Automated Patching with Ansible and the TekStream MSP

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By: Karla Broadrick | Technical Architect & Team Lead

 

TekStream is excited to roll out the use of Ansible for automated patching of customer environments managed under the Managed Services Program (MSP).

What is Ansible?

Ansible is an IT automation engine.  It can be used to automate any number of repetitive system administration tasks such as infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, task automation, and application deployment.  It can be utilized in both On-Prem and cloud environments.  Instructions are organized into roles and playbooks, allowing flexibility for tasks to be performed based on a set of input parameters.  The setup for Ansible is simple and doesn’t rely on an agent on remote hosts.  All of this leads to a great degree of flexibility in how and where Ansible is used to automate every day IT tasks.

How is TekStream utilizing Ansible?

TekStream has created an Ansible playbook that can be used to automate OS and application patching in customer’s environments.  The playbook automatically creates backups, downloads designated patches, shuts down the application, applies both Windows and Linux OS patches, applies WebLogic and other Oracle patches and reboots the host as needed.

The TekStream Ansible solution for patching is targeted at OS patching and Oracle WebCenter and WebLogic application patching, but has the flexibility to be extended into other areas.  TekStream uses this solution in our MSP customer environments.

Benefits:

The benefits to TekStream MSP customers of using Ansible for patching are many including

  • Consistency: Patches are applied the same every time in every environment. This means less mistakes are made and ensures uniformity and quality that our MSP customers can rely on.
  • Time savings: Automation saves time. No longer is there a need to manually log into each server, download and transfer patches, apply each one, and wait in between each step.  With the TekStream Ansible solution for patching, a single command kicks off the entire process.  Our MSP customers can rest assured that their downtime is minimized.
  • Scalability: This automated solution lends itself to be scaled quite easily.  Whether you have a single server environment or a large cluster, the Ansible playbook can be utilized.  The servers can be patched in parallel, without the bottleneck of required manual intervention.  This means that we are able to patch a large clustered environment with a single period of downtime.
  • Easy knowledge transfer/training: Because Ansible takes care of 99% of the work, there is very little knowledge required to do patching. Once configured for a customer environment, the solution is able to run on its own.  This makes knowledge transfer and training incredibly simple.  It also eliminates the fear of lost knowledge during personnel changes.
  • Reliability: All of the benefits listed above equates to reliability. Your organization can rest assured that patching will be done correctly, every time, and in an acceptable timeframe.
  • Cost Savings: Ansible allows us to do more in less time.  For TekStream MSP customers, this translates to cost savings and allows us to stretch your dollars further.

Interested in streamlining the patching and maintenance of your system?  Contact TekStream to learn about how we can help with Ansible and our MSP program.

Options to Consider for Your Oracle 12c WebCenter Upgrade

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By: Brandon Prasnicki | Technical Architect

 

If you search the Oracle knowledgebase on how to upgrade your existing Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC), Imaging, or Portal instance from 11g to 12c, your options are to do an in-place upgrade or to migrate the entire repository using Oracle WebCenter Content supported tools.  However, if an upgrade consists of new hardware (on-premise), new cloud Infrastructure (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform etc), upgraded operating systems (Microsoft Windows or Linux) along with database upgrade (Oracle Database 12c), the only supported method is to use these supported migration tools.  To move the content from one machine to the next, this process consists of the following:

  1. Install 12c on the new environment
  2. Create the 12c schemas with RCU
  3. Create and configure the 12c domain
  4. Migrate the WCC configurations with CMU and Archiver
  5. Migrate the WCC content with Archiver

While this is a straightforward approach, the question becomes:  Is this feasible?

The answer to that question is:  It depends.

With any upgrade project, TekStream Solutions evaluates the scope of the upgrade and migration and makes recommendations on the appropriate approach.  Here is a high-level outline of starting points considered during the TekStream QuickStream process:

