Document Manager

 

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  1. Overview of Document Manager
  2. What you can do with Document Manager

  3. Access Control

  4. Work with documents in Document Manager

  5. Document conversion

  6. Search
  7. Versioning
  8. Receive updates
  9. Workflow process

  10. Prerequisites and dependencies
  11. Related information

 

Overview of Document Manager

WebSphere Portal Document Manager is a new feature of WebSphere Portal. Document Manager enhances work productivity, frees client machine space and streamlines complicated document management processes by providing a centralized location for documents as well as built-in methods for tracking changes and comments from members of the work team. Files exist in a centralized location in a tree directory structure separate from client machines, where any authorized person can access them, allowing for easy transfer of documents among team members. Depending on a user's access rights, he or she can read, edit, or delete files, as well as create and delete folders. In addition, Document Manager integrates with WebSphere Portal Productivity Components, allowing remote users to edit documents even if they do not have editor software on their personal system. Access control prohibits unauthorized changes being made to a document or folder, and a versioning option provides a safety net in case incorrect information is added to (or correct information deleted from) a file. Document Manager is an ideal solution for diverse and widespread workgroups needing a single focal point to control document processes.

 

What you can do with Document Manager

Users navigate a hierarchy of folders which contain documents. Depending on the user's access rights, he or she can perform simple tasks, such as adding new documents or editing and deleting documents.

Basic user tasks include:

Administrators configure the basic settings for project management tasks. These tasks include setting users' access rights (access control), activating a workflow process, and tracking versions of documents.

 

Configure Document Manager

Document Manager is a portlet that is automatically installed with WebSphere Portal.

Document Manager requires some additional configuration by the administrator. Refer to the online configuration help in the Document Manager interface for step-by-step instructions. First, click the configure icon, then click the help icon. The configuration help opens in a new window.

Document Manager configuration does not take effect until users log out and log in. Be careful when altering configuration settings while Document Manager is in use.

 

Access Control

Some Document Manager administrators may want to restrict who can view, edit, move or delete folders or files. Setting such restrictions can help keep the document repository organized, and can help prevent unwanted changes to documents or folders.

For example, an administrator may want only project managers to have authority to move and delete files, and give writers the authority to open and edit files. Administrators determine users' authorization for these tasks by setting access controls.

The Document Manager Administrator must use the Resource Permissions Portlet to grant users and groups access rights to Document Manager resources.

Note: WebSphere Portal administrators cannot create an administrator solely for Document Manager. You can create an administrator role by editing one of the following resource types, WPCP VirtualResource or WPCP Projects VirtualResource. You can then use this administrative role to administer all Document Manager projects.

  1. Log in to the portal with a user ID that has administrative privileges.

  2. Click Administration.

  3. Click Access.

  4. Click Resource Permission.

  5. Click either VirtualResource or WPCP Projects. Follow the instructions provided with the Resource Permissions help to assign an administrator role.

Document Manager resources are stored as WPCP resources under the Portal Access Control hierarchy. For example, Document Manager projects are WPCP projects, Document Manager documents are WPCP Resources and Document Manager folders are WPCP Directories. They follow the same inheritance rules as any other Portal resources.

 

 

WebSphere Portal role Document Manager access rights
User Read-only access to Document Manager resources. Users can see the resource, but cannot modify or contribute content of their own.
Editor

The ability to view and add new folders or documents to the current resource. Editors can also modify the properties and content of existing Productivity Components documents and files.

Note: The editor role cannot

  • convert and edit documents that are not Productivity Components format
  • move files.

Manager

All the privileges of Editors plus the ability to

  • modify the properties and content of all documents
  • convert documents to Productivity Components format.

    if workflow is on, the user has to be a member of wpsDocAuthor to create the converted document

  • delete folders or documents underneath the current resource.
  • move files.

Administrator The Administrator role can perform any operation.

The Privileged User, Delegator, or Security Administrator roles have no special meaning for Document Manager resources.

Access control gives special privileges to the owner of a resource. For instance, if a user with the Editor role adds a document or folder, she has view, edit, delete, grant access and delegate permissions on that file or folder, even though she is only an editor.

 

Set up access control

As portal administrator, you need to grant and/or restrict view authority to the users and groups that you want to see the Document Manager portlet. Once a new Document Manager Content Repository is created, the administrator must give users permissions on the Portlet itself and to the newly created Content Repository's Resource Node (the name of the content repository will appear in the list of nodes). This action occurs in the WPCPProjects node in the Resource Permissions Portlet in WebSphere Portal.

