Insights from Implementing OpenText 16 Upgrades

OpenText announced the largest coordinated software release in the company’s history in July. OpenText Content Suite and OpenText Extended ECM (xECM) have new features and capabilities with Release 16 EP6.

While the new release features and capabilities are deemed interesting and beneficial, for clients TerraLink has recently upgraded the business drivers were also to be operating on supported software or completing the software upgrade in conjunction with hardware upgrades.

In the course of completing these Content Suite and Extended ECM upgrades, the TerraLink team has gained key insights that will aid organizations about to embark on their own OpenText upgrades. Most notably, is that while OpenText provides documentation about upgrading each individual component there is not an overall procedure and prescribed sequence for upgrading the xECM bundle with three typical major components - OTDS, Archive Server, and Content Server. Additional TerraLink insights for OpenText Content Suite and xECM upgrades include:

• The installation and upgrade procedures for Archive Center, Content Server, and OTDS are different when upgraded by themselves vs as part of the xECM bundle
• Custom indexes on content server database tables can meddle with the upgrade procedure and cause database upgrade interruptions and errors
• Existing workflows (whether in Production or not) containing any XML Interchange steps should be replaced with Content Intelligence steps due to OpenText support deprecation
• System Center, while relatively new, has very specific infrastructure and network communication requirements
• As LAPI (Livelink API) is not supported in versions 16 and later, custom developed modules and custom code need to be converted from LAPI to RESTAPI
• Current user interfaces (UI) need to be evaluated to identify specific applications and roles where Smart UI should be implemented. Introduction of Smart UI presents opportunities for greater user adoption but will increase the user learning curve and complexity of the upgrade roll-out
• For users of xECM Platform 10.5 with Transmittal Management there is a new user experience in xECM for Engineering version 16, which includes multiple out of the box features which previously had to be developed

To enlist TerraLink experts for your upgrade project or just to learn more about the benefits and lessons learned with upgrading OpenText Content Suite, Extended ECM, or SAP Extended ECM by OpenText, contact TerraLink at sales@terralink-global.com.