BlueCielo Meridian GCF/Project Portal 2016 Administrator's Guide

Understanding the system architecture

The system architecture of GCF/Project Portal is based on the standard Global Collaboration Framework architecture and allows deployment and security flexibility.

In its simplest configuration, a single folder in a Meridian Enterprise vault is linked to a single folder in a Project Portal workspace. The two systems can be located at the same physical site or they can be remote from one another. Documents and metadata are transferred between the systems using Meridian Enterprise briefcase files. The GCF processor programs that synchronize information at both sites can be installed at GCF computers at each site or on the same computer. This computer is called the GCF computer in this manual. For more information about Meridian Enterprise briefcase files, see the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Configuration Guide.

A typical deployment will employ four servers, each with GCF/Project Portal components installed similar to the following figure.

Due to the inherent differences between Meridian Enterprise and Project Portal, there are some limitations in GCF/Project Portal:

• In Project Portal, a folder or file name can contain characters that are not allowed in Windows. Such characters are replaced with underscore characters (_) in Meridian Enterprise.
• In Project Portal, it is possible to have two folders or files with same name appear in the same folder, this will create a conflict in Meridian Enterprise.

• GCF/Project Portal uses the Meridian Enterprise file name without the extension for the corresponding document name in Project Portal. To use a Meridian Enterprise property for the document name in Project Portal instead, see Configuring the export settings.

• Unlike Meridian Enterprise which only associates one primary content file to each document (not considering hybrid documents and renditions), multiple primary content files can be attached to one Project Portal document. Therefore, only one file should be attached to any Project Portal document that will use GCF collaboration. If multiple content files are attached, the file that is attached and transferred to Meridian Enterprise is determined by a priority list of file extensions. For more information see the MainAttachmentOrder setting in Configuring the Project Portal processors.
• In Meridian Enterprise, outdated revisions are read-only. In Project Portal, all revisions can be modified. GCF/Project Portal works with the most recent revision only.
• A Meridian Enterprise vault may only collaborate with one Project Portal site.
• Meridian Enterprise hybrid documents are not supported.
• Meridian Enterprise folder properties are not copied to Project Portal folders.

This document describes how to configure GCF/Project Portal with one Meridian Enterprise vault and one Project Portal workspace. For information on configuring GCF/Project Portal for multiple vaults or workspaces, contact BlueCielo ECM Solutions Technical Support for assistance.

The relationships and communications between the various components that are installed on the computers are described in the following topics.