Once access control for groups is set, the administrator (and certain enabled users) can set access for folders and documents. Refer to the Document Manager User's Help for instructions on setting access control for resources.

 

Space Considerations

There may be a question of space considerations when Document Manager will be populated with large amounts of data. Large amounts of data could be 20 to 30 gigabytes of data with the intent of growth.

Index size is approximately 40-70% of the textual content (disregarding layout information and structural information) of documents. The range is dependent on the size of the vocabulary and uniqueness of terms. The smaller the number of unique terms and the more often multiple occurrences of the same terms are found in a single document, the smaller in the index is and vise-versa.

The Portal Document Manager index can be found on the WebSphere Portal server machine and is located in...

WAS_HOME/wpcp/config/WebSphere_Portal/author/Indexes

For WebSphere Portal Document Manager 5.1.x the design and architecture of PDM changed from WPS 5.0.x to WPS 5.1.x.

In WPv5.1.x, a Java Content Repository (JCR) implementation is used as the PDM repository. However, the space needed for the Document Libraries remains a function of the database vendor and its implementation. In general, the binary data of the document content takes up the majority of the database space. The more documents and libraries, the larger the indexes and overhead.

The maximum index size seen before performance degradation is somewhere around 10GB. The default location of the index is...

WP_root/jcr/search
...and it is configurable in the file...

WP_root/jcr/lib/com/ibm/icm/icm.properties

 

Assigning access to a Document Manager folder or document

Organizations can use the access control features of Document Manager to protect and manage documents and folders at any hierarchical level from a document library down to an individual folder or document. Access to specific folders and documents in Document Manager is assigned using either the Resource Permission portlet on the Administration page, or by clicking the Assign Access icon that appears next to the folder or document name in Document Manager. Refer to the Resource Permissions topic for more information about managing access using the Resource Permissions portlet.

You must have administrative authority in the current document library, or be the owner of a folder or directory, in order to assign access. If you find that you are unexpectedly denied access to folders or documents, contact the Document Manager Administrator for assistance.

To assign access effectively, it is important to understand the concepts of inheritance and blocking within the access control hierarchy. When a document library is created, it inherits the user roles and permissions assigned to the Portal Virtual Resource. For example, if a specific user (or group of users) is granted the role of Editor in the Portal Virtual Resource, then the user has Editor permissions throughout the portal, including all folders and documents. Roles can also be assigned at lower levels of the hierarchy, such as a Resource instance or a Java Content Repository resource, so that any children of the resource can inherit access permissions. To restrict access to a lower-level resource such as a folder, first block the inheritance on that folder, and then assign new roles to allow specific users or user groups the desired access permissions. The following example describes how this is done for a single folder with two groups of users.

 

Example of assigning access to a folder

OurCo is a company using Document Manager to foster team collaboration. OurCo wants to implement document access control across the various teams within its organization. Each team consists of a team manager, one or more team leads, and various document users such as writers or reviewers. The Document Manager Administrator at OurCo creates a new portal page for the teams. On this page, she places a copy of the Document Manager portlet, and creates a new document library for the teams to use. Administrator authority in the document library is assigned to each team manager, while the team leads receive Manager authority for specific folders within the document library.

Team1 consists of a group of document writers. They save their documents to FolderA, which resides in the OurCo document library. Team2 is tasked with reviewing the completed documents in FolderA. Currently, both Team1 and Team2 have Editor access to the portlet, and therefore, through inheritance, to FolderA and the documents within it. The team lead for Team1 wants to restrict the ability to edit files to his team, so he asks the team manager to change the access controls to accomplish this.

The team manager, who has Administrator authority in the document library, does not want to change the access permissions for Team2 across the entire document library, since Team2 is using other folders in the library to edit and store their own documents. To change Team2's access for FolderA only, he first blocks the Editor role on FolderA. Now neither Team1 or Team2 have Editor access to FolderA. Next, he adds Team1 back as Editor on FolderA. Finally, because Team2 needs to be able to read the documents in FolderA, the team manager assigns User authority in FolderA to Team2.

For step-by-step instructions for allowing or restricting access to documents and folders, see the online help that is available from the portlet title bar.

