OpenText AppEnhancer Support: Taking Care of Your Crew After Launch
Table of Contents
Data Storage and Future Proofing
They say half the battle to building a thing is having the right tools. That’s absolutely true. But what’s the other half of the battle? That’s easy. The other half of the battle is having someone who knows everything about those tools in your toolkit—a maintenance crew at the ready to keep things shipshape. Because launching a rocket into space is cool, for example, but making sure it doesn’t burn up on re-entry is another.
What are we getting at? Like all great things, upkeep isn’t optional. The long-term strategy depends on a knowledgeable support team to glean 100% of the value out of your investment.
If you’re using OpenText AppEnhancer (AE)—the rocket—to scan, store, retrieve, and preserve information with role-based access from any device or web browser, that’s great. But that rocket only stays great until something slows down or jams up or gets fuddled. What then? Do you let that thing stay fuddled? Heck no. You give your astronauts what they need to reach the stars and get them back to earth without char on their suits.
When it comes to keeping OpenText AppEnhancer running like the amazing machine that it is (aka, making the most of your investment and protecting your return on it), a professional service team is the parachute on your pod.
What has our professional services team been talking about with clients lately?
Development and Integration
OpenText AppEnhancer plays nice with others and has earned a sociable reputation in the application world—it chats comfortably with thousands of apps! In fact, we haven’t found a single product AE couldn’t integrate with yet; it’s a showoff! So it’s not surprising that AE integrates with pretty much any ERP software on the market today.
Here are just a few:
Unit4
Oracle ERP Cloud
Acumatica Cloud
SAP
Microsoft Dynamics
Oracle PeopleSoft
Kofax
Jack Henry
CityWorks
And many, many others
How does AE get along so well with all of these different applications? The short answer is good programming. The technical answer is that AE uses a resource-centric REST API. REST stands for Representational State Transfer and API stands for Application Programming Interface. So a REST API, simplified, is a software interface that transfers information between two applications. Put another way, it’s an intermediary that allows two applications to talk with each other. For web services, the built-in transfer protocol uses hypertext to communicate with the software it’s plugging into. Too much tech jargon? All you need to understand is that AE efficiently connects with web-based software, mobile apps, and other platforms in a way that doesn’t require local software installation. Brilliant!
Health Checks and Upgrades
Keep AE running optimally with under-the-hood health checks and upgrades. If you have been running OpenText AppEnhancer for any period of time, chances are your company needs have changed and your solution may not be performing optimally. Health checks are critical to the ongoing maintenance of your implementation. Our team will make sure your implementation conforms to the industry-standard best practices for operating systems, servers, memory, and databases. Additionally, we will take a look at your business processes and ensure they are running at maximum potential.
Know what else we’ll do? Keep you in the know about the latest and greatest AE features and functionality. AppEnhancer has seen new life under OpenText’s wing and we are excited to show off improvements in system performance and user productivity. An upgrade of AE is simpler than you may think and it will ensure you make the most of your investment!
Data storage and future-proofing
Your storage needs change over time. A decade ago, location-based servers were the industry standard for storing information. These large, expensive servers churned away in temperature-controlled rooms unaware that a revolutionary alternative was about to hover over the business world and fundamentally change how companies stored their data. Ten years later, the world is keenly aware of the advantages of cloud-based storage. The Cloud frees your data from the threat of destruction from natural disasters and the need for a brick-and-mortar IT department. At the same time, the Cloud provides unmatched security, privacy, and business continuity solutions with a flat monthly fee structure. AppEnhancer loves the Cloud.
Did you know that AE supports Cloud/Azure, Blob, Microsoft Sharepoint, and more? Ask us about future-proofing your storage with AE-friendly cloud-based storage options.
Roll out OpenText AppEnhancer to all departments
I can do that? Oh, yes you can! This is a biggie. If you use AE in only one department, you’re missing out on some great intra-department efficiencies. AE can be used for:
Accounts Payable – AE captures invoice data and feeds it into your accounting system. That’s important because it kicks off the approval process right away, improves the accuracy of data entry, and feeds key information directly into your ERP and financial systems. By following easily configured business rules invoices are routed to the appropriate people for approval and exception handling. During this process, all documents and related information are collected and archived for long-term auditing, reporting, and compliance.
Reduce manual and paper-based invoice processing costs
Increase visibility to every invoice that enters your AP department.
Automate document retention and keep a full audit trail.
Track the activity of staff members that interact with AP documents.
Create standardized workflows for the AP department.
Accounts Receivable – See a dramatic DSO improvement (days of sales outstanding) by centralizing receivables management into one location. Your company could process invoices at a cost savings of more than 50% in a quarter of the time.
Human Resources – In addition to eliminating paper-based employee files and improving the capture, management, and retention of important records, your HR department benefits from AE:
Increased HR staff productivity and compliance. Staff can automatically assign requests based on workload and skillsets, formalize best practice processes, and guarantee compliance through an audit trail.
Provide better service to employees with a personalized self-service portal that makes accessing documents easy and tracks requests and notifications.
Flexible, collaborative case and knowledge management that supports structured and unstructured processes, automates email correspondence and integrates into your existing HR systems.
Improved visibility through dashboards with HR operational, service level, and compliance metrics.
Private information is kept private with document-level security and role-based access.
Contract Management – Legal contracts and agreements touch every part of your company. But it is too often the case that contracts are spread throughout an organization and not accessible to the people who need information.
Shorten contract cycle times. Automate contract creation, review, approval, and execution.
Eliminate stakeholder frustration. Access contracts and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders.
Reduce your risk by standardizing contracts and improving visibility throughout the contract lifecycle to manage compliance and identify contracts that need updating as regulations change.
Reduce cost and add operational efficiencies through the use of intelligent automation to streamline contract creation, review workflows, and improve contract adherence.
Gain visibility across all contracts with federated search capabilities enable by xPlore Full-Text Search module.
Hold the phone! There are add-ons.
AppEnhancer add-on extension modules make decision-making even easier by improving service levels related to specific customer needs. These add-on modules allow you to buy only what you need instead of paying for a set of features that don’t fit your business.
What are these add-ons? Take a peek.
AppEnhancer Workflow Automation
Use workflow automation to tap into a full range of business process management capabilities and transform paper-intensive processes.
Add a powerful electronic report management module to your AppEnhancer system. Put advanced print streams and COLD text formats on your rocket—exact replication in PDF format.
AppEnhancer Full-Text Search
This functionality gets tasks done faster because employees find what they’re looking for quickly and easily (the main name of the game). Perform keyword and full-text searches that pull up precise search results with a single query. Blast off.
AppEnhancer Public Access License
Give users outside the firewall access to read-only documents.
Custom Development for OpenText AppEnhancer
AE is a great rocket out of the box, but with some customization from our certified team of developers, we form-fit it so you get even more out of your business processes—more thrusters! Our AE Development team builds apps that will address any unique or specific business process. Here are a few projects that we tackled in the past year:
Automate the internal countersignature on contracts
Upload and stream media files stored in AE in your secured Azure Cloud (no caching or downloading of data to the AE client)
Enhance Web Services with the more reliable and modern ReST Services
Revolution Data Offers Complete OpenText AppEnhancer Support
Thousands of companies use OpenText AppEnhancer for their document management needs. But OpenText relies on a network of trusted partners to maintain and support installations of AppEnhancer. We’re one of those trusted partners. We proudly support some of the most complex configurations across the United States, adding more thrusters to an already powerful engine.
Contact Revolution Data Systems Technical Support to discuss your next project, protect your astronauts, and keep your ship shiny.