One of the significant new features of Visual Intercept 3.6 is integration to Windows SharePoint Services for document management. By greatly enhancing its document management capabilities the integration will allow our users to manage a wider variety of documents and processes using Visual Intercept.

However, because it is a fairly recent addition to the Windows platform, many of our users are unfamiliar with SharePoint and how it can be used within the context of issue management. This article will provide a brief introduction on how to use Visual Intercept with SharePoint and how it can benefit your organization.

Summary

The integration to Windows SharePoint allows your organization to leverage the document management capabilities of Microsoft Windows SharePoint for the management of documents attached to items in Visual Intercept. This allows you to keep requirements, specs, test plans, log files, screen captures, and other documents in a system that supports document collaboration while having them accessible from incidents, projects, and other items in Visual Intercept.

As a result your organization can use Visual Intercept’s document management capability for more than just static files and documents. A document such as a specification can be related to items and Visual Intercept and continually edited. Because SharePoint stores and manages the versions of the document you can always be assured that users in Visual Intercept will have access to the latest version of the document. In addition these same documents can be exposed through SharePoint Portal Server on a portal site. This allows users not actively involved in the issue resolution process to use SharePoint as their primary interface for editing documents while still maintaining collaboration with Visual Intercept users.

Other benefits of the integration include the ease of maintenance provided by having the documents stored in a SQL Server database. By storing the documents in a database instead of the file system you can leverage the system’s built-in backup and restore capabilities, and security and access issues associated with storage on the file system are eliminated.

Features and Basic Concepts

• When the integration is enabled Visual Intercept uses a Windows SharePoint document library of your choice as its document repository. As users attach documents and files to incidents and other items in Visual Intercept they are added to the SharePoint library. As users access documents and files attached to items in Visual Intercept they are retrieved from the SharePoint library.
• The integration allows users to work within a document folder structure you define within the Windows SharePoint library. By defining a folder structure you can organize documents attached to items in Visual Intercept into categories. For example, you might want to have separate folders for requirements documents, specs, screen captures, log files, and test plans.
• The integration supports two distinct modes of attaching documents to items in Visual Intercept. The first mode allows a local file to be attached to an item in Visual Intercept and added to a specific folder in the SharePoint library. This mode is most commonly used when a document is generated by the client, e.g., a screen capture or log file, and it needs to be attached to an item and added to a folder in the document library. The second mode allows the client to browse the document library and choose existing documents in the library to attach to items in Visual Intercept. This mode is most commonly used when there is a current version of a document stored and revised within SharePoint which needs to be attached to items in Visual Intercept. For example, you could attach the same specification document to multiple incidents in Visual Intercept, and users accessing that document from those incidents will always retrieve the most current version.

Requirements

If you have any questions or need any additional information about Visual Intercept’s SharePoint integration, please contact Elsinore support at: .

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