RE: Document Management Systems for FrameMaker

["Rick Quatro" <rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Framers,

Here is a summary of some of the information that I have received so far.

Rick Quatro
Carmen Publishing
rick@frameexpert.com
http://www.frameexpert.com
Author of FrameScript: A Crash Course

Hi David,

Here is a summary of some of the replies I've gotten so far.

Rick Quatro
Carmen Publishing
rick@frameexpert.com
http://www.frameexpert.com
Author of FrameScript: A Crash Course

Rick...some general questions. this is only a start:

How big is the customer
How many current documents (not pages)
How many documents will be added in what time frame (5 per day, 1,000 per
week)
How many people will be using it and how often do they "go to the well"
Do you want to keep all versions and be able to access any version?
Only Frame documents or mixed types?
How much money and resources do they have to commitment to this?
Does the customer want an enterprise type system, a network system or a
single station system?
----------
How much are they willing to spend?

On the high end of the scale there's Documentum and Astoria. Adobe seems to
have
built WebDAV functionality into FM7. If you develop an SGML workflow, CVS
systems can be used fully.
----------
I've used Chrystal (now Lightspeed) Astoria and Documentum. I wouldn't
recommend
either of them. Neither works that well for remote users and Astoria
requires a
huge investement in SGML/XML work to get what you want out of it. Documentum
also
doesn't do that much out of the box--it requires a lot of
maintenance/customization.

Depending on their needs, something simple like ClearCase (if they're
already using
it for software control) gives you control of the documents without a lot of
headaches.
----------
For a list of content management software, check out this page:

http://www.apqc.org/portal/apqc/site/generic2?path=/site/km/content_mgmt.jht
ml
----------
I can say that our organization of about 18 writers use Documentum
plus the FrameLink interface from Datalogics to manage all the
source components for about 65 publications totaling about 10K
pages. We had looked at Documentum while we were still an
independent company and were probably going to reject it based
on cost. But then we were acquired by Intel, who have an enterprise
license for Documentum and the choice became a no-brainer. Our
only direct expenses were the licenses for the excellent FrameLink
interface, which very neatly integrates Documentum directly into
the FrameMaker UI, a consultant to get the initial implementation
up and running, and some training from Documentum.
----------
We here use VSS (Microsoft's Visual SourceSafe). While it does have some
drawbacks, if managed correctly it has worked really well for us - sharing,
checking in and out etc. If you want more info I would be happy to help you
out.



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