How to automatically update FileNet P8 data design in multiple environments

Question

I find that changing data design via ACCE is slow process and might cause human errors. Propagating changes from one environment to another seems to be quite tedious as well (for example from DEV to TEST).

Is there way to easily propagate data design changes to other P8 environments? Maybe it's possible to write some kind of update scripts?

Answer 1

FileNet actually ships with a program called "FileNet Deployment Manager" FDM.

This helps take the tediousness away from pushing changes from dev through to prod.

If your prod environment is already established, you would most likely need to rebuild your dev environments from first deploying from production backwards.

I would suggest looking into this tool, learning its strengths and weaknesses. It has helped us out a bunch.

BTW FDM has vastly improved from 4.5.1 to 5.2.1. You can deploy global objects like Marking Sets etc.

Answer 2

When you try this process yourself thru the FDM GUI (I put the CLI xml behind it) you get in a subfolder temp all xml files filled in as examples from what you did thru GUI.

1. Menu file, switch deployment tree gives you a new environment no CLI available
2. Add your DEV environment connected. CLI CreateEnvironment

• Create an export manifest. manual work
• Create an export dataset. CLI ExportDeployDataSet
• Create an export package from dataset. CLI CreateDeployPackage

3. Add an unconnected environment (no server connection). CLI CreateEnvironment

• Expand your deployment package (if you copied zip from one machine to another). CLI ExpandDeployPackage
• Import your package. CLI ImportDeployDataSet
• Create your Object store half map. CLI RetrieveObjectStoreInfoFromDeployDataSet
• Create your security principal half map. CLI RetrievePrincipalInfoFromDeployDataSet

4. Create an connected TEST environment. CLI CreateEnvironment

• Create your OS half map retrieve from CPE. CLI RetrieveObjectStoreInfoFromDomain
• Create your security principal half map by retrieve from your dataset. CLI RetrievePrincipalInfoFromDeployDataSet

5. Create your source - destination pair. CLI CreateEnvironment

• Map the objectstore data. CLI MapData
• Map the security data. CLI MapData
• Convert the dataset. CLI ConvertDeployDataSet

Then see in your temp folder all examples of XML's from whay you did in GUI.

Thats all you need to automate it from the command line interface. https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSNW2F_5.5.0/com.ibm.p8.common.deploy.doc/deploy_mgr_command_line_ref.htm