Project 816: Moving From Perceptive Content to Softdocs

Perceptive Content has served the University well for many years; however, it was designed for an earlier generation of document management and is not keeping pace with changing human and technical needs. 

Softdocs provides a modern, integrated, affordable platform that is easier to use and support. Softdocs specializes in higher education and government entities and provides an easy to use drag and drop interface providing the option for departments to create their own forms in the future.

Several factors make this transition timely:

• Title II accessibility compliance: Updates to Title II accessibility requirements effective April 2026 mandates accessible digital content, including forms and documents. Softdocs supports accessible, standardized, digital-first workflows. See this blog post by Softdocs for more information.
• Sustainability: Continued reliance on Perceptive Content increases long-term maintenance risk and operational complexity.
• Cost: Since Perceptive Content was bought by Hyland, costs have risen significantly while feature enhancements have declined
• Planned transition: Acting now allows for a phased, controlled migration rather than a future time-critical change driven by compliance or risk.

Perceptive Content documents, forms, workflows, and retrievers.

Softdocs can do electronic signatures. We currently use Docusign for that function and may move to Softdocs in the future but not at this time.

The decision was made by OneIT. The technical problems have been increasing over the years but the tipping point was the pending enforcement of Title II compliance. OneIT went with Softdocs because they primarily support higher education, their leadership came from Perceptive Content and have a proven track record of successful migrations. 

A stakeholder committee was not formed because of timing, financial and contractual constraints.

There are two parts to this implementation: 1) existing content migration and 2) implementation of eForms and workflows. The project team will not schedule activity between April 27th – May 12th (Last week of classes, Final exams, Graduation, End of Term Processing) or June 15th – June 30th (End of Fiscal Year processing).

• Existing Content: all existing content will be migrated. Units will be given the opportunity to identify documents that do not have to be migrated because of document retention policies. The exact time frame needs to be determined.
• Forms & Workflows: All forms and workflows have been inventoried and prioritized based on usage. Departments will be given an opportunity to identify outdated forms and workflows.

This is a fast-tracked project. There will never be a mutually good time for a project of this size and scope. It is a “lift and shift” approach. No changes are planned on the forms etc in order to minimize the effort on the functional units. However, if a business unit would like to change the form and/or process, we can assess the feasibility during this implementation. 

Softdocs is experienced with this kind of large scale migration for higher education institutions so we are following their recommendations as they make sense for Charlotte.

Most users will experience simpler forms, clearer workflows, and fewer manual steps. Some processes will move to new forms or interfaces as they are transitioned to Softdocs.

No. Existing documents will be carefully migrated according to records and business needs. 

Yes, training and documentation will be provided. Softdocs is designed to be intuitive, and many users will need minimal training. Power users will receive ~2.5 days of training prior to go-live.

New Title II accessibility requirements, effective April 2026, require accessible digital forms and documents. Softdocs meets the new requirements and will make sure existing and new content complies with the revised federal law.

Yes. One goal of this transition is to improve consistency and compliance with accessibility standards across University forms and processes.

No. Content forms and workflows will be migrated all at once. We will rely on Softdocs for higher education best practices and recommendations.

No, not at this time.