Content Manager 9.3 is out… so let’s see what’s in 9.3!

This month sees the third minor release of Content Manager 9 program series where they have focused on rebranding as well as new features and enhancements.

Join us as we dive into the latest release of TRIM / Records Manager that is now officially titled Micro Focus Content Manager 9.3.

 

Rebranding

The new branding is evident as soon as you update to CM9.3, with new desktop icons, splash screen and the total removal of the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) brand. It is very clear this is now a Micro Focus product with its logo and elements displayed throughout.

The Content Manager logo and icon have been simplified from a 4-colour textured icon with rounded corners to a new 2-colour flat square icon, giving a sharp fresh new look.

The welcome splash screen has been updated with the new Micro Focus branding:

The default theme colour and the majority of the icons within the application remain the same.

CM9.3 sees the introduction of another welcome window called “What’s New” and it outlines in dot point format all the new features and enhancements of the current installation. This only appears the first time the users starts Content Manager 9.3, after that it can be found in the help menu. I think this is a great new little feature for all the Administrators amongst us who are looking for a quick overview of the new version.

Update Records

A number of new tasks have been added to Content Manager to allow easier updating of record metadata.

From the right-click menu the user can update the title components of a single or multiple records.

Cm9.3 sees the introduction of 2 new options that allow you to change the record number of the records. The first option is going to be great for organisations going through a restructure or an amalgamation and they need to change the record type of the records. The selected records will be re-numbered using the new numbering patter or re-sequenced to match the new Record Type.

The second option is for when records that use Container numbering. There is a new System Option that automatically renumbers a record when it moves to a new container.

Set different default sort and filters to the record Favourites, Work Tray, In Tray, Due Tray, In/Due Tray, Recent Documents and My Containers.

Update Locations

In Content Manager 9.3 a few minor but handy little features have been added to the release that System Administrators are going to love.

Location Types can easily be changed by using the right-click menu > Change Location Type on single or multiple records. This is going to facilitate the update of Unknown location types to a Person type. The same window allows you to indicate if the location should be “Internal” or “External” providing a quick and easy way to update Locations.

The next updates to Locations is probably best suited for doing multiple updates at once, it is Change Profile Data. We can see this being used to when you are removing access to CM or similar security controls.

The ability to modify the domain component of the location’s email address is really helpful with so many organisational changes, mergers and acquisitions happening. It is a simple and effective way to update all your locations quickly. For example, if you need to change all locations with a @hpe.com email domain and replaced it with @microfocus.com email domain.

Other Location Fields has a new option added for the 9.3 release to go with the GPS Location, you can change the default Jurisdiction. This option allows organisations to apply a new default Jurisdiction to Locations.

ViewPane

Probably my favourite new addition to Content Manager 9.3 is the introduction of a Viewpane option. This gives users the option to select the location of their viewpane to be displayed at the bottom of the window (default) or to the right of the window.

I’ve set mine over to the right of the window and I find that it is a much better use of my screen real estate when working on a small laptop for example.

Office Integration

The Content Manager Office integration now works when documents are opened for Editing from Content Manager. In 9.3, when using the Edit option, the Content Manager Office integration options such as Check In, Make Final, Check In on Close and Records Properties, will have the same behaviour as they do when you open a record from within Content Manager integrated Office application.

The Content Manager Properties dialog is now displayed within the Office application rather than opening a record window in the Content Manager client.

ArcSight Integration

As part of the Audit options, Content Manager 9.3 can produce log files in Common Event Format that can be ingested by ArcSight (or other industry standard log ingest systems). The new option, Generate an additional offline audit log using ArcSight Common Event Format, is available on the Administration -Audit -General tab.

Render Improvements

Two new options have also been added to facilitate the automatic creation of renditions. Content Manager administrators can enable options for renditions to be automatically created for electronic documents that are checked in using specific Record Types. The two options that can be enabled are:

• Automatically create PDF rendition – enable this option so when an electronic document with a suitable file format is checked into Content Manager, once the document has been transferred to the document store, it will be sent to the Rendering processor and an PDF will be attached as a Rendition to the record.
• Automatically create OCR rendition (for tif, jpg, etc.) – enable this option so when an electronic document with a suitable file format is checked into Content Manager, once the document has been transferred to the document store, it will be sent to the Rendering processor and an OCR format will be attached as a Rendition to the record.

To facilitate the automatic creation of renditions, in Content Manager Enterprise Studio there additional settings that can be defined to generate specific automatic PDF renditions.

Document Store Integrity Checks

The Document Store Integrity Check functionality has been improved in this release. When a Integrity Check is run on a Document Store in 9.3, it:

• uses the document hash to ensure the stored document is valid and has not been tampered with.
• checks if the document is missing and restores the document from backup store if a replacement is found (if Correct any errors that are encountered is checked). If it cannot find replacement, it will mark the document as missing.
• checks for the number of documents that had a discrepancy with the reference count (single instancing).
• generates a hash for the document if Generate hash for records that don’t have a stored hash is checked.

Other Enhanced Features

• Improved UI
  • Reduction of duplicate options on dialogs
• Audit Log –Search Executed
  • Two new options added to Audit Options for Auditing of record searches
    • New RMB Search option –Search History
    • New Active Audit Events search method –Is Search Event
  • Improvements to SDM integration
    • SDM JSON format IDX files are now recognized by Content Manager and converted to user-friendly HTML files
    • Web Client now supports preview of user-friendly HTML renditions of the SDM IDX files
  • IDOL and KeyView
    • In this release the versions of IDOL and KeyView have been upgraded to version 12.0. Image Server, the component that allows you to complete OCR Image processing, has been upgraded to Media Server version 12.0
    • The default query operator for IDOL has been modified to now be AND rather than OR
  • Document Store Improvements
    • Improved Document Store Integrity Checks
    • New option to turn off the CreateHardLink function for WGS asynchronous file transfers
    • New option for enabling compression on client/WGS connection
  • ArcSight Log Generation
    • Option to generate offline audit log using ArcSight Common Event Format
  • Elasticsearch Improvements
    • The default query operator for Elastiscsearch has been modified to now be AND rather than OR. This cannot be modified
    • X-Pack authentication and support for Amazon Web Service (AWS)

 

There are many more fixes and enhancements in Micro Focus Content Manager 9.3 but these are some of the highlights we thought you might like to know about.

If you are planning an upgrade and need assistance, call Kapish on (03) 9017 4943 as we are always here to help guide you through a successful upgrade project. Or if you would prefer you can always email us and one of the Kapish Team will be in touch.

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Here is the complete copy of the Micro Focus Content Manager 9.3 Release Notes.