The Context

written by Olivier Marques & Virgilio Alex Gaspar.

As part of this journey, keeping the persons in the center is key to building user-friendly solutions for all end-users: citizens, customers, prospects, and employees.

However, this is not always an easy task.

The combination of being effective (meeting the requirements) with being efficient (keeping the cost under control, both at development and runtime) is sometimes challenging, especially when dealing with compelling and feature-rich solutions like OpenText Content Server (CS) or its bigger brother, OpenText Extended ECM (xECM).

Let’s have a look at the expectations we are facing:

• The users look for appealing, “easy-to-use-without-a-user-guide” solutions, tailored to their jobs, providing everything they need with the simplicity of any every day “app”.

• The organizations look for technology solutions that, while delivering the business value to the different stakeholders, are at the same time easy to build & adapt, and easy to run in the long term, without costly upgrades or complex coding.

The Solution

This is when the Module Suite (MS) from AnswerModules enters the set.

Module Suite allows building CS/xECM based solutions for real business requirements while meeting end-user expectations with a visually appealing, friendly, and functional end result - just what our customers and final users need.

How?

Module Suite provides the ability to rapidly build applications based on OpenText CS/xECM, without having to deploy a specific or third-party RAD solution. Essentially, it allows you to graphically create and deploy unique features or solutions while keeping the code simple and easy to maintain.

One of the game-changers is the possibility to create all kinds of forms with all kinds of validations and deploy them in a way that even allows external users to interact with OpenText CS/xECM - all this keeping the UI simple and attractive.

As an example, in just a few hours, we were able to build a full-fledged Smart UI interactive user permissions form that allowed exports, imports, or copy permissions between users. All of the interfaces were built mostly by using Drag and Drop controls from the existing AM control library. The few code lines that were necessary to have, were written in an easy to code, easy to read, and widely adopted language (Groovy), making sure that no provider lock-in is being created.

We find that while some parts of this could be accomplished by using the powerful OpenText Web Reports capabilities, as the requirements get more challenging, Module Suite allows going beyond while reducing the time to get there.

In the long-run, the resulting solutions are also “CS/xECM upgrade-ready”. This is achieved by design, as Module Suite applications do not depend on the native CS/xECM API, relying instead on the Module Suite engine which is evolved and released simultaneously with every new OpenText version.

Like VILT, AnswerModules is also an OpenText SolEx (Solution Extension) Partner, allowing for constant alignment on the roadmap.

You won't need to change your IT infrastructure because Module Suite interfaces smoothly with your present Content Suite / Extended ECM setup. Furthermore, unlike other solutions in the market, it does not offer limited configuration-based functionality.

In a nutshell…

Module Suite allows being more agile and efficient, providing an intuitive approach to form creation and business application development, resulting in an improved user experience and ultimately in faster and greater adoption.

Thinking on TCO, one of the great things about Module Suite is the guarantee that your current solution will work after an upgrade of your OpenText version.

For us, at VILT, Module Suite from AnswerModules is a real added value solution to all our OpenText CS and xECM customers.