Back on June 21st, Fishbowl Solutions previewed Version 2.0 of its SharePoint Connector for Oracle WebCenter Content – watch the recording here. I am happy to announce that after 10 weeks of further testing, refinement, and a successful Beta program, Version 2.0 is now available!
Version 2.0 marks a significant evolution of Fishbowl’s SharePoint Connector. Before I get into a few of the reasons why, I will first provide a brief history of this product. Fishbowl started working on the connector in late 2010. Version 1.0 was released in April of 2011, and the product achieved Oracle Validated Integration a few months after that. Version 1.0 worked as intended. It was essentially a web part that could be configured to act as a storage provider to store content created in SharePoint within Oracle WebCenter Content. Customers were happy that the product enabled them to get content into WebCenter and off SQL Server, but as with most software products they wanted more. There was also some confusion regarding 1.0 use cases. For example, Version 1.0 allowed bi-directional content updates. Content could be updated in either system and the updates would be reflected in both systems. However, this was somewhat problematic as customers expressed concerns regarding security and content/data integrity issues that may arise from having the ability to update content from either system.
With Version 2.0, Fishbowl Solutions has provided an integration that helps to clearly separate use cases for each product, yet still enable the back-end power of Oracle WebCenter Content to be leveraged. That being the case, Version 2.0 does not support bi-directional content updates. Content creation and updates occur exclusively in SharePoint. Permissioned users can access and view the content from either system, but WebCenter users will be alerted with icon and text cues for those content items “managed in SharePoint”. This further helps separate use cases for each product, positioning SharePoint as the collaboration platform, and WebCenter as the single-source-of-truth repository.
Version 2.0 also includes greater configuration flexibility. Connector settings are applied at the SharePoint central admin level, and either inherited or overwritten at the site collection, site and folder level. This will enable organizations to get the Connector up and running quickly decreasing overall time to value.
There are many more Version 2.0 features and improved functionality that I would like to discuss in this blog post, but instead I am going to wait and share these with you during our SharePoint Version 2.0 Connector webinar next Thursday, September 6th at 1:00 PM EST, 10:00 AM PST – see registration link below. I hope you will be able to join us as we discuss the use cases for the connector, the new features/functionality and corresponding benefits of each, as well as a demonstration.
Fishbowl Webinar: Pair Best-In-Class Collaboration with Industry-Leading Enterprise Content Management