  1. Is the repository small? This supported methodology is a good approach and alternative for instances that do not hold a lot of content.  We have seen situations for implementations that leverage WCC as a backend for implementations like Portal where the content repository isn’t very large.  For this, the supported methodology is a decent alternative.
  2. Are there opportunities to decommission old Enterprise Content Management Systems? Sometimes there is an opportunity to also mix in and decommission old content repositories. Examples include old shared filesystems not currently managed by any enterprise content management systems (CMS), or even little-used old CMS systems where, depending on the customer license structure, the ROI of rolling into an Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC) instance makes sense during the time of upgrade.  Examples of this include but are not limited to Adobe and Documentum etc.  For this, TekStream utilizes a proprietary utility called “Content Loader” to handle WCC delta migrations, and merge deprecated CMS application content.
  3. Is the repository large? For very large repositories, Tekstream uses a cost-effective approach called the “out of place” in-place upgrade which eliminates the need to migrate the content.  The ‘supported’ Oracle approach simply is not feasible, as repositories with millions of content items would take months and maybe even years to migrate.  Examples of implementations that include large repositories include Digital Asset Management (DAM), Records Management (RM) and even some regular Content Management repositories.   When Oracle states this “out of place” in-place upgrade is not a supported approach, they are strictly referring to all the ‘gothchas’ that can occur.  The support team members at Oracle are not the consultants to handle such an approach.  That is where TekStream solutions come in to guide and implement the upgrade to a successful outcome.
    1. Have we seen ‘gotchas’ in this approach? Certainly.  Every version and situation has its nuances.  TekStream’s QuickStream process digs deeper into identifying unique customer situations to account for during a migration.  Tekstream has proven to handle these challenges and deliver successful implementations.  Our background expertise performing these upgrades before has proven vital to customer success.
    2. Could a customer do this approach by themselves? Honestly, probably not.  We are here to guide you through this approach and avoid the pitfalls that can occur.  We have been through this before, and are here to guide and deliver a successful upgrade.

TekStream Solutions makes sure that the system is migrated, upgraded and in a clean, working, and supported state at the completion of the project.   This approach has proven to save customers a lot of time and money.  TekStream also offers extended support and is an Oracle Managed Services provider to give customers great peace of mind and frees up internal resources for more demanding in-house projects.

Want to learn more about Oracle 12c WebCenter upgrades? Contact us today!

Integrating Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) and Content and Experience Cloud (CEC)

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By: Greg Becker | Technical Architect

OVERVIEW

During the first phase of a recent project we built an employee file repository for a Healthcare client in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure – Classic (OCI-C) space. A number of services were used including Oracle Content and Experience Cloud (repository), Oracle Process Cloud Service (for filing the documents in a logic structure), Oracle WebCenter Enterprise Capture (for scanning) and Oracle Database Cloud Service (for custom application tables).

During the second phase of the project our clients had a requirement to automatically update metadata values on their content items stored in the CEC repository. They wanted to trigger a change based on events or updates that occur for an employee record that is stored in Oracle Human Capital Management, for example when an Employee Status changes from Active to Inactive.

Our solution was to use an Oracle Process Cloud Service process to perform the metadata updates when certain values were passed into the process. The reason for updating the metadata is so that accurate searches can be performed by end users. The tricky part of the implementation is how to call the PCS process based on the change. To accomplish this Informatica is used to determine a ‘change’ based on data from the tables within the HCM structure and then pass that change record to a DB table used by the client solution. At that point a database function was developed to action the PCS REST Web Service. The final step of the process was to build a database trigger that called the function.

First you need to do some initial setup to be able to use the APEX libraries as well as create the network ACL to connect to the PCS domain you’re using. You can find this information in various places online. You can either use SOAP or REST web services and we chose REST. If you want to call the web service using SSL (which we did) you’ll have to also create an Oracle wallet.

CODE SNIPPETS

Function Definition:

SOAP Envelope:

Call the Function from a Trigger:

SUMMARY

There are more than one ways to fulfil this customer requirement but these are the pieces that worked well in this case. If you have any additional integration needs between Oracle Human Capital Management and Oracle Content and Experience Cloud please contact TekStream and we’d be happy to assist you.

AXF 12c Upgrade Patches and FIPSA Components

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By: John Schleicher | Sr. Technical Architect

Introduction

This document contains the patch listing that was assembled during a recent Financials Image Processing Solution Accelerator (FIPSA) upgrade where the system was upgraded from 11.1.1.8 (imaging) to 12.2.1.3 release using the standard upgrade process and supplemented by post-upgrade activity to restore the system to full functionality.

The patch listing represents all of the WebLogic server components inclusive of Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)  that were present on the custom solution.   If your system doesn’t include BAM then the additional patches (26404239, 26081565, 28901325) aren’t required.

FIPSA Release

The FIPSA package 12.2.1.3.2 is required for the upgrade as it contains the necessary libraries and archives that are required for the AXF Solution Workspace and Coding form to run in the 12c environment.

Manual Edit

Due to a modification to the central task service engine which affects the SystemAttributes structure a single line edit is required of the InvoiceProcessing.bpel file of the 12.2.1.3.2 FIPSA release.  Presumably, this will be modified by subsequent releases.  Ensure that on line 3411 the reference to task:assigneeUsers/task:id is changed to task:updatedBy/task:id.  This is the least impact solution and may be adjusted in future releases but this has been tested and is working.

