We are thrilled to announce the release of Content Manager v24.4, packed with features and improvements designed to enhance your productivity, collaboration, and compliance capabilities. This release highlights our commitment to innovation while addressing the evolving needs of our customers. Refer to the entire Content Manager 24.4 release announcement recording or take a quick look at the feature demo. Let’s look at brief introductions for some of these features.

Enhanced Collaboration with Google Drive Integration

One key strategy for Content Manager has been to increase our collaboration footprint to newer ecosystems. And Google is a massively adopted business collaboration ecosystem for several verticals. It made sense that our customers should leverage a records management perspective on this ecosystem. While our previous release of Content Manager builds support for Google Drive as a Manage-in-place drive, this release enables the most common capabilities like check-in and check-out to the system.

Like OneDrive Integration, this new capability mirrors a seamless experience, ensuring smoother workflows within popular business ecosystems. The setup is simple, and a registration process establishes the connection between Content Manager and the Google App.

Figure 1: Integration with Content Manager

Once the deployment, configuration, and test are complete, users can find the Google Drive icon/link from the web client and desktop client.

Figure 2: Take collaboration to the next level with the ability to check in and check out records directly in Google Drive

Once ready, users can check out Google Drive to collaborate with internal and external users. As a best practice, use native apps to open the correct document format. For example, opening a text file with Google viewer will render a new document at check-out. And as a new document separate from the original one being checked out, user cannot check-in any changes to the new document to the same record.

Figure 3: Sharing with users

Refine Search Results with Ease

This next enhancement is a modern take on refining search results without complex queries. A new refine search feature on the web client lets you filter search results using metadata from your search columns. This capability reduces the learning curve needed to build a complex search query and boosts productivity by saving time when operating on large datasets. The following new functions are available:

1. Accessible via a floating refine pane.
2. Toggle button for on-demand use.
3. Available in Grid view only.

Figure 4: Refine search user journey

The use-case to quickly filter the search result is straightforward now. Users can search for a query with extensive results. A Refine Search button to invoke a new floating pane will list all the columns from the search result. The user can then expand the floating refine pane to choose from the metadata displayed in the columns to refine the results. Users can also combine multiple-column data to refine results more accurately.

Figure 5: Refine search user journey

Accessibility Improvements for Inclusive Experiences

The Content Manager web client has enhanced keyboard shortcuts and focused order to align with WCAG/VPAT guidelines, making it more accessible. We tailored the updates to meet specific customer requirements in this release.

Autoclassification Accuracy

As part of Content Manager AI's strategy, we have the records autoclassification capability integrated with OEM IDOL/Elasticsearch. The v24.2 release also enabled this capability for Enterprise IDOL. This feature simplifies records classification by automating the assignment to correct containers. The accuracy of this automation is controlled with a training model and is improved by retraining the model periodically. The deployment is simple and is well-documented for IDOL and Elasticsearch. The quality team undertakes extensive testing to validate functionality and precision every release.

Figure 6: Auto-classification in a nutshell

Broadly, auto-classification capabilities can be summarized as below:

1. Ability to train the solution so that it continues to learn and fine-tune the automation.
2. Ability to apply security and access controls to holding bays to allow for the processing of confidential and sensitive information.
3. Ability to classify documents into specific folder groups according to policy.
4. Ability to reprocess incorrectly classified documents.
5. Supports
   1. Bulk uploading of documents for auto-classification as part of a network drive clean-up
   2. Capture of documents via SharePoint integration into Content Manager
6. The OCR rendition module can be combined in the Autoclassification process to extract text renditions for classifications.

Figure 7: Auto-classification - training records

Figure 8: Auto-classification - training progress

Figure 9: Auto-classification - category training

Preserving Customizations During Upgrades

An upgrade comes with challenges, and this minor enhancement addresses one. Strategically reducing maintenance overhead for the admin in charge of the upgrades and lowering the total cost of ownership is a win-win situation for all. Preserving the configuration files during an update helps the admin reconfigure the new config files with a quick edit. Existing configuration overwrite on the upgraded configuration files was avoided to avoid conflicts with any newly introduced configuration settings. A manual edit is quick and safe since all the older files are backed up in the same destination folders. 

Revoke Exposed Records

In the MS Teams integration app, the functionality to "expose" Content Manager records enables secure collaboration within Channels. The read-only records remained exposed in the channel irrespective post their usage

Figure 10: Expose records

A new Revoke Expose button in the option will reverse this exposure and securely remove the records from the channel.

Figure 11: Revoke expose

Enhanced Search Capabilities

Finding documents in a complex hierarchy of folders is a challenge. Content Manager introduced a new search field in this release that helps locate files across folders and subfolders under Channels in the MS Teams integration app. The search rules are within Microsoft's API boundaries; hence, we can search by the first name of the folder.

Figure 12: Search enabled in MS Teams integration app at a channel-level

Figure 13: Search enabled in MS Teams integration app at folder-level

What’s More?

This release delivers customer defect fixes, addresses security issues and adds practical enhancements that add tangible value to your Content Manager experience. If you are on an older version of Content Manager, refer to the updated comparison guide page to view the features enabled between your version and the latest release. 

We understand that an upgrade requires considerate planning and time. However, an upgrade to v24.4 is recommended, at the same time, for the most comprehensive support lifecycle experience. Refer to the “What’s your version” page to help with all resources for upgrade planning. 

If your upgrade plans are delayed, refer to our Product Lifecycle page to understand the support timeline for your current version, and visit our Extended Support Program to understand how to avail technical support for applicable versions.

Feel free to reach out to us for questions/feedback/further assistance with Content Manager 24.4

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