This article looks at how integration with OpenText Content Manager improves the availability of important documents in Salesforce. Content Manager (CM) helps organizations meet regulatory and data privacy guidelines through robust content management. Using CM as a backup and data storage facility for Salesforce data solves a number of challenges.

The Cloud is Not Bullet-Proof

There is a perception that cloud-based applications are risky:

• Data security and data ownership
• Long-term retention of data
• Disaster recovery processes
• Ability to provide support during major events (support is overwhelmed)
• Privacy and data breaches
• System outages e.g. software upgrade windows

These concerns have been largely mitigated in recent times. In reality, the very existence of cloud-based platforms depends on them being robust, secure, and available. In terms of reliability, cloud systems are excellent but even a 99.9% uptime is still 43 minutes a month of downtime. Downtimes tend to occur irregularly and this can make outages longer than the monthly estimate. On top of this, there are factors that are beyond everyone's control:

• Network outages e.g. a provider issue or local cable fault (caused by bad weather or an Act of God)
• Unexpected degradation of system performance e.g. due to the multi-tenancy environment

Salesforce Integration

For many companies, being unable to access their data is crippling. However, this can be mitigated. Integrating Salesforce with OpenText Content Manager enables companies to access Salesforce records and documents during periods of Salesforce unavailability.  Beyond being a Salesforce backup system, CM has other benefits that include information governance, identification, preservation, collection, processing, review, analysis, production, and presentation. CM is essentially a cradle-to-grave document management system.

T4S

The leading Salesforce to CM integration is T4S from FuseIT. T4S transparently syncs Salesforce records (leads, contacts, cases, accounts. etc.) and documents to configurable locations in CM. To ensure CM documents have the required context metadata, Salesforce documents and the associated Salesforce record, with field values, relationships, and references, are all pushed to CM. CM users are also provided a link in the metadata to the Salesforce record. T4S has a number of other features:

• Auto-file: When a document is manually uploaded and attached to a Salesforce record, T4S transparently pushes the document to the mapped container in CM and adds a link to the document in the Salesforce record. The Salesforce document can then be auto-deleted (optionally)
• Auto-file email attachments: Inbound emails can be processed using Salesforce Email-To-Case. The email message and attachments are created in a new Salesforce case. T4S detects the new case and converts the case record to an HTML file. It then auto-creates a container in CM and copies the HTML file and associated documents to the container. T4S then adds a link in Salesforce to each document location in CM. Finally, T4S adds a link to the Salesforce case record in the CM metadata
• File documents to complex structures: T4S can auto-create containers and title them according to a rule set. This includes using Salesforce metadata to formulate new container titles or updating existing titles. The container taxonomy is exposed in Salesforce so users can override the default and choose an alternate filing location
• Document Search in Salesforce: A user can initiate a document search from Salesforce by entering the document name, or other metadata texts. The required document is returned to Salesforce for viewing by the user
• Save Salesforce records in CM: A Salesforce user can click the "Save Record to Content Manager" button to save any record to CM as an HTML file. Alternatively, when a Salesforce record reaches a designated status, the record can be automatically archived into CM
• Show CM documents in Salesforce: CM users can add documents to a designated location exposed to Salesforce. The location appears in Salesforce as a list of documents in the designated location and documents located elsewhere that are linked to the container with the “Alternatively Contains” feature
• Reduce document volumes in Salesforce: Salesforce users can sync large attachments to CM and expose a link in Salesforce to the document so it can be viewed on-demand

T4S eliminates the double or even triple handling of documents by automating document management and making CM transparent to Salesforce users. Other benefits:

• Users can access, process, and archive CM documents from within Salesforce
• Users can access CM documents from anywhere, at any time, and from any device
• T4S can potentially lower CM licensing costs if generic document access is provided through Salesforce
• Data storage costs are reduced for companies that regularly exceed Salesforce storages caps 
• CM to be extended without significant cost e.g. Salesforce Einstein for cognitive computing
• CM can become a single source of data to eliminate duplicates and improve data integrity
• Improved efficiencies as documents and metadata are only entered once, in either system. CM uses Salesforce fields as the source of important metadata, provenance, and version detail
• Compliance increases as users add documents to CM via Salesforce