Note that active InvoiceProcessing tasks after upgrade cannot use the ‘SaveTask’ AXF action as the old paradigm will be engaged and the process will fault at the noted ‘assigneeUsers’ reference.  It is recommended that the ‘Save Task’ AXF action be disabled via the Imaging Solution Editor to avoid this fault until such time that active workflow instances are no longer present on that baseline.

Patch Listing

Here is an opatch lsinventory listing of the patches applied to the system representing bam, capture, content, soa, and WebLogic:

********************************************************************************

Oracle Interim Patch Installer version 13.9.4.0.0

Copyright (c) 2019, Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Oracle Home       : /oracle/middleware12c

Central Inventory : /oracle/oraInventory

   from           : /oracle/middleware12c/oraInst.loc

OPatch version    : 13.9.4.0.0

OUI version       : 13.9.3.0.0

Log file location : /oracle/middleware12c/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch2019-04-23_10-51-48AM_1.log

OPatch detects the Middleware Home as “/oracle/middleware12c”

Lsinventory Output file location : /oracle/middleware12c/cfgtoollogs/opatch/lsinv/lsinventory2019-04-23_10-51-48AM.txt

——————————————————————————–

Local Machine Information::

Hostname: imaging

ARU platform id: 226

ARU platform description:: Linux x86-64

Interim patches (18) :

Patch  26045997     : applied on Tue Apr 23 10:50:59 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  22112962

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 13 Apr 2018, 23:35:27 hrs UTC

   Bugs fixed:

     26045997

Patch  27133806     : applied on Tue Apr 23 10:41:52 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  22061693

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 27 Mar 2018, 16:59:09 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     27133806

Patch  25830131     : applied on Tue Apr 23 10:35:35 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  22704908

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 27 Jan 2019, 12:26:12 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     25830131

   This patch overlays patches:

     28710939

   This patch needs patches:

     28710939

   as prerequisites

Patch  28710939     : applied on Tue Apr 23 10:31:41 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  22540742

Patch description:  “WLS PATCH SET UPDATE 12.2.1.3.190115”

   Created on 21 Dec 2018, 14:25:48 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     23076695, 23103220, 25387569, 25488428, 25580220, 25665727, 25750303

     25800186, 25987400, 25993295, 26026959, 26080417, 26098043, 26144830

     26145911, 26248394, 26267487, 26268190, 26353793, 26439373, 26473149

     26499391, 26502060, 26547016, 26589850, 26608537, 26624375, 26626528

     26731253, 26806438, 26828499, 26835012, 26929163, 26936500, 26985581

     27055227, 27111664, 27117282, 27118731, 27131483, 27187631, 27213775

     27234961, 27272911, 27284496, 27411153, 27417245, 27445260, 27469756

     27486993, 27516977, 27561226, 27603087, 27617877, 27693510, 27803728

     27819370, 27912485, 27927071, 27928833, 27934864, 27947832, 27948303

     27988175, 28071913, 28103938, 28110087, 28138954, 28140800, 28142116

     28149607, 28166483, 28171852, 28172380, 28311332, 28313163, 28319690

     28360225, 28375173, 28375702, 28409586, 28503638, 28559579, 28594324

     28626991, 28632521

Patch  29620828     : applied on Tue Apr 23 08:57:20 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  22858384

Patch description:  “ADF BUNDLE PATCH 12.2.1.3.0(ID:190404.0959.S)”

   Created on 15 Apr 2019, 17:17:00 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     23565300, 24416138, 24717021, 25042794, 25802772, 25988251, 26587490

     26674023, 26760848, 26834987, 26957170, 27970267, 28368196, 28811387

     28849860

Patch  29367192     : applied on Tue Apr 23 08:50:38 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  22751712

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 12 Mar 2019, 01:07:01 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     28843809, 28861250, 28998550, 29259548

   This patch overlays patches:

     28928412

   This patch needs patches:

     28928412

   as prerequisites

Patch  29257258     : applied on Tue Apr 23 08:45:17 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  22807543

Patch description:  “OWEC Bundle Patch 12.2.1.3.190415”

   Created on 16 Apr 2019, 07:02:38 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     18519793, 18877178, 19712986, 21110827, 21364112, 24702902, 25177136

     25181647, 25693368, 26650230, 27333909, 27412572, 27454558, 27570740

     27578454, 27713280, 27713320, 27839431, 27846706, 28128298, 28179003

     28324896, 28361985, 28373191, 28411455, 28460624, 28517373, 28581435

     28629570, 28705938, 28709611, 28818965, 28878198, 28893677, 28912243

     29197309, 29198801, 29279156, 29285826, 29286452, 29305336, 29305347

     29349853, 29473784, 29620912, 29620944, 29635114

Patch  28901325     : applied on Tue Apr 23 08:36:49 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  22605292

