Subscription Notifier™ for Oracle UCM
Custom content email notifications based on any business rules.
- Would you like the ability to send out and email to a list of your users based on a scheduled query when content is ready to expire, needs review, a new version has been checked in, or metadata has been updated?
- Are you using “notification of expiration” and would like different notification schedules, or the ability to notify different users based on doc type?
- Would you like to define subscriptions based on product fields without using an exact match metadata search?
- Would you like the capability to go beyond standard or custom email notification and automate an action, such as updating metadata, through a subscription?
If you answered yes to any of these, check out Subscription Notifier™, now available for 11g!
"Creatively used, Subscription Notifier will revolutionize the way we manage content in [Oracle UCM] Stellent."
- Mike Makofske, The LA Times
Contact us for more information.
Subscription Notifier Product Specifications
Subscription Notifier is the only out-of-the-box solution that allows you to:
- Track content by any business rule – not just expiration date.
- Easily build complex content queries – with no iDoc scripting.
- Create granular notification schedules for user notification.
- Automatically email users and/or aliases when content needs review, has been updated, had a new revision checked in, or is ready to expire.
- Notify different lists of users on different schedules for the same content!
- Create custom email templates with action-driven instructions.
- Take the “notification of expiration” feature in Oracle UCM to the next level
Ex-- No constraints on limiting you to content expiration only, having one rule for all content, etc. - Triggers other events, in addition to sending an email.
Ex—updates metadata based on a query/subscription.
The other events triggered by Subscription Notifier are extendable to meet your specific needs. A few of the ways it has been used are to:
- Initiate workflow by creating a new revision of a document
- Undo the check-out for content out for an extensive amount of time.
- Update an external database
- Send a single email notification once a day for items still in workflow queue.
User Interface Screenshot
Supported Platforms
- Oracle UCM (Stellent) Content Server Versions 7.x, 7.5.x, 10gR3, 11g
- Any Operating Systems Supported by Oracle UCM
- MSSQL and Oracle Databases
- Any Web Servers Supported by Oracle UCM
Subscription Notifier Comparisons
| Features
Solutions | Notification of new content / versions added to content server | Consolidated notifications (eg. 1 email/day) | Notification of content that is ready to expire | Separate notification schedules | Notification of metadata changes | Side-effect of automatically updating metadata |
| Notification of Expiration |  | | ||||
| Stellent Subscriptions | | |||||
| Subscription Notifier | | | | | | |
Subscription Notifier Brochures
Subscription Notifier for Oracle Brochure
NAVTEQ Manages Disaster Recovery Plans with Oracle UCM and Subscription Notifier
Subscription Notifier Use Cases
Disaster Recovery Plans :: Contract Management :: Policies and Procedures :: Keeping Web Content Up-to-Date
When NAVTEQ talks about Disaster Recovery Planning, it is serious business. As the leading global provider of maps, traffic and location data enabling navigation, location-based services and mobile advertising around the world, any outage is truly disastrous. NAVTEQ® map data powers business and government solutions, vehicle navigation systems, portable and wireless devices and more. The digital location data that NAVTEQ collects and stores is critical to the company’s business and customers worldwide, so it is imperative that NAVTEQ take key steps to protect its network and systems globally. Disaster Recovery Plans are a part of overall business continuity. They address the unthinkable – the scary stuff that keeps CEOs up at night. Disasters fall into two main categories: natural disasters which are impossible to prevent and man-made disasters or those caused by human error or intervention. These are typically preventable but difficult to stop. In either case, Disaster Recovery Plans contain the steps that are taken to get the business running again in the event of a disaster.
Due to their critical nature, NAVTEQ uses Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM) to manage plans. UCM works well because it provides powerful and flexible security, like the ability to specify those who can edit versus those that can only view Disaster Recovery Plans; it delivers revision control for auditing purposes and perhaps most important to NAVTEQ, workflow routing. NAVTEQ relies on UCM to ensure the right people review and contribute to plans so they are up-to-date and effective.
