Foremost Recommendations for Obtaining the Best from OpenText Exstream

1. Foremost Recommendations for Obtaining the Best from OpenText Foremost Recommendations for Obtaining the Best from OpenText Exstrea Exstream m OpenText Exstream is an omnichannel customer communication platform. It enables businesses to increase customer engagement through highly personalized and targeted communications that can be optimized for multiple digital and print channels. As one of the most powerful tools in multichannel customer communication management (CCM), we believe Exstream has the potential to significantly maximize the impact of customer touchpoints on organizations. However, to get the most out of Exstream, businesses need to master a few key elements. As a specialist solutions provider with decades of experience in the CCM field, we have implemented Exstream projects for a large number of clients. From helping a large life insurance company reduce its rapid change time from 15 days to hours, to supporting an insurance company in simplifying its overly complex setup to apply new standards and best practices, we have gained valuable experience and hope to share Key findings are generated to help our customers and other users get the most out of the software. In this blog, we reveal our top tips, focusing on achieving successful deployments, and how to make fast-track changes and succeed when support is needed. 1. How to deploy easily 1. How to deploy easily? ?

2. • Embrace Process: • Embrace Process: Your IT department will have a mandatory published process for deploying code. Take the time to understand this before deploying Exstream and make sure to adopt it when the time comes. • Be agile: • Be agile: If your organization has adopted an agile development model, you will need to consult with other areas of the business to understand how to gradually deploy Exstream within that model. • Master history: • Master history: Leverage tools like Apache Subversion (SVN), a software version control and revision control system, and Jira, which can plan, track, and manage agile and software development projects. These will help you maintain your code and deployment history. 2. How to avoid disruption when changing rapidly 2. How to avoid disruption when changing rapidly? ? • Join forces with IT: • Join forces with IT: Avoid miscommunication and cross-purpose headaches by sitting down with IT and agreeing on the release process upfront. The agreed approach is fully documented and shared with all necessary personnel. Doing this right from the start will help maintain business as usual, while also ensuring that Exstream is regularly updated for overall optimization. • Schedule weekly releases • Schedule weekly releases: Make sure you have a weekly release day from the start, scheduled on a date and time outside of peak production periods to ensure minimal disruption. Also, keep your weekly releases small to allow enough time for necessary testing and approvals. With this, rapid changes and updates can be incorporated into existing release routines that other business people will be familiar with. • Don't overcomplicate regression testing • Don't overcomplicate regression testing: When deploying an application, make sure it covers relevant documentation, not all documentation, to keep it simple. A set of regression tests should also be maintained for each application and should be fully run to avoid introducing new problems. • Leverage additional tools: • Leverage additional tools: Comparison tools such as Stream diff are invaluable when comparing baseline results with new results when the test set produces a large number of output files (PDF, AFP, etc.). Message point and OpenText Exstream Content Author also provide an efficient way to separate simple content changes from the IT publishing process.

3. 3. How to succeed when you need support from us or OpenText 3. How to succeed when you need support from us or OpenText • Ditch production data: When troubleshooting, if you want to avoid the pitfalls of dealing with customer information, the golden rule is to never use production data. You need a process in place to anonymize customer data and then attach this data to relevant tickets for security. • Don't rush to fix: • Don't rush to fix: Always make sure to reproduce the problem before attempting to fix it. This will ensure that you fully understand what is causing the problem and significantly increase your chances of correcting it faster. • Regression success • Regression success: If you have automated regression testing and tools in place, it's best to fully regression test the application before deploying each change. • Remember documentation • Remember documentation: When you make changes, don't forget to update related documentation. This is a common mistake we see businesses make, and it can quickly lead to outdated documentation that cannot be relied upon. If your business uses DevOps that supports its wiki, you can use it to host documentation so your organization can consume it without hassle. Here at Benevolence Technologies Benevolence Technologies, our team pioneered Exstream implementation and as a group we have amassed unrivalled experience over the years in helping businesses get the most out of their CCM delivery and projects. We recommend at least requesting an upgrade assessment health check and consulting service to ensure that your OpenText™ environment is ready for an upgrade and that you have someone to turn to for helpful advice and guidance. As always, please be sure to reach out if hearing from you! you have any further questions. We look forward to hearing from you