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 30 Nov 2018, 21:05:48 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     28901325

Patch  26081565     : applied on Tue Apr 23 08:35:28 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  21885885

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 19 Jan 2018, 08:12:44 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     26081565

Patch  26404239     : applied on Tue Apr 23 08:33:47 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  21885962

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 18 Jan 2018, 21:09:57 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     26404239

Patch  24950713     : applied on Tue Apr 23 08:24:45 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  22708973

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 29 Jan 2019, 08:18:55 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     24950713

   This patch overlays patches:

     29142661

   This patch needs patches:

     29142661

   as prerequisites

Patch  29142661     : applied on Wed Apr 17 12:22:50 MDT 2019

Unique Patch ID:  22643444

Patch description:  “SOA Bundle Patch 12.2.1.3.0(ID:181223.0212.0069)”

   Created on 23 Dec 2018, 12:57:19 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     24922173, 24971871, 25941324, 25980718, 26031784, 26372043, 26385451

     26401629, 26408150, 26416702, 26472963, 26484903, 26498324, 26536677

     26571201, 26573292, 26644038, 26645118, 26669595, 26696469, 26720287

     26739808, 26796979, 26851150, 26868517, 26869494, 26895927, 26935112

     26947728, 26953820, 26957074, 26957183, 26982712, 26997999, 27018879

     27019442, 27024693, 27030883, 27073918, 27078536, 27119541, 27141953

     27150210, 27157900, 27171517, 27210380, 27230444, 27241933, 27247726

     27260565, 27268787, 27311023, 27368311, 27379937, 27411143, 27429480

     27449047, 27486624, 27494478, 27561639, 27627502, 27633270, 27639691

     27640635, 27651368, 27653922, 27656577, 27708766, 27708925, 27715066

     27767587, 27785937, 27832726, 27876754, 27879887, 27880006, 27929443

     27932274, 27940458, 27957338, 28000870, 28034163, 28035648, 28042548

     28053563, 28067002, 28096509, 28163159, 28178811, 28178850, 28265638

     28290635, 28317024, 28324134, 28368230, 28389624, 28392941, 28448109

     28468835, 28597768, 28620247, 28632418, 28702757, 28808901, 28901363

     29005814

Patch  28928412     : applied on Mon Jan 28 13:14:33 MST 2019

Unique Patch ID:  22610612

Patch description:  “WebCenter Content Bundle Patch 12.2.1.3.190115”

   Created on 14 Dec 2018, 02:53:41 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     16546231, 17278216, 21443677, 23526550, 23567875, 23717512, 24660722

     25051178, 25228941, 25311639, 25357798, 25605764, 25606440, 25801227

     25822038, 25858327, 25885770, 25928125, 25928588, 25979019, 25985875

     26075990, 26105301, 26185222, 26228118, 26283098, 26300787, 26358746

     26415656, 26430590, 26545951, 26574381, 26576630, 26586426, 26596903

     26636302, 26723147, 26732710, 26786056, 26813909, 26820528, 26847632

     26890620, 26893963, 26954901, 27020230, 27065201, 27099662, 27102908

     27119372, 27140730, 27190092, 27190553, 27193483, 27206340, 27233223

     27254464, 27314625, 27319352, 27346199, 27365218, 27383350, 27383732

     27390329, 27396349, 27406356, 27453228, 27457939, 27458003, 27496856

     27502500, 27507189, 27547665, 27574477, 27608152, 27620996, 27648991

     27661839, 27744442, 27771468, 27801161, 27804618, 27814273, 27824132

     27839174, 27877814, 27879502, 27916698, 27921859, 27943295, 27983987

     27984425, 28043459, 28048684, 28098831, 28165088, 28180857, 28185865

     28225141, 28295718, 28302949, 28317851, 28319312, 28378394, 28380642

     28405721, 28425934, 28452764, 28475951, 28481653, 28485796, 28486569

     28556894, 28593461, 28621910, 28635203, 28651169, 28663117, 28704291

     28707740, 28798285, 28872073, 28872314, 28889421, 29011518

Patch  28278427     : applied on Fri Aug 17 08:15:59 MDT 2018

Unique Patch ID:  22374151

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 6 Aug 2018, 05:40:17 hrs PST8PDT

   Bugs fixed:

     28278427

Patch  26355633     : applied on Thu Mar 29 12:51:10 MDT 2018

Unique Patch ID:  21447583

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 1 Aug 2017, 21:40:20 hrs UTC

   Bugs fixed:

