Document management system (DMS) is a document-oriented content management tool; an IT tool that allows you to process all forms of documents created in organizations. There are many DMS systems that allow you to handle documents in the right way, like fast data archiving, easy searching for documents by metadata or even content, or visualization and optimization of the structure.
Using document management software helps simplify the document life cycle management process to a large extent. You can set up automated workflows and processes to manage, update, and store documents shared and used in the company. Document management also helps maintain:
- Confidentiality with teams, customers, and partners
- Efficiency of workflows and systems
- Compliance with industry standards and regulatory authorities
The concept of a document management system is the trend of these past years. It is built as a content repository where you can store your content and reach it through RESTful APIs or service layer. The approach is reactive, it means another system requests the content as it is needed. The DMS may be headed, it means there is a graphic interface (GUI), you may serve across functionality in visual way or manage, administrate the system as you wish. Since it is headless, there is no user interface (UI), giving you freedom to build it according to your requirements. Due to its API-first concept, it is easy to integrate with and provides more freedom to developers to choose framework for their projects.
Advantages of headless DMS compared to traditional DMS:
| Headless DMS | Traditional DMS | |
| Integration | Easy to integrate due to its API-first approach | All content and source code coexist and are bounded tightly. |
| Flexibility | Free to choose database, underline framework and logic, programing language agnostic | Written on specific technology, which is dictated by the system to which integrates |
| GUI and customization | No GUI, fully customizable | Built in UI, should be adopted to each specific solution |
CRM based on a SaaS
Our service consists of two major parts: BilinkSoft CRM API and DMS based on Sensenet SNaaS.
Core component of the CRM is RESTful API which makes possible to access to business logic from extranet. In general, such API is a network or cloud-based service where instead of downloading software your desktop PC or mobile to run and update, you only connects to the service, which communicates with any other resources inside business network or external. The API might be hosted in any well known cloud provider like Azure, AWS, GCP as SaaS.
Core component integrates all company services together, processes information and documentation according to business logic workflow, making data accessible from any device and communicates with a customers in real time. We are using Microsoft based .Net Core technology to integrate data access layer and customer/user interface. High performance calculation tasks are proceeding with functional programming language F#.
API, built in Microsoft .Net platform, provides application interface to communicate between data storage level and business logic and client application. In such structure, the client may be a desktop or native application or separate system or even another external API. The communication is carried out with JSON and OData protocol. Where an identity server provides secure and fast authentication. OAuth 2.0 protocol based on client ID, token and secrets, can be used for both authentication and authorization.
Document Management System with SenseNet SNaaS
Another part is Document Management System build in open-source .Net solution from Sensenet. In Sensenet, the delivery of content happens through APIs. This solution requests the content as and when it is needed. Document management component makes easy to store and retrieve any kind of document directly in data base or file system.
Sensenet as a service (SNaaS) is a content repository with API first approach packed with a our role permission system.
Due to its API-first approach, it is easy to integrate and gives more freedom to the developer to choose the database, framework, and programming language at all level of the application development, whether it is a web, desktop or mobile development project.
You can either install sensenet in your own environment or use sensenet as a service (SNaaS), gaining access to a sensenet instance where we store and host all your content and data securely. SNaaS saves you time and energy by removing the need for installation and all maintenance-related tasks, ensuring easy onboarding, updates, and patches.
As an open-source software, the source code of sensenet backend and frontend components is fully public and available on GitHub.
A basic setup of sensenet has three top-level parts:
- A content repository that is the storage and service layer
- An application that uses the content of the connected content repository through API calls
- A sensenet admin surface that helps you carry out common content managements tasks
Sensenet allows high-performance searching base on apache lucene indexing in a millions of records at a time. As well as manage base operations of querying, filtering, ordering and paging inside stream and document content. Content is the basic block for storing information in such approach. A content can be any kind of data, user, document, workspace, memo, task, and more. Using content items everywhere unlocks a great deal of exceptional features, making your experience as a user more seamless, and your job as a developer a lot easier.
With the our API services layer, you do not need a UI to manage content at all, because you can access your content in the repository through our REST API. The requested resource can be any content or children of a content in the repository that is permitted for the current user. It is possible to build automation processes or jobs to make a content synchronize between different system and sending alert notification if something happens with RabbitMQ message queue and Hangfire .Net for background processing.
Async processing
System allows to manage a huge amount of operations in short time using async processes with message queue (RabbitMQ) and background processes on Hangfire, Quartz and Cron.
Message queueing with RabbitMQ allows web servers to respond to requests quickly instead of being forced to perform resource-heavy procedures on the spot that may delay response time. Message queueing is also good when you want to distribute a message to multiple consumers or to balance loads between workers.
Another advantage of queue approach is asynchronous processing. It means, asynchronous processing enables various workflow processes to run at the same time in different threads.
BiLinkSoft CRM is a powerful, customizable, small business–oriented DMS solution. It does all you need to manage business documentation flow efficiently in-one-place, keeping your business connected end to end with minimal IT involvement. The platform might be easy integrated with already existed company’s solution. The systems is fully serverless SaaS with all of benefits of cloud computing like high availability and scalability and cost management.