The team at NAVTEQ tasked with managing plans and Oracle UCM had been successful in creating the workflows to manage the approval and release process of the 150 Disaster Recovery Plans, but was challenged with managing the review cycle. Because the plans’ review cycles and review processes varied in nature, they encountered issues fully automating the review. For instance, some plans needed review 12 months after release, some 6 months and others 3 months. Basically, the team wanted to specify a type of plan and set the review cycle based on the type. When the review cycle came due, the system would notify the specified reviewers – often times a variety of people from a variety of departments. NAVTEQ attempted to use the UCM out-of-the-box subscriptions, but they found they would need to create a subscription for each plan. This manual process would be tedious and extremely time-consuming.
NAVTEQ had worked with Fishbowl Solutions on a previous project and already used Fishbowl’s Workflow Solution Set component suite to handle their complex workflow needs. They immediately went to Fishbowl’s website looking for a solution and found a product called Subscription Notifier. Subscription Notifier would allow them to set up subscriptions based on plan type, allowing management of all plans using only a few subscriptions. They could specify the reviewers of each plan type and also the notification schedule, sometimes notifying individuals a number of times up to the impending review date. The team contacted Fishbowl, saw a demonstration and purchased.
The results have been great! Subscription Notifier works exactly as NAVTEQ requires, with the capability to do even more! In addition to automating the review of Disaster Recovery Plans with varying review cycles and needs, Subscription Notifier has provided some "wow" moments as well. When a plan has completed its trek through numerous reviewers and is ready for release, the team at NAVTEQ wants to change the security on the plan so it can no longer be modified by anyone. Subscription Notifier has a built in feature called “side effects” which can trigger several outside processes, one of them being the change of Account in UCM. The team at NAVTEQ was skeptical that the change would take place immediately enough to meet their needs, but their fears were quickly relieved: The change takes place instantaneously. A wow moment for NAVTEQ! A second "wow" factor was in response to a user request that they be notified three, two, and then one day prior to the due date. This was easily set up within the Subscription Notifier easy-to-use graphical interface.
Though it’s difficult to apply actual cost savings to Oracle UCM, Subscription Notifier and Workflow Solution Set, NAVTEQ estimates that the time spent managing Disaster Recovery Plans is reduced significantly per plan. When applied to 150 plans, sometimes needing review multiple times in a year, the time savings add up. As for ensuring the business can get back up and running in the event of a disaster, hopefully NAVTEQ will never have to find out!
NAVTEQ Manages Disaster Recovery Plans with Oracle UCM and Subscription Notifier
Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) manages thousands of contracts yearly between vendors, service providers, and partners. Contracts range from agreements with food service vendors, to medical staff, to building maintenance services, and more. Not only are the contracts extremely diverse in nature, but they also have unique terms and conditions including expiration dates. Without a system, maintaining HCMC’s contracts was extremely manual and left lots of room for improvement. One area of opportunity was in contract negotiation. By renegotiating terms and conditions prior to expiration, the
HCMC worked with Fishbowl Solutions on a solution to their contract management challenges. Fishbowl first helped implement Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM) for the overall storage of contracts. UCM allowed HCMC to store contracts using metadata to make finding contracts in the future simple; for example, HCMC could set the department, contract owner, and expiration date of each contract. Links were established to display contracts by contract title, category, vendor, and approaching expiration date. The UCM system also provides security and revision control, so contracts would be fully managed and protected.
Fishbowl also installed their Subscription Notifier™ Component to address the challenges around contract expiration and negotiation. Subscription Notifier extends the basic notification of expiration functionality in UCM and allowed HCMC to set future expiration dates for every contract checked into the system. Subscription Notifier allows for email notifications to be sent to the contract owners a defined number of days prior to the contract's expiration (i.e.--90 days prior to expiration). This proactive notification allows the contract owner to negotiate new rates, the terms of the contract, or proactively look for other options before the contract is expired.
The combination of Oracle UCM and Fishbowl’s Subscription Notifier Component have provided HCMC with an improved contract management system. Their system provides better control and saves HCMC time and money by proactively negotiating better rates before contracts expire.
At Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) it is critical to patient care and employee education that all policies and procedures are kept up-to-date and are quickly made available to all employees. HCMC has hundreds of policies and procedures that are updated every three years to stay compliant with medical best practices.
HCMC had been using Lotus to store the policies and procedures. HCMC employees, however, were having a difficult time keeping track of what policies and procedures they were responsible for, when these policies and procedures needed to be reviewed, and how to make the most up-to-date policies and procedures available to all employees. It was clear that HCMC needed a proactive process for notifying employees responsible for the policies and procedures when they were ready for review, as well as an efficient vehicle for making the most recent policies and procedures available to all employees.
With Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM) HCMC is able to store all current policies and procedures in UCM. Employees can quickly access the policies and procedures through search in UCM, or through links from various departments’ intranet pages, leveraging content in UCM and managed using Site Studio. By integrating Fishbowl Solutions’ Subscription Notifier™ Component with Oracle UCM, HCMC can set an expiration date of three years after the check-in date for each policy and procedure. One hundred and eighty days prior to the expiration date, Subscription Notifier sends out one email notification per week to designated Chapter teams when the policies and procedures they are responsible for need to be reviewed. If the policy or procedure has not been reviewed within 30 days of the expiration date, Subscription Notifier increases the email notification to send daily reminders of the required review. Once the policy or procedure has been reviewed and/or updated, the three year review cycle is reset. Subscription Notifier can also automatically email a team or department when the policies and procedures that apply to them have been updated so they are always working with the latest.
With Oracle UCM and Subscription Notifier HCMC has been able to dramatically reduce the time spent finding, tracking, and updating policies and procedures. They also now have a proactive process to ensure that their policies and procedures are reviewed and updated quickly, and remain easily accessible to all employees.
Policies and Procedures Use Case
Keeping Web Content Up-to-date
With the dramatic increase in buyers researching a product or service online before purchasing, it is critical for organizations to have a presence online with the most up-to-date information available for their products and services. To ensure that Fishbowl Solutions’ could capture the attention of these online buyers, the marketing team carried out a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) initiative.
SEO is the process of positioning web pages around the keywords or search phrases that the target audience of buyers uses to find the products or services that are offered. The better optimized a web site is, the more likely the company will appear on the first page of search engine results for those keywords – and the more likely targeted buyers will be drawn to that company. To be truly successful, however, SEO must be an ongoing initiative. In addition to a host of other criteria, search engines consider pages that are updated frequently to be more relevant than others and thus appear higher in results. If pages are not updated frequently, even if they are positioned well on targeted keywords, rankings will begin to slip.*
Fishbowl’s initial SEO initiative was successful and produced a 50 percent increase of our web content being returned on the first page of search engine results for the keywords we defined. In order to maintain these top results we needed a proactive process to ensure that all of our content was updated regularly.
The Fishbowl Solutions website is managed in Site Studio with all of our web content stored in Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM). Because of this we were able to leverage our Subscription Notifier™ component to schedule an email notification to be sent to the marketing team 30 days before the web content’s check-in date of six months prior. With this proactive notification the marketing team is able to update web content with new keywords, search phrases, and technical information. This ensures that the search engines continue to index our website maintaining our original SEO results and website visitors always receive the most up-to-date information. Fishbowl is also leveraging Subscription Notifier’s “side effects” functionality to schedule the removal of web content that has not been updated in over one year from the check-in date, eliminating any clutter and outdated information on the website and improving visitors’ experience.
Subscription Notifier has allowed the marketing team at Fishbowl to save time through proactive notifications and automated management of the website. The results from our SEO initiative have remained positive, which has increased the amount of inquiries from the website and resulted in more opportunities to work with customers and help them do more with their UCM investment.
*Disclaimer: each search engine has a unique algorithm for ranking sites and search engines change algorithms frequently. The topics covered in this use case are generalizations and do not cover all the ranking criteria for search engine optimization.
Keeping Web Content Up-to-Date Use Case
Contact us to learn how you can use Subscription Notifier to keep all of your content accurate.
Subscription Notifier Web Demonstration
(click the image to watch)