     26355633

Patch  26287183     : applied on Thu Mar 29 12:50:58 MDT 2018

Unique Patch ID:  21447582

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 1 Aug 2017, 21:41:27 hrs UTC

   Bugs fixed:

     26287183

Patch  26261906     : applied on Thu Mar 29 12:50:32 MDT 2018

Unique Patch ID:  21344506

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 12 Jun 2017, 23:36:08 hrs UTC

   Bugs fixed:

     25559137, 25232931, 24811916

Patch  26051289     : applied on Thu Mar 29 12:50:26 MDT 2018

Unique Patch ID:  21455037

Patch description:  “One-off”

   Created on 31 Jul 2017, 22:11:57 hrs UTC

   Bugs fixed:

     26051289

Noted Patch Exceptions

The above listing doesn’t leverage the latest bundle patches for SOA nor WebLogic Server as there were overlay patches with dependencies on the bundle that had yet to be released.  Monitor the release of patches 24950713 and 25830131 for inclusion of the latest bundle release.

Conclusion

TekStream has performed the 12.2.1.3 FIPSA upgrade and worked through the issues necessary to restore full functionality on the new baseline.  

Have questions or need assistance with your upgrade? Contact us today!

[pardot-form id=”17931″ title=”Blog – John Schleicher – AXF 12C UPGRADE PATCHES AND FIPSA COMPONENTS”]

[1] Application eXtension Framework

Migrating from WebCenter to Hyland OnBase

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By: Karla Broadrick | Technical Architect & Team Lead

 

Ready for a change in your ECM platform?  Perhaps your organization is on an older unsupported version of WebCenter Content or WebCenter Imaging and the prospect of upgrading to the latest is overwhelming.  Maybe you are looking for an expanded feature set and future product roadmap that WebCenter simply doesn’t offer.  Or perhaps your organization owns both WebCenter and Hyland OnBase and you are looking to consolidate your footprint.  A move to Hyland OnBase might be the change you are looking for.

With experts in both WebCenter and OnBase, TekStream is uniquely positioned to assist your business with its digital transformation.  The TekStream team’s intimate knowledge of both WebCenter and OnBase allows us a deep understanding of how your current solution works, your current pain points, and future business needs.  With this understanding and OnBase expertise, we are uniquely equipped to assist you in designing an OnBase solution that will not only meet all of your current business needs, but also provide a stable platform with a product that continues to expand its features and offerings.

Below are some of the potential challenges that the TekStream team can help you navigate as you consider a migration to OnBase.

  • Metadata Model conversion: From Content Types, Profiles and Metadata to Document Type Groups, Document Types, and Keywords. How is the current metadata model best represented in OnBase?
  • Security: Securing your content is the utmost importance. TekStream can assist with mapping security groups and accounts to OnBase user group privileges and security keywords.
  • Document ingestion: How do you get documents into the system? Whether its document upload, scanning, email, or flat-file ingestion OnBase is capable of meeting your needs.
  • Workflow: TekStream can help you examine your workflow processes and determine how these should best be replicated in your OnBase solution. Or if you aren’t currently taking advantage of any workflow engine, OnBase can help streamline your business processes. TekStream will work with you to design and build out a tailored workflow to any number of business areas.
  • Executing the migration: Planning the logistics around the migration itself including extracting images and data from one system, transferring and importing it to the other.
  • Custom components and other custom functionality: Nearly every WebCenter implementation things that make it unique. Whether it’s custom components or other custom functionality that is integral to your business, it’s essential to make sure that this functionality is planned for in your OnBase implementation.

 

Contact TekStream today to learn more about we can help you migrate to Hyland OnBase!

TekStream AXF 12c Upgrade Special Components

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TekStream’s extension to Oracle’s Application eXtension Framework (AXF) provides enhanced customizations surrounding Invoice Reporting using Business Activity Monitor (BAM), auditing of user actions, and QuikTrace of BPEL process instance.   With the introduction of the 12c upgrade available with release 12.2.1.3 TekStream discovered that two of its reporting components were highly impacted by paradigm changes in 12c.   TekStream has gone through multiple iterations of 12c upgrade and has incorporated the necessary reporting enhancements to provide the functionality of the 11g release to its 12c counterpart.  This paper highlights the enhancements to the package to bring it on line with 12c.

