Every new release of Content Manager brings a decision. Do you upgrade now, wait for the next version, or stick with what's working? We hear this question from clients across government and regulated industries every time OpenText pushes out an update.
Content Manager 26.2 is worth a proper look. It doesn't reinvent the platform, but it makes real changes in the areas records managers and IT teams have been asking about for a while: classification, search, retention workflows, the web client, security, mobile access, and how well the system plays with the Microsoft tools your staff already use every day.
Here's what's actually changed, and what it might mean for your organisation.
One of the biggest time sinks in records management is classification. Someone has to decide where a document belongs, what retention schedule applies, and what metadata needs to be attached. Get it wrong, and you're either over-retaining everything (expensive and risky) or under-retaining critical records (worse).
Content Manager 26.2 introduces what OpenText calls a semantic framework, and it's a bigger change than the name suggests. Instead of relying purely on file type, folder location, or keyword matching, the system now converts document content into vector embeddings. In plain terms, that means it captures the meaning of a document, not just the words in it, so two documents that discuss the same topic in different language can still be recognised as related.
This underpins four practical improvements:
For a council records team we've worked with, this kind of improvement matters because their staff aren't records specialists. They're planners, engineers, and customer service officers who just need the system to make the right call most of the time, with an easy way to correct it when it doesn't.
Semantic search also solves the classic problem we hear about in every records system, on every platform: someone knows a document exists, searches for it, gives up after page three of results, and emails a colleague instead. That's not really a technology failure; it's a trust failure. When staff don't trust search, they build workarounds, and workarounds are usually where compliance problems start.
Retention and disposal scheduling is where a lot of organisations quietly fall behind. Schedules get set up once, during implementation, and then nobody touches them again until an audit forces the question.
The 26.2 release gives records teams clearer visibility into what's due for review and more control over approval steps before anything is actually destroyed. For agencies working under strict retention obligations, that reduces the anxiety that comes with disposal decisions. Nobody wants to be the person who approved destroying something they shouldn't have.
A handful of smaller but genuinely useful admin improvements sit alongside this.
You can now search records using retention schedule numbers directly, which sounds minor until you're the person trying to track down every record tied to a specific schedule ahead of a review.
The SQL text index (the database technology behind Content Manager's search) now supports reindexing filtered by registration date, so IT teams can rebuild search indexes for a date range rather than the whole system.
There's also an improved data cleanup utility for completed workflows, and better validation for inactive groups and access control enforcement, both of which help keep permissions accurate as staff move roles or leave.
A records system only works if people actually use it, and a clunky interface is one of the fastest ways to push staff toward workarounds. Content Manager 26.2 gives the web client a genuinely new navigation experience, not just a coat of paint.
There's a new left-hand vertical navigation panel that you can expand or collapse depending on what you're doing, which frees up screen space for the actual document or workflow you're working on. The Properties and Action panels have been reworked too, so common tasks like registering a document, applying a hold, or checking a workflow status take fewer clicks and less guessing.
None of this is flashy. It's the kind of change you notice by how much less often someone asks "where is that button now" during a training session.
For organisations operating under strict compliance obligations, security controls and audit trails aren't optional extras. Content Manager 26.2 adds several specific improvements here rather than one broad security update.
Document-level encryption now protects individual documents, not just the system as a whole.
The platform also supports TLS 1.3 (Transport Layer Security, the protocol that secures communication between a client and a server), which is the current standard for encrypted connections.
There are enhanced controls for handling assignee changes on documents that are checked out, so a document doesn't end up in limbo if someone leaves mid-task.
Print Report operations now get improved audit logging, and Manage In Place records (MIP, meaning records that stay in their original system, like SharePoint, rather than being physically moved into Content Manager) get enhanced audit and revision history tracking.
This matters most during an actual audit or investigation, when the last thing anyone wants is to spend a week reconstructing a timeline that the system should have kept for them.
Field-based teams have never fitted neatly into records systems designed around a desk and a monitor. The Content Manager mobile app gets meaningful attention in 26.2, particularly around barcode scanning.
The app now supports Code 39 and Code 128 barcodes, common formats used on physical file labels and asset tags, so staff can scan a barcode to retrieve a record instantly rather than searching for it manually.
The app stores up to 1,000 recently scanned records locally, which matters for teams working in locations with patchy connectivity.
Staff can also perform bulk updates for assignees and home locations directly from the app, so a team doing a physical records audit in a warehouse or archive doesn't need to update each record one at a time back at a desk.
Most organisations don't live inside Content Manager all day. They live in Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint, and Content Manager needs to fit around that reality rather than fight it. This release goes further on Teams integration than any recent update.
A new Finalised MIP Records tab gives quick access to approved and completed records directly inside Teams, so staff don't need to leave a conversation to check a record's status.
Up to five additional metadata fields can now display alongside records in Teams, giving people context without switching applications.
On the MIP (Manage In Place) side, there's tenant-level MIP configuration, an improved store management experience, better audit and revision tracking, and the ability to finalise a record directly from Teams rather than routing back through Content Manager.
A few smaller Teams enhancements round this out: support for capturing two-person chats as records, advanced search set as the default option when creating a record, controls over which record types are visible to whom, the ability to control or revoke exposure of records, improved timezone configuration, and support for Exchange Online role-based access control (RBAC, meaning permissions are assigned based on a user's role rather than configured individually) for applications.
We've seen how much this matters with a state government client whose staff avoided the records system entirely because saving a document meant switching applications, finding the right folder, and applying metadata manually. Every extra step is a reason not to do it. Reduce the steps, and compliance becomes a habit instead of a chore.
A few changes in 26.2 are worth flagging before you plan an upgrade, not because they're problems, but because they need a decision from your team.
Microsoft is retiring Remote Event Receivers (RERs, the mechanism SharePoint Online has used to trigger automated actions). If you integrate Content Manager with SharePoint, you'll need to review OpenText's upgrade guidance, reapply your Lifetime Management Policies (LMPs, the rules that govern how long content lives and what happens to it) after upgrading, configure Preservation and Hold libraries where relevant, and understand how synchronisation and webhook-based processing behave differently under the new model.
This isn't optional housekeeping. Skip it, and your SharePoint governance can quietly stop working the way you expect.
Content Manager 26.2 continues support for the underlying OpenText components it relies on: Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) 25.3, Media Server 25.3, KeyView 25.3, Blazon Server 16.6.12.21, and Brava Desktop 25.2. Worth checking against your current environment before you upgrade, particularly if any of these are managed separately by your IT team.
Two things drop out of support entirely. Annotation and redaction functionality is no longer supported on 32-bit Content Manager, and Windows Server 2016 is no longer a supported platform. If either applies to your environment, moving to 64-bit Content Manager and a supported server OS needs to happen before, not after, you upgrade.
None of these changes are dramatic on their own. Taken together, they point to a platform that's paying closer attention to the people who use it every day, not just the administrators who configure it. If you're weighing up what 26.2 would actually mean for your environment, we're happy to talk it through.