 

Work with documents in Document Manager

 

Documents in Document Manager

Document Manager can store multiple file types, including:

The following characters cannot be used when creating folders or filenames in Document Manager: 

: | @ * ? < > % ' " \ / # + &
In addition, any invalid URL characters can not be used. For more information on URL characters, review RFC 2396.

These documents are stored in the Document Manager document repository, and the document repository is stored in the content publishing database. This database has the default name of wpcp50. During database configuration, plan the size and number of documents you plan to put in the document repository. The size of the document repository must be considered when determining any spatial or performance issues. Refer to the Install > Database section in the WebSphere Portal Information Center for more information on configuring the database. If you wish to use IBM Content Manager as the Document Manager repository, refer to Use IBM Content Manager as a datastore for Document Manager.

Opened files are temporarily stored on the server machine. Once document changes are committed, the new version of the document is stored in the document repository.

 

Productivity Components

Productivity Components can be used to edit Document Manager documents. Administrators can configure Productivity Components to be on or off for a Document Manager project. If Productivity Components is available, the user can create new documents or edit existing documents using the editors.

In addition, using Document Conversion Services, documents in other formats can be converted so that they can be edited with Productivity Components. For example, a spreadsheet created in another program can be converted to a Spreadsheet Component format to allow editing in Document Manager. The Internet Mail Box portlet can save attachments as Document Manager documents or conversely attach Document Manager documents to e-mail.

Productivity Components-supported Web browsers are:

 

Use editors other than Productivity Components

Document Manager can be configured to not use Productivity Components as the default editors. If you elect to not make Productivity Components the default editors, instruct users how to configure their browsers to automatically launch an editing program. If these configurations are not set on the user's machine, the browser prompts the user to save the file locally.

To configure the browser to automatically open an editor:

  1. Open <Java directory>/jre/lib/content-type.properties in a text editor.

  2. Add the editor's information using the following format:

    application/vnd.editorname: \
      description=Your Editing Program's Name;\
      file_extensions=.fileextension

    For example, an entry for Lotus WordPro would look like the following: 

    application/vnd.lotus-wordpro: \
      description=Lotus WordPro Document; \
      file_extensions=.lwp

  3. Save the changes.

 

Viewing and editing documents

Documents in a Document Manager folder appear in a table view. Each document's name is an active link. If the user clicks the document name, a view-only version of the document opens.

Beside each document name are a series of icons, which the user clicks to modify that document. If the user does not have the proper access rights, or if the function pertaining to that icon is turned off, the icon will be inactive.

 

Locking documents

Locking allows users to avoid edit conflicts by securing files they intend to modify. With locking enabled, a document is locked when a user clicks Edit or when a user clicks the Lock icon next to the document. Users with appropriate permission can apply or remove a lock as needed. With workflow enabled, a document is automatically unlocked once it is approved.

To override an existing lock, a user must have delete authority on the document. If the user has delete authority, he or she can remove an existing lock placed by another user on that document.

 

Document conversion

Documents produced by many standard applications (such as word processors or spreadsheets) can be viewed as HTML pages using the Document Conversion Services. Document Conversion Services is integrated with Document Manager and Mail Box. Documents received as attachments to e-mail can be viewed in the browser even if the application that created the document is not installed. Document Conversion Services also allows documents to be searched by content. Document Conversion Services supports many of the most widely used applications.

The document conversion functionality of Document Manager requires the use of a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) server on the iSeries system. For more information, including setup instructions, refer to Install then click Virtual Network Computing.

 

Enabling document conversion

You must have the appropriate package installed for the system.

Systems Additional Packages
iSeries (v5 r2) PASE, X11R6

You need to create a temporary directory for document conversion. The default temporary directory is:

If you wish to create a different temporary directory other than the default, you can edit the convertors.xml file. Add the property "tempDir" to the <global> tag:

<global>
<property name="tempDir" value="<yourtempdirectory>"/>
</global>

To launch the native application when clicking the attachment, the following MIME types must be registered in WAS to enable browsers to properly display documents of that type. The following additional types need to be registered:

The conversion filters are installed with WebSphere Portal. You can configure the export.cfg file, located in the ShareLIB, if you want to fine tune conversion properties such as graphics size and resolution.

 

Search

The Document Manager search function works on the body of the documents as well as document metadata (for example, Title, Description and/or Author). Users enter text in the search bar much as they would to perform a search on the Internet. Document Manager users must select the project they want to search before entering search parameters.