BAM Dashboards:

The Business Activity Monitoring component of the SOA solution was significantly improved in the 12c release.  So significantly in fact that it precluded an upgrade path from 11g.   In the official upgrade procedures solutions incorporating this component are instructed to stand up an 11g version for BAM and slowly introduce a 12c version as all of the nuances of the new release are learned such that alternatives can be made.  In addition to a different dashboard component the layered introduction of ‘Business Queries’ and ‘Business Views’  add new elements to the solution that have to be solved before a dashboard can be constructed.  TekStream has done the necessary homework to bring the 11g based system directly online during the upgrade within a new InvoiceAnalytics package to save our customers the effort of introducing an interim solution during the process.  With TekStream’s 12c AXF upgrade we accommodate replacement dashboards, new 12c objects that are introduced with the release as well as upgrade of the 11g BAM data.  Clients will regain functionality (albeit with new upgraded BAM dashboards and underlying components) immediately after going online with 12c.  They will have direct replacements to the ‘Assigned Invoices’, ‘Invoice Aging’, and ‘Invoices’ reports and can use these with all of the 12c enhancements.

QuikTrace:

TekStream’s Audit and Reporting package ships with a component labeled QuikTrace which in addition to global Worklist views to locate all active invoices also provided technical tracing capability not available in AXF.   Technical staff can use key data points to find a record within the SOA composite execution stack for those records not active in a worklist and traceable via the global Worklist view.  The capability was based on an 11g primitive ‘ora:setCompositeInstanceTitle’ which on a per composite level allowed for the population of the title field which was then searchable via the Enterprise Manager (em).  The Audit and Reporting package allows for the searching based on Imaging Document ID, Invoice Number, Purchase Order Number, Supplier Name, and a customizable business key.

With 12c Oracle has changed their paradigm for a more efficient flow trace primitive ‘oraext:setFlowInstanceTitle’ which migrates the search element to a new single element SCA_FLOW_INSTANCE.title per composite flow.  To maintain the same functionality of the 11g system it is necessary to encapsulate all designed search elements into a single location.   TekStream has incorporated this into the Audit and Reporting package to offer the same functionality to its client base.

Upgrading AXF Clients:

For AXF clients with the reporting package we have the elements to bring you back online with the features that you are accustomed.    These will be available as soon as you bring AXF back up on 12c.

For AXF clients without the reporting package be assured that TekStream can get you to a 12c Audit and Reporting point as well.  We understand the 12c data and can pull together the data objects for functional dashboards and can introduce those QuikTrace touchpoints into the 12c based composites for that feature capability.

Want to learn more about Invoice Reporting using Business Activity Monitor? Contact us today!

[pardot-form id=”16747″ title=”Blog- John Schleicher – TekStream AXF 12c Upgrade Special Components”]

Considerations for Moving From On-Prem to Cloud

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Experts today are continually barraged with data about the cloud. It appears to be each different business is using cloud-based programming, leaving those as yet utilizing on-premise arrangements thinking about whether they, as well, should switch. Organizations are rushing to cloud arrangements on the grounds that there are numerous a large advantages than there are with on-prem arrangements. Here are some of the regularly said reasons cloud setups are better.

COST EFFECTIVE

Cloud arrangement suppliers by and large charge some kind of month to month expense.  This rate might be paid every year or month to month and can either be for each client cost or a cost that incorporates a set scope of records. In return for this charge, you’ll have the capacity to set up accounts until the point when you achieve the most extreme, overseeing secret word resets and record evacuations and augmentations utilizing an authoritative gateway.

Rather than depending on CDs or a site download to introduce the product on every gadget, you’ll have programming that is prepared to utilize. Permitting charges are incorporated into the price tag, so your IT group will never again need to stay aware of your product licenses to ensure the greater part of your introduced programming has been obtained.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

With such huge numbers of private companies and new companies in the business world today, technical support is no longer a choice. A SMB for the most part can’t bear the cost of a full-time IT bolster individual, not to mention the high cost of a server chairman. This implies depending on neighborhood organizations to offer help on an as-required premise, which can accompany a heavy for every hour sticker price. Along these lines, the organizations that do have on-introduce programming will regularly depend on remote help, which is outsourced by means of the cloud.

With cloud programming, technical support is generally taken care of by the supplier, regardless of whether by telephone, email, or an assistance work area ticket. These suppliers have the wage base to pay the high pay rates instructed by the present best IT experts, both at the server level and at the client bolster organize. Most smaller organizations essentially couldn’t manage the cost of this kind of skill all the time.

SCALABILITY

Each strategy for success to develop after some time and cloud programming offers the versatility required to deal with that development. At the point when another representative joins its staff, a business utilizing cloud programming can essentially add another client to its record administration. At the point when an organization maximizes its logins, a higher-level record can as a rule be requested with negligible exertion with respect to the business.

