Regular maintenance and upkeep play an important part in protecting your organization’s investment in a Perceptive Content document management system. Completing regular check-ups and setting up alerts and regular reporting will help ensure that unnecessary down-time or unforeseen headaches are minimized and avoided where possible. In some cases, these items may be automated, but it’s always a great idea to check in and perform some periodic maintenance and upkeep. Below are some recommended upkeep tasks with suggested intervals that you may wish to implement in your Content system.
Daily
Set up system alerts, including service and drive/storage space monitoring. An ImageNow service going down or a drive running out of space can spell disaster very quickly. External service monitors may use a simple TCP/IP ping to ensure a service’s aliveness, and send an alert email to an IT team should an unwanted response be returned.
Implement regular backups for all Perceptive Content servers and databases. In most cases, a daily backup of some form is recommended, particularly for any Perceptive Content databases that may be in use. Daily or weekly snapshots of the Content servers can ease recovery efforts should the unexpected happen.
Check any import directories (local or network share locations) to verify that items are being picked up and brought into the Content system as expected. In some cases, errored documents may be sent to an error folder and if so, you may check the script or Import Agent log file to find out why.
Weekly
Review the server Event Viewer and application log files, checking for impactful errors for the Perceptive Content system and log files for any custom development (iScipts). Ensure that there aren’t excessive log files building up, which can quickly fill up drive space and make searching for more specific errors a pain. In general, agent and script logging should be set to “error only” (level 0 in the Perceptive Content .ini files) unless actively troubleshooting an issue.
Tip: You may wish to use Notepad++ to search through the script directory or archived log folders for a few keywords – error, fail, warning, etc. to help find any potential issues more efficiently.
Ensure all needed agents and scheduled tasks are running as intended. If not needed, you may disable the associated service or task to prevent it from starting after a server reboot.
If your organization is licensed for Business Insight, consider scheduling regular reporting. Reports can be used to gain an understanding of existing or developing bottlenecks in Documents, Workflow, Tasks, and more, and archiving data for later analysis. Business Insight has built-in canned reports available for immediate use, though more customized reports can be created as well. You can always run ad-hoc reports, but they can be scheduled for regular delivery to your inbox, too!
Configure database maintenance plans for all Perceptive Content databases. These will ensure that regular transaction log, differential, and full backups are taken regularly, along with occasional index rebuilds and statistics updates to ensure optimal performance. Running regular maintenance on database indexes and statistics on a weekly basis will help avoid data defragmentation in the system.
Monthly/Quarterly
If your organization requires regular password changes for service accounts, create a plan to change these wherever needed in the Content environment. It is common for a service account to run Content-related services and scheduled tasks. If it’s password changes, plan on updating these locations as quickly as possible to avoid unneeded downtime should a server reboot occur.
Apply OS-level patches and restart the Perceptive Content servers periodically. This ensures that any operating-system-level bugs or vulnerabilities are patched in your environment regularly. If Java and/or Apache Tomcat is used to host Integration Server, Forms Server, WebNow, or Experience, you may wish to apply periodic security patches as well – be warned that this will require a reinstallation of these components, though.
Plan for upgrades! Understanding new software versions and performing periodic (yearly or bi-yearly) upgrades can ensure that you are on a supported version of Perceptive Content, and offer defect fixes and new functionality that you may wish to take advantage of. Monthly patches for the Perceptive Content system are also made available, which can help patch a particularly troublesome defect in urgent cases.
If Apache Tomcat is used to host Integration Server, Forms Server, WebNow, or Experience, you may wish to apply periodic security patches as well – be warned that this will require a reinstallation of Tomcat, though.
Audit user/group permission in Perceptive Content. Have a colleague that’s moved on to another role or no longer with the organization? Remove or inactivate their account within Content – especially if they are a Department or Perceptive Manager user with elevated privileges.
Perform a yearly audit of licensed products. If you are licensed for an agent or component that’s not needed or no longer in use, you may be able to remove it from your annual SMSA bill.
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