Searches use:

There is a background task that runs periodically to index new documents added to Document Manager projects. How often this background task runs is controlled by the Search Index Frequency configuration option found on the Document Manager configuration page. The minimum time between search index updates is 15 minutes.

Administrators can rebuild the search index immediately by changing the search index frequency option. To do this, the Administrator goes to the Document Manager portlet configuration page and sets the Search Index Frequency to Once. This starts the search indexing task. If Search Index Frequency is already set to Once, or this is a a subsequent attempt to start the indexing, the Administrator selects another option in the drop down, such as 15 minutes and clicks OK, which saves the setting and starts the document indexing task.

Document Manager content cannot be searched through the normal WebSphere Portal search function.

 

Versioning

Users can create new versions of documents, as well as view and retrieve documents by version. Document Manager provides built-in versioning support. The Document Manager administrator can activate or deactivate versioning control from the configuration panel. When versioning is active, users creating a new document or saving edits to a document select whether or not they want to create a new version of that document. Version numbering is automatic, based on how many previous versions of a document exist.

You can preview different versions of a document by clicking Edit properties - paper icon, then clicking the Versions tab. Click the eyeglasses icon next to the document version you wish to preview.

To preview a version, have workflow enabled for that project. You also cannot preview versions from within the Tasks folder.

 

Receive updates

The Receive updates system allows users to see whether particular documents are added or edited. Authorized users request updates for documents or folders they have an interest in. When that particular document is edited, or when a new document is added to a folder, the file shows up in the user's personal Updates folder. The Updates folder is a special folder that appears at the top level of the folder hierarchy when Receive updates is turned on.

Administrators turn the Receive updates function on or off, but cannot control whether particular users are allowed or denied update reports for documents and folders.

 

Workflow Process

 

Overview

Workflow is an optional component of Document Manager that administrators enable during portlet configuration. Workflow allows user to gain control over writing and editing processes, by defining decision and update points.

In workflow, people are assigned roles in a process. For example, there may be a work team with a software developer and a technical writer. The writer starts the workflow process when he creates a document in Document Manager. When he saves that document, the document is automatically submitted for review to the developer. The developer can either approve the document, or send the document back to the writer for changes. This process repeats until the developer approves the document. When the document is approved, the document is made public in Document Manager.

There are two roles in workflow: author and reviewer. When workflow is enabled, both authors and reviewers have a Tasks folder which is at the top level of the folder hierarchy in Document Manager. The workflow process is as follows:

  1. The author creates and saves a document. When saving the document, the author selects the directory where she wants the document to eventually appear. However, the document does not show up in that directory until the review process is complete.

  2. The document appears in the reviewer's Tasks folder.

  3. The reviewer can either:
    1. Approve the document by clicking Approve - check icon.
    2. Reject the document by clicking Reject - circle with slash. A dialog box opens where the reviewer can enter comments. This option is useful if there are multiple reviewers.

  4. If the reviewer rejects the document and adds comments, the document appears in the author's Tasks folder.

  5. If the document was rejected, the author makes the changes indicated in the comments, and saves the document again.

  6. Steps 2 and 3 repeat until the reviewer approves the document.

  7. When approved, the document appears in the directory the author selected when she first created the document.

There can be multiple reviewers; however, only one reviewer can approve or reject a document. There is no process for assigning which reviewer gets approval authority. The first reviewer to click the approve or reject icons makes the decision for all the reviewers.

 

Set up workflow

Workflow roles are first administered through WebSphere Portal's User group Administrative portlet. When using the default workflow, all portlet users allowed to change content must be in the wpsDocAuthor group. Users with review responsibility must be in the wpsDocReviewer group. Membership in the wpsDocAuthor or wpsDocReviewer groups is in addition to the group membership needed to have access to the Document Manager portlet.

Once a change to a document is saved, the document appears in the Tasks folder of the assigned reviewers. Although multiple users can have review responsibility, only one reviewer can accept or reject the document change. Once a document change is accepted by a reviewer, it becomes visible in the Document Manager folder hierarchy. If a reviewer rejects the document change, the document appears in the Tasks folder of the originator of the change for further modification; a subsequent save reactivates the approval step.

 

Prerequisites and dependencies

Document Manager automatically installs with the WebSphere Portal installation. However, the document conversion functionality of Document Manager requires the use of a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) server on the iSeries system. For more information, including setup instructions, refer to Install then click Virtual Network Computing.

 

See also