Another advantage to cloud arrangements is that they for the most part include new highlights that normal on-premise setups do not include. As clients express an enthusiasm for having the capacity to accomplish more with their product, suppliers include these highlights, making them accessible either consequently or with a discretionary record change. Cloud arrangements are additionally consistently endeavoring to work with other programming applications and these combinations make it simpler for organizations to deal with everything in one place.

AVAILABILITY

The present workforce is progressively portable, telecommuting, inn rooms, coffeeshops, and air terminals. Cloud programming implies that these laborers can get to their documents wherever they are, utilizing a portable workstation, cell phone, or tablet. This implies even while in the midst of some recreation, groups can keep in contact, keeping ventures pushing ahead through the cloud.

A standout amongst other things about cloud arrangements is that experts never again need to make sure to bring records with them when they leave the workplace. An introduction can be conveyed specifically from a client’s cell phone. Applications that handle charging, cost assessing, and venture administration can be gotten to amid gatherings, enabling participants to get the data they require without influencing everybody to hold up until the point when the meeting is finished and everybody has come back to their workplaces.

RELIABILITY

In the event that you’ve at any point endured a server blackout, you know how destructive it can be on an assortment of levels. Your representatives are compelled to either wait around, sitting tight for the circumstance to be settled, or go home for the day and leave your work environment unmanned. On the off chance that this happens over and over again, you’ll utilize customers and even workers, and in addition hurt your well-deserved notoriety as a business that has become a model of togetherness.

Cloud suppliers look at unwavering quality as a vital piece of their plans of action. They make it their central goal to guarantee clients approach the records and applications they require constantly. In the event that a blackout ever happens, many cloud suppliers have worked in reinforcements to assume control, with clients never mindful an issue has occurred. On the off chance that such reinforcement doesn’t exist, a cloud supplier still approaches specialists who can guarantee frameworks are up considerably more rapidly than a SMB could with an on-preface server.

SECURITY

Security is a continuous worry for organizations, with reports of ruptures getting to be plainly typical. Cloud programming guarantees an abnormal state of security, including information encryption and solid secret word prerequisites. These little things will help protect a business’ information, lessening the danger of a rupture that could cost cash and mischief client confide in an organization.

Organizations that store specific data, for example, medicinal records or financial balance data should scan for a cloud supplier that offers these insurances. There are presently cloud suppliers that have some expertise in HIPAA consistence, for example, so a medicinal practice could profit by the authorities on staff at one of those suppliers who can guarantee that wellbeing information stays safe.

DISASTER RECOVERY

What might happen to your business if a cataclysmic event struck your building or server farm? Imagine a scenario where you came in one morning to discover a fire had rendered your workplaces dreadful. Would you be compelled to close everything down for the term or would your representatives have the capacity to begin working promptly?

Cloud programming enables catastrophe to verification your business, guaranteeing your representatives can telecommute or a brief office if for reasons unknown they can’t work in the workplace. Cloud suppliers typically have reinforcement anticipates their own servers to ensure against calamities, so the product and documents you utilize every day will be available regardless of whether an issue strikes one of their server farms. Before you pick a supplier, don’t hesitate to make inquiries about an organization’s catastrophe arrangements to ensure you’ll be effortless.

Thinking about moving from On-Prem to Cloud? Contact us today!

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New features in WebCenter Enterprise Capture 12c

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WebCenter Enterprise Capture 12c was released in late 2015 and with it came the addition of several key new features.  This article explores several of the significant improvements and new features offered by the newest product version.

1.     Release Processes

One of the new features added in WebCenter Enterprise Capture is the concept of release processes in the client profiles.  In 11g, each capture client profile had a single specified process that it was sent to upon release.  In configuration, you could define which process the profile mapped to (a specific Conversion, Recognition or Commit profile), but only one could be specified.  In WebCenter Enterprise Capture 12c, the ability to define multiple release processes was added.  This allows a greater amount of flexibility in the capture workflows that can be created by allowing a user to route a batch to one of any number of predefined processors.  This also reduces the number of capture profiles to be configured because a single profile can be used to route to any number of post-processors.

To choose which release process will be used for a particular batch, a user simply selects from the predefined options in the Release drop down menu.

Figure 1 Example of a “Commit” release process

2.     Unlock feature

In Capture 11g, there was no built in ability to unlock a batch.  Administrators would have to configure a specific “unlock batch” client profile but the process was not intuitive to the end users.  This resulted in many abandoned locked batches and unnecessary work for system administrators.  In WEC 12c, the Unlock feature is included OOTB and available from every capture profile.  This makes unlocking batches simple.

Figure 2 Unlock batch button

3.     Attachment Types

One of the new features of WEC 12c is the support for attachments and attachment types.  Administrators can define attachment types for a workspace.  Additional documents can be added to a batch as attachments of the main documents.  Separate workflow and commit paths can be defined for attachments.

