A common customer use case

In a common customer use case, the user interacts with IBM® Content Navigator or a user-written application, which interacts with Content Manager OnDemand to authenticate the user, search for documents, and retrieve documents.

A common use case across many different business segments involves allowing registered customers to select a range of documents to view. For the banking industry, these documents can be bank statements that can be selected from a predefined number of months. For health insurance companies, the documents can be explanation of benefit statements. For utility companies, the documents can be bills or invoices.

The customer is usually a user who is registered to the company website. The registration process provides credentials, for example, a user ID and password. To gain access to any of the company applications, the user submits the credentials from a web page, such as a portal, to be authenticated by the company web application. After the user is authenticated, the application can restrict the user's access when the user navigates the website.

Users that need access to Content Manager OnDemand must have a user ID. Administrators cannot create a user ID for each registered Internet user. The user population might reach thousands or millions. Therefore, most applications search on behalf of a user ID that has the permissions to search a specific folder and retrieve a document. The assumption is that if the user was not authenticated, and the constraints are placed on the search values to guarantee unique results, then one or more user IDs can be defined to have full permissions to the folder that is searched.

Regardless of the industry that has Content Manager OnDemand statements to present to customers, a customer typically runs two kinds of transactions:
  • One transaction involves displaying a search results list of documents, usually within some predefined date range. The application searches on behalf of the user. After the user is authenticated, the application chooses a unique key or key combination to ensure that the search results are for that user, and searches without additional input from the user.
  • Another transaction involves the user selecting a document from the search results list. Content Manager OnDemand returns the data in the format requested and the application presents the data to the user. For example, if the document is stored in Content Manager OnDemand as an AFP data stream, one of the following situations must occur:
    • Recommended: Data conversion needs to take place to provide a data stream that can be displayed to the user
    • The user needs an AFP viewer program that is locally installed on the user's workstation
    In many cases, the application transforms the data (for example, AFP to PDF) to make it easier for the user to view. The PDF viewer is easily obtainable if it is not already installed on the user’s workstation. An AFP viewer installed on the user's workstation might be more difficult for a user to obtain and for a company that provides web services to manage.

In this common customer use case, the following list describes the interaction between the user, the web application, and Content Manager OnDemand:

  1. The user signs on to the website with their credentials. The web application authenticates the user, and retrieves a Content Manager OnDemand connection from a pool of connections.
  2. The web application selects a predefined folder to search.
  3. The web application assigns one or more Content Manager OnDemand folder field values to run a search that is unique to the user.
  4. The web application searches, for example, by account number and date range, and sends a search result list to the user.
  5. The web application closes the folder and releases the connection back to the pool of connections.
  6. The user selects a document to view from the search results list. Optional: The user is authenticated again before the user is allowed to retrieve the document.
  7. The web application retrieves a Content Manager OnDemand connection from a pool of connections.
  8. The web application retrieves the document and transforms data before it sends the data to the user.
  9. The web application releases the Content Manager OnDemand connection back to the pool of connections.