Honorable Mention
$5,000

Judging

The judging panel awarded this application Second place because:

• Creative usage of DFS, which fits in perfectly with the theme of using web services
• Idea has a lot of potential for further development
• Created a hosted version of this entry accessible via the internet

InBoxVault Email Integration

Inbox Vault is a service built on top of Documentum 6, using the newly-released Documentum Foundation Services (DFS), and hMailServer, an open-source .NET-based email server.

About the Developer

Vikram Pant is an Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, a management consulting firm located in the Washington D.C. area. He first joined the firm as an intern in the summer of 1998.

More on Vikram Pant

Overview

I view the webapp as a Web 2.0-style mashup with D6 DFS on one side and an open-source .NET-based e-mail server on another. I took some services from one side and some methods from another and in the middle, mashed up, was InboxVault.com. At a high-level I took hMailServer (open source email server) and installed it on a virtual machine. I then staged the D6 Vm image and made sure both could talk to each other.

*The primary reason for the Email Server having both front-end and backend was for simplicity. Ideally, and a possible task I may undertake, is to take the hMailServer API and wrap them within some Web Service calls using .NET. Then this would be a true mash-up; instead, here the Documentum side is web service and the email side uses a DLL.

Technical Highlights

Use of DFS and external 3rd party application. I believe the biggest technical highlight of the project is showing how easy it is to combine two separate platforms (a mail server and docbase) using web services to solve a problem quickly. (Inboxvault was done in approx 40 hours and most of that time was spent doing Hello Worlds to test DFS out).

Use of a 'middle-man process to handle interaction between DFS and email server. This was the way the mail server and docbase interacted. I wasn't able to create a trigger which would fire a web service to load the email/content, so I created a binary which every 10 minutes checks for unread mail. (This was done primarily due to time constraints of the project and the fact that hMailServer didn't have the ability to fire a process when new email received out-of-the-box).

Email Server (both front-end website and backend handler)*:

• hMailServer & API/DLL
• inboxvault.com (ASP.NET front end)
• custom emailHandler (written in C# utilizing both hMailServer API and DFS; running on timer)

D6 VMWare Image (out of the box instance):

• Documentum 6 (Weblogic / Sybase)
• DFS Instance

Sample EndUser Walkthru

• John updates his resume and wants to keep a copy accessible anytime anywhere. He doesn't want to open a browser and go to some file upload site for a simple text file nor does he want to use the usb thumbdrive. He just wants to send it somewhere safe and accessible from home. He opens up his email and sends it to himself. He then remembers that he's emailed himself a dozen versions and that there has to be a better way. He goes to InboxVault.com.
• An end user, John Doe, comes to InboxVault.com and signs up for an account. He is given johndoe@inboxvault.com.
• John now sends himself an email and attaches his resume to it.
• John goes home and from home can log in and get the latest copy to work on. He then emails it to himself again and it is versioned (to be implemented).
• The next day John is at work and can pull up both versions of his resume.

Benefits

The purpose of InboxVault.com was to create a repository that users could access (import/get/version) via e-mail. A user would sign up at InboxVault.com and then get an account with email address, you@inboxvault.com.

The benefit is that they can send email with files, CC: for archival purposes and know one spot where all their files/emails are. Also InboxVault would take care of versioning, tagging and so forth through a custom web front-end.

Vikram Pant

Mr. Pant has several years of technology experience ranging from system architecture to software design to managing backend infrastructure hardware to COTS integration. Over the past four years he has been working on implementing the Documentum suite of products within the federal government sector.

Mr. Pant earned degrees in Information Systems and Finance from the University of Maryland and a Masters in Information Systems from Johns Hopkins University. He resides in Olney, Maryland with his wife Erin.

View Project
Discuss Project
Contact the developer
More on Inbox Vault