Case for a LiveCycle Administrator

[Elaine_Schmitz]

Greetings, we are in the early stages of deploying livecycle within our company. One of the things I have noticed is that we haven't put a strong case together for a "livecycle server administrator" role. As a result, the following questions have surfaced:



1) What are the primary roles of an administrator?

2) Might these roles / tasks keep one busy full time, or is most of the work done up front with installation and server configuration?

3) Once installation / configuration is complete does an administrator's work generally decrease?

4)How likely is it for processes to stall in production (which would require an administrator to resolve)? Can this be an ongoing scenario, or, if processes are tested thoroughly in Dev/QA, can one expect that stalls will be minimized in production?

5) If our forms need to retrieve data from a mainframe (via SOAP, for example), and the mainframe is unavailable, will that cause a stalled process? Or should we handle that scenario in the design of the form?



We will be using a handful of components, such as Reader Extensions, FileNet, Output, and one or two others.



So many questions, thank you for your consideration 😉

[pguerett]

1) What are the primary roles of an administrator? <br /><answer> To install and maintain the LiveCycle server and associated databases and app server (if you do not have an app server admin).<br /><br />2) Might these roles / tasks keep one busy full time, or is most of the work done up front with installation and server configuration? <br /><answer> It depends on how much you use yoru Livecycle - do you have a feel for how many workflows and how many steps might be involved?<br /><br />3) Once installation / configuration is complete does an administrator's work generally decrease? <br /><answer> Yes ...but you can leverage them to look after staging environments as well as dev environments<br /><br />4)How likely is it for processes to stall in production (which would require an administrator to resolve)? Can this be an ongoing scenario, or, if processes are tested thoroughly in Dev/QA, can one expect that stalls will be minimized in production? <br /><answer> This is dependant on the complexity of your processes and if they reach out to other resources (LDAP, DataBases. Email etc..)You may create a very robust process but there are always unforeseen situations will arise. Stalling processes are the exception and not the rule.<br /> <br />5) If our forms need to retrieve data from a mainframe (via SOAP, for example), and the mainframe is unavailable, will that cause a stalled process? Or should we handle that scenario in the design of the form?<br /><answer> Should be handled in the calling program whether that be the form or the workflow process.