4.     External document conversion

Another useful feature of WEC 12c is the support of the use of external conversion programs for document conversion.  In the definition for a Conversion Job, there is now the ability to specify External Conversion including a program and command line parameters to be used.

A common pain point felt by users of WEC 11g was that the outside in conversion engine used by WEC often struggled when trying to convert pdfs with embedded fonts.  A workaround was to use the Ghostscript conversion engine to convert the documents instead of the native outside in.  However, this was only able to be accomplished with documents imported via email. With the new ability to specify an external conversion engine in the document conversion processor, the need to have a custom script to do conversions goes away and it can be used for all documents regardless of the ingestion method.

5.     Desktop client

With the upgraded version comes an upgraded capture client with a lot of new features.  First and foremost, the client is no longer a java applet but instead is a desktop client with a standalone installer.  While the client does use java, the required libraries now come packaged within the client itself.  The benefit here is two-fold.  First, there is no prerequisite to have a certain version of java installed.  Second, there is no longer a dependency on a browser that supports java applets.  Most modern browser versions such as Firefox and Chrome no longer support java applets.  Internet explorer does support java but requires many setup steps to work correctly.  All this hassle goes away in WEC 12c with the introduction of a desktop client.

6.     Metadata search

One of the newly introduced features of the 12c client is the ability to search for a document within a batch based on metadata.  To use this feature, users enable the “Find Document” option from the batch menu.  Then a search box appears allowing users to search through all the metadata fields in a batch to find matches.

Figure 3 Find Document batch menu option

Figure 4 Metadata search pane

7.     View document in native application

Finally, Capture 12c has added the ability to view non-image documents in their native applications.  This includes pdfs, word documents, emails, etc.

To use this features, simply right click on the document and choose “View document in associated application” from the menu.

Figure 5 View document in native application

Contact TekStream for help upgrading to WebCenter Enterprise Capture 12c to make use of these and other great features.

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The Top Five Records Management Problems and Why They Resemble Raising a Teenager

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Here are five issues that you will encounter with dealing with both teenagers and record management.  These five records management problems come from observations that are firsthand experiences from client engagements across multiple industries, as well as from raising teenagers, and from actually being an ex-teenager.

  1. “Clean up your mess before I have to do it.”

Basic retention management (not necessarily full-blown records management) is a lot like having to clean your teenager’s room.  The teenager had ample opportunity to do it themselves, but failed or neglected to do so.  Your employees also have old, irrelevant, and often contradictory documents lying around, and have neglected to clean them out. This can cause records management problems down the road.

By scheduling the elimination of old, outdated content, the records manager is essentially acting as the parent with the broom and dustpan.

2. “Be in this house before your curfew, or else.”

No teenager likes to be told when they have to come home. However, if they are out past their curfew, usually it’s a recipe for disaster.

If you company records are not disposed in a timely fashion per legal mandates, it’s like they missed THEIR curfew.  Having such records in the house after their time is up also is a recipe for a legal disaster.

During post-mortem type follow ups, it’s often observed that a customer has records that need to be processed due to disposition rules being triggered, but the customer has failed to actually process the items.  A teenager could be simply grounded for missing curfew; your company’s punishment may be more severe. Simple steps can eliminate future records management problems.

3. “You live in my house, you must follow my rules.”

Teenagers typically hate the rules set forth by their parents.  Teenagers consider their lives to be their own business, where a parent shouldn’t infringe.

Employees often think that they are the owners of content, and can control who has access to it, and the company should not infringe.  This opinion is not true, the company owns it if created on company time and utilized company resources in such creation.  Company rules must apply to who keeps what, who sees what, how such items are retained, and so forth to avoid records management problems.  It’s the company that will go to court if legal issues arise when the “rules of the house” are not followed.

4. “All my friends are doing it.”

No two companies are the same.  Even if the companies perform near identical work, record keeping requirement rules can be substantially different between states and localities where your “friends” live.  (Besides, if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it?)

5. “I forgot.”

It’s amusing to see what a teenager “remembers” and what a teenager “forgets”.  Your employees “forget” from time to time, or are simply preoccupied with other, meaning “more interesting”, tasks.

Applying consistent record and retention policies removes the “I forgot” excuse for not disposing of old content and out of date records and prevents records management problems.

The five records management problems above illustrate raising teenagers and records management both are indeed similar.  They both seem to be thankless jobs in the moment, but when looking back in retrospect, both can be considered successful if consistent (and persistent) strategies are first deployed and then followed.

If you have questions about records management, please contact us today:

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