There is no doubt that a lot of  web content constitutes business records and must be managed. The question is which is the easiest way to achieve this?

If the Web Content Management (WCM) system is the main tool for the creation of the web content, then it should provide an integration with the records management system, consistent with the integrations with other authoring applications. The HP TRIM WCM system allows you to configure rules that automatically capture web pages as records when they are published. The rules can vary between different sections on the web site, so that you can exclude non-records content. If you want to capture regular snapshots of the whole site, you can use the site capture scheduler.  This will automatically render the whole site into static HTML pages, zip it up, and store it as a permanent record in the HP TRIM repository.

If the Web site is used for the publication of content created from other systems, then it makes sense to use the records management repository as a source for that content. Use the integrations of the authoring applications with HP TRIM  to capture the version that you want to publish as a record, and then publish it from there. The WCM module allows you to publish records in three ways, all of which interactively extract the record from the central repository:

• Hyperlink to a single record
• Fixed list of links to selected records
• Dynamic list of links based on search criteria

If you use HP TRIM for document management, you can define at what point a new version of a document gets published, based on rules.  This allows you to automatically publish a new major version of a document as soon as it is declared; or you can make the process manual by the users assigning a publish date in the document management client.

If the Web site is used to publish interactive forms, it becomes part of a communications process with your customers. You will want to capture the submitted forms into the records management system to bring them into context with related correspondence and transactions. The WCM module allows you to capture forms as a combination of metadata and rendered form in various formats.  It even allows you to automatically start off a HP TRIM workflow process when a form is submitted, allowing you to automate your business processes.

Because the HP TRIM WCM module is based on standard technology such as XML, XSLT and CSS, it can be configured or customized to publish data from other applications as well.  Whether you want to capture records as part of these integrations or whether you want to capture the records as part of an integration between the source application and HP TRIM records management directly, varies from case to case. Our professional services specialists can help you analyze the requirements and figure out the most effective approach. The high level of out of the box integration between HP TRIM WCM and HP TRIM records management not only gives you a head start, it also means that you are dealing with people who have the integration experience, both at a technical and at a conceptual level.