1 Reply Latest reply: Sep 10, 2014 8:02 AM by pedro1974 RSS

    Is Adobe Reader X suitable for collaborative work?

    pedro1974 Community Member
    pedro1974 Sep 10, 2014 7:32 AM

      Hello,

       

      I am currently evaluating the possible use of Acrobat Reader X in my enterprise.

       

      We use a Documentum Content Server for storing PDF documents (and other formats as well).

      I have seen that Lifecycle Connector for ECM may allow using this configuration.

       

      End users will use Acrobat Reader X (no upgrade to XI can be foreseen due to deployment impact) to annotate PDF documents.

       

      Does the Lifecycle Connector for ECM allows starting up Reader X from Documentum TaskSpace (xCP 1) or custom web application to select a PDF file and to automatically check-out, open (with Reader X), annotate and check-in it in a row?

      Or is the connection the job of Lifecycle Reader Extension? Or, since we have some web services for check-in/check-out, is it a better option to insert some custom JavaScript in the Reader X menu to access custom check-out/check-in services, sending some parameters such as the object id of a document for instance?

       

      What about concurrent access? Reader XI allows a team to annotate a same document at the same time. Is it feasible with Reader X as well?

       

      How is the annotated document stored into the ECM system? Is it stored as a new version of the document? Does it alter the original document? Does it save the original document and the annotations as separate objects linked by an id?

      With Reader X, if two users annotate at a same time a same document, do we know who added which annotation?

       

      In addition to Adobe Reader X, I also perform a benchmark with other solutions for annotations, such as A-Render and OpenAnnotate, which are web-based, but are not available in my enterprise yet. I am trying to figure out if Reader X would be a real added-value, since it is already in the road map of our next deployment.

        • 1. Re: Is Adobe Reader X suitable for collaborative work?
          pedro1974 Community Member
          pedro1974 Sep 10, 2014 8:02 AM (in response to pedro1974)

          In addition to the questions above, we could also try to imagine how we could annotate documents that are stored using other formats (Office, Images...) in the content management system.

          I suppose we could add Adobe PDF Generator to generate PDF renditions of the document on the fly.

          This raises additional questions:

          - the on the fly rendition generation might be a blocking issue in term of response time. Is there a cache management?

          - Where are stored the generated renditions? Do we save them in the CMS together with the source document? Can it be saved as a rendition (Documentum rendition) of the source document? Or is it saved as another document, or as a dm_note? (Perhaps I should post this specific question on the EMC² forums, once I have same preliminary answers).