified back-end management.

The core component of P8 is the Content Manager (CM) Suite, which is geared to traditional document management applications. The CM Suite provides the basics of ECM, including document review and approval, classification, search, content life cycle management, events, process tracking and system connectivity for managing, controlling and delivering a broad range of content types. The connectivity options include integration with Microsoft Office as well as the many desktop applications that support the WebDAV standard. At the enterprise level, a Java API and built-in XML and SOAP (simple object access protocol) integration capabilities simplify the challenge of exposing content to and dynamically interacting with portals, ERP, CRM and other third-party systems. In addition, a prebuilt integration to BEA's WebLogic Portal is available immediately, and portal connectors are being developed for mySAP, Siebel, Plumtree and the IBM WebSphere Portal.

The Business Process Manager Suite and Web Content Management Suite include all the components of the CM Suite as well as additional features and functions required for their respective purposes.

The BPM Suite is aimed at transaction-centric applications, such as claims processing and mortgage/ commercial lending, as well as process- and document-centric environments in manufacturing and government. The suite adds the workflow management, process design, process simulation and process analysis features needed to automate and optimize complex business processes. The platform's built-in integration capabilities can be extended with an optional Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) server based on IBM CrossWorlds. FileNet says organizations can also work with Vitria or SeeBeyond EAI technology and the iLog Inference (rules) Engine.

As its name suggests, the Web Content Manager Suite adds the features needed to manage robust Web sites and intranets. Content contribution can be handled through templates, wizard-driven tools or the Microsoft Office and WebDAV integrations available across the P8 platform. Management extends to HTML, XML, rich media, PDFs, emails and images, and revisions are handled at the object (rather than page) level, easing site changes, versioning and rollback. Automatic link navigation builds and maintains the links between content sources and Web pages, ensuring their ongoing integrity.

All three of these suites share a common J2EE code set and can leverage the scalability and performance of enterprise application servers such as BEA WebLogic or IBM WebSphere. The platform operates in both Microsoft and Unix environments and with SQL and Oracle databases. If you begin with any one of these suites, which each start at about $125,000, you can always add the functionality available in the other suites. In fact, FileNet has greatly simplified this process by integrating the entire platform. Regardless of which of these three suites you start with, tapping new features and functions is a simple matter of installing additional code rather than calling in FileNet and/or integrators to add modules. This approach is said to lower the total cost of ownership, letting organizations focus on building and improving content-driven applications rather than integrating underlying technologies required to support those applications.

The fourth element of the P8 Platform is the Image Manager Suite, a document imaging platform evolved largely from FileNet's Panagon platform. Aimed at high-volume, high-performance applications, such as insurance claims, lending and tax processing, the Image Manager Suite incorporates capture, workflow, output and report management, and support for magnetic and optical storage. While this suite has a separate repository — with provisions for high availability, scalability and security as well as integrations with SAP and Siebel — it's tied to the P8 Content Manager repository through the Image Services Resource Adapter. This Adapter is a set of Java classes for querying, retrieving and creating documents in Image Services.

Another element unifying the entire platform is the P8 Workplace Web-based user interface. Running from a J2EE application server, this single interface lets users, administrators and developers perform all their document management, business process management and Web content management tasks. Users can browse, search, version, create folders and renditions, and personalize views of content from within either the Content Manager or Image Services content stores. P8 Workplace is also used to launch and track workflows, perform and route tasks, and create and approve content for delivery to a Web site. Administrators, analysts and developers use Workplace to customize user interfaces, create templates, define and manage business processes, analyze performance and build and test new processes.

FileNet emphasizes that P8 is not about simply storing and retrieving content on an enterprisewide scale; it's about supporting processes and applications with dynamic content. With its support for integration through XML/SOAP, an open Java API and optional EAI technology, the platform, it is said, can harness content from anywhere and interact with systems to automate content-dependent processes. Using tools including prebuilt solutions templates, predefined events and event subscriptions (rather than custom code), the platform can use the creation, modification or deletion of content as a trigger for workflows, tasks, messages and updates within P8 or integrated applications. Underscoring the concept of active content, these interactions might result in new or updated content and further downstream interactions.

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