BetterECM - russ stalters’ Blog on Exploring NextGen ECM

Well, this has been a long time coming. I am happy to see that Microsoft finally released the DoD 5015.2 Add-on for Moss 2007 a couple weeks back while I was trekking around the UK and Europe.

I am proud of the work our team did in creating the new features for the MOSS Records Center last year.  The extremely collaborative nature of the project and development with the Microsoft  Product Group using the SCRUM agile methodology during the project showed me the possibility of a high performing team with this methodology.

I plan to implement the MOSS Records Center with the Add-on in the next several months.

Here is the Microsoft Post: Announcing the DoD 5015.2 Resource Kit for SharePoint Server 2007.

This comes under the heading of “How Did They Do That?”. This white paper (Records Management Solution Demonstrates Power of SharePoint As A Development Platform) that is available on the Microsoft Downloads site, provides some details of the “MOSS as a Development Platform features that were exploited when we built the DoD Records Management Add-on for MOSS.

Another white paper by one of my former colleagues, Vishwas Lele, is a great treatise on using MOSS as an application development platform. You can download it here.

Microsoft has a new web page on the Office site entitled “Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 receives DoD 5015.2 certification” that provides some frequently asked questions regarding the DoD 5015.2 certification of SharePoint 2007. There is also a link to the press release.

Forgive me, it has been a while since my last post. I have been a bit busy the last couple of weeks completing the DoD 5015.2 certification testing of MOSS 2007.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, AIS built the DoD 5015.2 certification add-on pack over the last several months and we just successfully finished certification testing last week.

Here is the press release Microsoft made today: Microsoft’s press release today.

The certification reports will be posted on the JITC product register located here in the near future.

This is an important milestone for Microsoft and adds significant records management capabilities to MOSS. I am happy to see this finally be available for my clients that have invested in MOSS. Microsoft confirmed that licensed MOSS clients will be able to get the DoD 5015.2 certification add-on pack without an additional charge.

So, now with that major achievement behind me I should be able to starting posting more regularly. As always I follow my number one rule: only make a post to BetterECM when I have something to say.

Update: Here is the link to the AIS Press Release

Or…HOW Did They Do That?

Well, in this post I will shed some light on how we were able to add the required DoD 5015.2 functionality to the existing MOSS 2007 Records Center.

For those who have not explored MOSS 2007 as a development platform, you should really take a look. MOSS can be extended not only to build pretty rich and robust ECM applications, but to build other business solutions that can leverage workflow and a rich browser based user interface.

I recommend taking a look at the White Paper my colleague Vishwas Lele wrote back in January called: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) as an Application Development Platform.

We were able to leverage the rich features out-of-the-box (OOTB) of SharePoint 2007 and take avatage of connecting and extending those features using only the SharePoint Object Model and native SharePoint 2007 capabilities. Our development team was able to extend, connect, and integrate various out-of-the-box features and functionality, such as:

• SharePoint Lists and Framework
• Content types
• Custom field types
• Access Control Logic (ACL)
• Workflow Foundation
• Integration with Exchange and Outlook
• Search

We are in the process of creating a Developer Case Study with Microsoft which will describe in detail how the fetaures required for DoD 5015.2 were created using some of the very configurable OOTB SharePoint features along with some custom workflows built on the Workflow Foundation and customizations built on the MOSS 2007 & WSS SDK.

One of the interesting features of the DoD 5015.s Records Center is that Records Managers will have workflows avaialable to automate the review of Vital Records, review and approval of Category and Folder Cutoff, and diposition processing.

As soon as the Case Study is published I will post a link to the paper.