SeeUnity’s DM Integration for SharePoint – Overview

Recently I got my hands on some of the SeeUnity’s powerful Integration Components. SeeUnity has two components designed for SharePoint, the Enterprise Integration and the Archiving and Distribution Services. The first one allows users to access or push eDocs documents via the common SharePoint Interface, and the later one allows documents to be synchronized or  linked (manually or automatically) between SharePoint and external repositories based on customized rules and field mappings.

There are many functionalities provided by these two components, but doesn’t matter how many you are configuring, there are two things need to be understood before getting your hands dirty.

1. Understand the number of applications required to be installed and
2. Decide where they should be installed.

It sounds easy, but for me this was the most difficult part. In most environment, there are at least 2 servers involved (given that the chance of having both the SharePoint Server and DM Server on the same box is extremely low); the DM server and the SharePoint Server. To make it even more complicated, some of the components can even be installed on a dedicated SeeUnity Server for performance optimization.

The SeeUnity’s documentations are fairly well documented, but not all the scenarios can be covered; and the fact that it is so flexible, it does add some complexity to the installation process.

The core applications for the integration are:

• Core Integration Services

• Administration Console

• Web Parts

• WebDAV Server

• Protocol Handler or BCS Indexing (Security Trimmer optional)

• Archiving and Distribution Services

Of course, there have been tough times in getting all these two communicate, but the components seem to be working stably after it is configured correctly. Phew~ At least