The OpenEngagement DMS is based on Plone, an open-source general-purpose content management system, which in turn is based on Zope, an open-source general-purpose web application server. The OpenEngagement DMS and KMS consist of the Plone platform, several third-party add-on products, and a great deal of code developed by OpenEngagement. The OpenEngagement DMS is in many ways different than the underlying Plone platform: it provides it's own skin, workflow, security system, and many features, which allows it to be suited for accounting and auditing firms.

It is expected that this documentation is sufficient for most users of the OpenEngagement DMS. However, users may refer to the general Plone documentation if they wish to gain greater power from the product, or to extend the product, possibly in directions we did not envision.  However, users should not modify their live DMS server; users should only modify additional DMS servers set up for the purpose of development. Once users modify their live server, it is not possible for OpenEngagement to properly support the product.

Users of Hosted Solutions will likely gain very little by understanding the Plone platform on which the DMS is built. In fact, The key benefit of a Hosted Solution is firms can ignore the issues related to document management and server maintenance can instead concentrate on their core business, accounting. Firms using Local Solutions may gain some benefit from learning the platform, but this should rarely actually be necessary.

Using the Plone documentation, users may gain a greater understanding of the OpenEngagement DMS and, if they desire, may use this knowledge to modify or enhance the product. The Plone documentation will be useful for explaining the behavior of much of the OpenEngagement DMS, particularly the content types that are included with Plone by default such as: Folders, Pages, Files, Images, Links, News Items, Events, and Smart Folders.

Users of Hosted Solutions, of course, will not have access to their installations and will not be able to modify them. Any user may, though, install a test instance of the OpenEngagement DMS and modify this. This should be done on a separate computer from the one on which your live instance of the DMS is installed. Working in this manner, users are free and in fact encouraged, to experiment with the DMS. Any changes to the DMS instance, either through the ZMI, the source code, or third party products, may be given to OpenEngagement and included in future releases of the DMS. This allows users to contribute to the project, allows for OpenEngagement to test and verify all changes, allows users to modify the product without compromising the availability of support or consulting, and allows users to introduce their changes into the main development of the product, so users to not have to maintain their changes or re-integrate them with the DMS with each upgrade of the product.

There are numerous web sites providing information about Plone. Most are targeted toward Plone developers and not Plone users, but generally have some information available to end-users. Please note, where information is directed toward end-users, they generally assume users are using Plone out of the box. The OpenEngagement CMS contains numerous and significant modifications, in order to transform Plone, a general-purpose DMS, into a DMS specifically designed for CaseWare users. For example, we have made the workflow, security, and user roles relevant to accounting and auditing environments.

Some useful sites are:

http://www.plone.org  
This is the main Plone site. It provides documentation, how-tos, news, and more.

http://www.upfrontsystems.co.za/courses/plone/
This provides a tutorial describing how to use Plone. Most of it is quite advanced, but some of the introductory material may be useful. Other pages on this site may also be of interest to users.

http://plonetarium.objectis.net/
This site focuses on modifying the appearance of Plone sites.

http://www.zope.org/Products/CMF/docs/
CMF is the Content Management Framework, the component of Zope on which Plone is built.

As well as these web sites, there are now three books available on Plone: Building Website With Plone by Cameron Cooper, Plone Content Management Essentials by Julie C. Meloni, and The Definitive Guide to Plone by Andy McKay.

Of these, Meloni’s is the most directed toward Plone users; the other two are directed primarily toward Plone developers. Plone.org has prominent links to the three books on the left side of most of its pages. These link to Amazon, where the books may be purchased. The books may also be purchased elsewhere, but in general must be purchased on-line.

There is currently one demo site available, which is reachable from the top navigation bar on the www.openengagement.com web site, http://www.openengagement.com/oe_demo.

The demo site gives an example of using the OpenEngagement CMS product for external reviews. Another two demo sites are scheduled to appear soon, giving examples of using the DMS for internal reviews and for corporate reporting. The OpenEngagement DMS is represented by the DMS portion of the demo site. The site also covers the Knowledge Management System (KMS).

The site is read-only, and so does not fully demonstrate the functionality of the OpenEngagement DMS product. It does not allow demo users to add, delete, or modify content, or to log on as users with different permissions and so see how an OpenEngagement DMS site appears differently for users with different permissions. It does, though, show an OpenEngagement DMS site from the perspective of a user with full viewing permissions, and no other permissions, on the site, and shows the content and structure of a sample OpenEngagement CMS site.

To get a better feel for the product, users may download and install it. As well, interested parties may contact OpenEngagement and we can set up a temporary hosted site for users to experiment with, where they may add and delete user accounts, add, delete and modify content and so on.