After working with the IBM FileNet software for several decades, it's amazing how many user interfaces have been used to deploy, configure and manage the solutions that have been developed.  As we've all moved through generations of technology we've come full circle where many of the tools for managing infrastructure have now moved back to being command line tools. I'm going to describe a new tool that my company has developed, a command line interface for IBM FileNet.

I recently demonstrated fncli (a FileNet Command Line interface) at the Midwest Business Automation User Group 2025.  You'll find it on YouTube https://youtu.be/fhU3kttrgow?si=MDkAho3tiUZKTEsj.  The premise is that a command line is easier to integrate into your DevOps processes and simpler to navigate (sometimes) than a lot of user interface pages.  It's more reliable for scripting as you're not relying on someone navigating pages and copying/pasting information, and it hopefully can concentrate on a specific function rather than providing a generic tool for everything.  If you want to read about it or ask for a demonstration, you can go to the fncli website.

fncli comprises a command line executable, which is developed in Go, and provides multi-platform/ multi-language support; a container that implements the command features; and, a data and security model within a new or existing object store in your IBM FileNet domain.  It uses the existing infrastructure and builds a framework for managing, securing and controlling both individual commands as well as queries and scripts you can develop or purchase.

Stored searches and javascript within ACCE are problematic out of the box.  The structures for managing them aren't very complete, so fncli provides that structure.  Instead of stored searches we have Named Queries, secured documents that contain SQL or GQL sequences.  They're secured, tagged, grouped, authorised and certified to guarantee the right access to features, and confidence no-one is tampering with things that could be critical.  In parallel to Named Queries, we have Named Scripts, javascript components syntactically identical to the existing actions and script features of ACCE, but secured, tagged, grouped, authorised and certified as well.  You can simply upload your existing scripts and fncli will help you manage and use them. Scripts also benefit from extensions for Script libraries where common script functions can be shared and assembled dynamically at runtime rather than copy/pasted within ACCE, with all of the accidental issues that could create.  Scripts can be applied to queries or can be executed discretely, either from the fncli container, or within the content engine.  Security and certification is paramount, so you must be allowed explicitly to do anything constructive or destructive, or with system level access.

There are a number of simple commands, like ls, to list information, get, to retrieve information in JSON or tabular format, or summary to show what is in the domain, what software releases, what components and how they're configured.  Query and script management and execution commands, work with the security model and the commands for managing it. Mustgather requests are automated with obfuscation, and for IER and Case Manager customers, there are commands for looking at file plans, disposal schedules and case solutions.  The migrate command extracts the details needed for migrating a WebSphere FileNet system to BAW/CP4BA.  These are just a few of the commands I think are important, based on years of helping customers with their IBM FileNet system.

I'm targeting fncli to be production ready by the end of September, but if anyone wants to participate in testing our release candidate, head to the fncli site and fill in the contact us form and I can organise that.  If you've got any suggestions for features that you'd like to see in a command line interface for IBM FileNet I'd really like to discuss how we could include that too.