CMBox Featured

(O)Content Management Box Architecture Insights

John Sim

Dec 15, 2023 • 8 min read

I've been pulling together a series of post on the new Content Management Platform CM Box that the Fishbowl Solutions team have been working on to help provide customers with an alternative option to Oracle Content Management - enabling them to continue leveraging the functional features they need without the headache of spending 6months or up to a year to work out a transitional plan for moving to a new CMS.

Prior Posts:

Architecture Insight

The CM Box platform has been built from the ground up as a Cloud Native platform using modern frameworks and services to enhance and upgrade the performance and experience of the platform.

There are 6 core components:

Core CMBox Framework
Cache Layer & GraphQL Layer
Content Conversion Servers
Authentication Portal
Generative AI Vector Store & Integration
Object Storage

CM Box Core Services

To make the migration easy the team have replicated and enhanced the core architecture that OCM provided - this means your content structure, naming conventions, functionality and data remain the same and can be accessed via GQL or the new CM Box interface.

The team have also built in additional services which you can read in more detail below:

OCM Ingestion Service (Oracle Content Management)
Automation Hub (WebCenter Content)
Authentication Portal
Conversion Servers
GraphQL & Cache Layer
Generative AI Virtual Assistant
SaaS Extensions
Asset & Document Management
MS Teams Integration

OCM Ingestion Service (Oracle Content Management)

This is where the magic happens for anyone looking to migrate from Oracle Content Management and onto CM Box or WebCenter Content. An ingestion service is provided that will clone your OCM environment architecture and copy your assets from the OCM Object Store and into the CM Box Object store.

Forget about 6 months a year of architecting and mapping asset types, writing test scripts etc the ingestion service handles it for you - point to your OCM instance and click a button - its that simple..

Automation Hub (WebCenter Content)

OOTB there is no easy migration for OCM to WebCenter Content and so if you are looking to goto WebCenter Content you can use CM Box to automate and manage migration to WebCenter Content.

More info on this can be seen here:

Authentication Portal

As part of CM Box there is a self serve onboarding portal designed for Organisations / Customers - this means your admins have access to manage and handle items such as SSO Configurations and more.

SAML, SCIM and more are supported allowing you to easily integration with MS Azure or Oracle Identity Cloud Service for SSO.

Conversion Servers

CM Box comes with 3 Conversion Servers to handle

Document Conversions
to PDF with over 30 different file types supported.
Image Conversions
to AVIC, PNG, JPG as well as rendition generation to same size definitions OCM for Thumbnail, Small, Medium & Large. Also in the works is a rules engine to allow you to define your own renditions and configured outputs.
Video Conversions
to MP4 allowing you to convert AVI, MOV and other formats to a web streaming enabled video.

GraphQL & Cache Layer

Initially this was built specifically for OCM Customers and has been in use for Over 4 years providing an improved and faster content delivery service. When I say fast I mean fast!

Under load we are seeing 20-50ms response times

Built with Redis and exposing Apollo GraphQL Content Layer. Here you can the the web accessible Sandbox to test your queries against:

Generative AI Virtual Assistant

This is an addon service if you have an Oracle, Azure or Open AI subscription you can add your key and enable built in Generative AI Virtual Assistant to be able to query content hosted on CM Box.

If you are new to Generative AI here is an overview on RAG that we use with Assets:

SaaS Extensions

Fishbowl Solutions are working on a number of SaaS Extensions built with the SaaS integrated Visual Builder. You can see the first one built for Oracle CX Sales here:

Asset & Document Management

Asset and Document management is at the core of CM Box with an enhanced UX built from best design practices from Oracle and Oracle Content Management and team working with the product for over the last 8 years.

You can see it in action here:

MS Teams Integration

Last year the team built in support for Oracle Content Management and MS Teams as an integrated Document repository - due to the popularity the solution is being migrated to CM Box for existing customers that have OCM and Teams.

You can see it in action here:

What's missing

CM Box handles a lot today out of the box but there are still features that haven't made it into the platform.. unless our customers start asking for them.

Here is a list of what hasn't made the cut so far - it doesn't mean it is not coming, just that it isn't there today:

REST API
Conversations
Capture
Integrations
Analytics
CEC Toolkit
Streaming Services
WebHooks (WIP)
Site Builder (WIP)

REST API

CM Box does not offer a like for like REST API service - however the team can expose common individual OCM REST Services as required to make lift and shift easier for sites and services that rely on the REST API over the OCM GraphQL layer.

For example the Content Delivery API for returning items:
/content/published/api/v1.1/items can be enabled so that your site does not need to rewrite its API request handling.

Conversations

OCM Built this on top of Oracle Social Network which is also EOS 2024 and are transitioning and integrating to services such as teams - you can see this new approach here Fusion Apps Social Integration.

Although we have MS Teams integration at the moment it is designed for Documents and not collaborating over discussion and the chat channels - although this is something that could be enhanced.

Capture

Although we don't have any OOTB support for Oracle Capture or Imaging if you have a service that can push files to a CM Box service with corresponding meta data information CM Box can handle the throughput of ingesting content sent from a third party scanning or capture platform.

Integrations

Oracle Content Management had 10 integrations it supported OOTB with Process, Eloqua, Visual Builder etc.. There are no plans to build any custom integrations currently and to be honest not many customer that I worked with enabled any.

If there is an integration you would like the Team at Fishbowl Solutions could build it in for you - one of our recent discussions was integration support for PLM (Windchill).

Analytics

It is on the roadmap, but unfortunately hasn't made it into the product as of yet. You will get access to a report screen ie total assets in a repository and general breakdown, but there won't be any true analytics available.. Although watch this space I'm sure I'll get an email after this post that it's almost ready.. ;)

CEC Toolkit

It would be great if we could just adapt this to work with CM Box - but today there is no like for like REST API where we can take the CEC Toolkit and point it to CM Box - maybe in the future.. Although I think the preference from the team would be to provide a webUI instead similar to the new OCM Toolkit PowerShell.

Streaming Services

Oracle Content Management offered an amazing video platform called Sauce it handled multi-bitrate streaming, conversion to multiple formats and much more.

OOTB CM Box does provide video conversions to MP4 to enable streaming but does not support adaptive streaming - there is also a built in video editor, similar to the image editor that will allow you to split and transform your videos directly on the platform.

As for streaming services - if enough customers ask for it then it will make it in as a new addon service.

WebHooks & SiteBuilder (WIP)

The team are actively working on these features and hopefully in the next 3-6 months will rollout a solution.

A preview can be seen here of the new site builder:

Conclusion

There is a lot going on with the new CM Box CMS & I hope this helps to breakdown and provide an insight into the Architecture and services that the Fishbowl Solutions team are working to offer customers and partners looking for an easy migration path to WebCenter Content or the CM Box Platform from Oracle Content Management.