The webMethods Content Service Platform supports connection to over 50 content management applications and over 100 document types. Document types include such information as Microsoft Office documents, e-mail messages, rich media files, e‑forms, image files, and reports.

Document types can be imported into Software AG Designer where they are converted to a standard IS document type (an IS document type is a proprietary Software AG format for exchanging information between business process components). You can use the IS document type to describe the input for a business process, as the business data for a task, or for any other supported IS document type use. For more information about creating IS document types, see the webMethods Service Development Help.

For document types that have an e-form associated with them (Adobe LiveCycle and Microsoft InfoPath are supported), both the e-form and the metadata are used to create the IS document. Document types that are not associated with an e-form are converted to an IS document type using only the document type's metadata.

Document types are also accessed at run time by the webMethods run-time components (Process Engine and Task Engine).

To integrate your stored document types into business processes and tasks, Software AG Designer must have network access to the storage location at design time.

During run time, the content location must be available to the Task Engine if you have implemented the ability for a user to download the content from a task instance running in My webMethods. For more information about working with content and attachments in a task application, see the webMethods BPM Task Development Help.

If Integration Server is connected to a Broker at the time you create an IS document type from a document type, the resulting IS document type will be publishable to the Broker and will have an associated Broker document type.

To use a document type as a run-time IS document type source that starts a business process, a webMethods Content Service Platform environment must be configured and deployed to the Integration Server host where the process will run.

For more information about configuring and deploying a Content Service Platform environment, see Configuring and Deploying a webMethods Content Service Platform Environment.