Seeking Developer; Suggested Skills??? 2

[KHuie]

Greetings all, we are beginning to put together a justification to higher a developer to assist with integration, reporting, web page modifications and other development requirements with Content Server. We will be using OT Enterprise Connect, OT Records Management, OT Content Server, FootPrints (ticketing system) and the MS suite of tools. My question to the group is what skills should a well-rounded developer have for this environment? What would be good questions to ask to determine their competency?

Thanks Much for your inputs!
Ken Huie

 

[appnair]

Grr'h Enterprise Connect it has been out since when like six months.seriously do you expect to find anybody who has done anything with it.Maybe you can find fakesters if they put 5 yrs of dev exp with ent connect.

RM-If anybody has done RM ask them what they did to get it going.I am expecting a qualified guy to start with populating core tables and working their way to RSI's and RM classifications,creating RM classifications/RSI's based on file plans residing in excel.Anybody heard of skupsky and its integration bonus points.Somebody who dealt with that should get have a fair undesratnding between differences between classifications/rm classifications/categories

Content Server-you know everything to ask there.I remember a candidate who claimed everything they knew about livereports saying kuaf is a column in dtree.

Or you can offer people like David Caughell of OT(just joking)

Finally instead of a jack of all trades consider hiring a pretty sharp developer maybe not trained in livelink spend some money at OT training for him/her they will probably be more eager to learn than old guys who carry a lot of baggage




Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
James Thurber, New Yorker cartoon caption, June 5, 1937
Certified OT Developer,Livelink ECM Champion 2008

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=2884

http://www.linkedin.com/in/appunair

 

[ggriffit]

Agree with AppNair that Enterprise Connect has been out for too short a time to have too many people with a substantive grasp of it.

For Livelink itself, you could look for someone who is Certified, either as a Developer or an Admin, or someone with a good record of Livelink projects that you can check out. Don't just trust that they have worked on a large LL project or at OT as an automatic pass as I've worked with a lot of people who should know a lot more than they did, either because of our expectation or thiers.

Like Nair, the pool of the top guys is quite small, significantly smaller than other tools such as Oracle or SharePoint for example.

As with any other hire, take up references, give them a quick test of common questions and practical things to see if they are as good as they are claimed to be.

Also agree that unless you really need someone to hit the ground running then you could be better hiring in someone with a good and wide experience in the type of technologies involved and train them up, the OT courses are great for this and perhaps some support from consultants or OT etc.

Also think about what they need to do, if its lots of complex OScript immediately then thats different from needing some simple OScript to start with etc.

Greg Griffiths
Livelink Certified Developer & ECM Global Star Champion 2005 & 2006

http://www.greggriffiths.org/livelink/

 

[KHuie]

You guys rock, two of the best in the Biz! Thanks for the valuable information.

A couple items:
* On EC - the tool is new, but how about developing from the Web Services layer? Is that new? What skills support that?

* On OSCRIPT - We're shortly moving to LL 9.7.1 is this version and later really that dependent on OSCRIPT knowledge? It was my understanding the OT was moving away from this proprietary code dependency.

Hmmm... what if the 3 of us started a business??? Naahh 2 much work, huh?

klh

 

[ggriffit]

Ken, thanks for the comments, Nair and I are just a few of many Livelink guys, such as yourself, who share our knowledge to help the rest, and I certainly get as much back and more that I give.

Enterprise Connect is a new tool and still finding its feet, not sure how many people have deployed in in eval or Prod as yet - would like to hear from those who have as my team are looking into it now for our users.

WebServices is relatively new within Livelink, although it supports standard Web Services, of which you can find lots of examples on the web. The KC has some documentation, samples and forums for Livelink Web Services.

This technology should replace the LAPI stuff as its more suited to a Enterprise 2.0/Web environment, although LAPI will still have its place, users and plenty of legacy code to keep people enployed for many years to come.

OScript is still the language for Livelink, although we are expecting OClipse - OScript plugin for Eclipse - with Livelink 10, which is more of a replacement for the Builder than anything else from what I've seen so far, but there will be lots more on this at Content World. Would have thought a plugin for Visual Studio would be coming too given a) the OT/MS relationship and b) LAPI is supported in 2 MS language types (.Net and VB) and only one which is commonly used in Eclipse - Java

As well as the WebServices layer, there is also the Java Modules layer, although this has a smaller user base than LAPI but does allow compiled code which gives you the chance to keep your code or liscence checks private etc.

As for OScript knowledge, depends what you are looking to do with the resource you recruit, if you need them to write Livelink modules then OScript is key as its likely to be about for a while to come, as well as legacy system support etc.

Greg Griffiths
Livelink Certified Developer & ECM Global Star Champion 2005 & 2006

http://www.greggriffiths.org/livelink/