You Installed Documentum – Now What?

One of the most common questions when implementing a Documentum solution is how do you bulk load documents into the system.There are several options available depending on your requirements.

1. Use native client applications (eg Webtop or Desktop Client)
2. Build a custom application
3. Buy an COTS product

Use native applications
Webtop and Desktop Client support multi-file import; however, it only allows you to import multiple files to a single folder in the repository.  It does NOT have the ability to import a directory tree (with files) from a local file system.

Build a custom DFC application

A relatively simple DFC application can be built to import a directory tree from a local file system and re-create the folder hierarchy with files in the repository.  This option supports the capture of filenames and folder names, but this does NOT generally have the ability to assign metadata to custom attributes.  The assignment of metadata requires some form of data input file that lists attribute values for each file.   This can be accomplished by more programming; however, there are several COTS products that provide this kind of functionality.  The build vs buy discussion involves many factors that will not be covered here.  To determine the best product, one must evaluate all of the requirements against each product’s capabilities.

Buy decision

Here are some third party products:

1. McLaren Docloader

2. BlueFish Dixi

3. Documentum Import Manager