When Do You Need Document Management?
Document Management can more than pay for itself when your business is document centric, when documents are the life blood of your business.  This is often true for law firms, financial services firms, mortgage companies and may be true for certain departments and groups within the company.

If you have a lot of time wasted looking for documents, getting documents together, dealing with document access issues, or tracking document history and versions you may be a candidate for a solid document management solution. 

What is Document Management?
 First of all, document management is not for your documents, it's for your users and your business objectives. Document Management puts you in control of the knowledge institutionalized within your organization.  A document management system is the means to impart structure, organization, and accessibility to this knowledge store.
Document management is a broad discipline that offers a variety of services and features that can be addressed within the following categories:

• Library services
• Network support
• Document security
• Full text retrieval
• Document viewers
• Version control
• Document History
• Access control (Check-in/Check-out)

Technologies such as imaging and workflow, which are closely related to document management are often lumped into the document management mix.

The Key to Document Management
Library services are the key to document management.  Library Services is a broad term that encompasses saving, cataloging, and retrieving files. When you use a document manager to create a file, you generally are required to fill in a profile card.  In other words, a user must classify a new document according to a predefined classification structure (possibly adding new fields such as a new client, new contract type etc. ).  This structured approach in turn provides the ability to locate documents easily.

Document Management Software 
Worldox Document Management System software from World software provides one cost effective solution to document management needs.  For information on Worldox and other EDMS approaches please contact us at EBS.
 

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 OUTLOOK TIP*[2]

Automatically reply to incoming messages while out of the office!
This feature requires you to use a Microsoft Exchange Server e-mail account. Most personal e-mail accounts through an Internet service provider (ISP) are POP3 accounts and do not support this feature.

In Mail, on the Tools menu, click Out of Office Assistant.
[The Out of Office Assistant command does not appear unless you are using an Exchange Server e-mail account and you are in the Mail view. ]
Click I am currently Out of the Office.
In the "AutoReply only once to each sender with the following text" box, type the message that you want to send to others while you are out.
If you want, create rules (rule: One or more automatic actions taken on e-mail messages and meeting requests that meet certain conditions, along with any exceptions to those conditions. Rules are also referred to as filters.) to manage your incoming mail.

HELP: For help with Exchange, Business Continuity Planning, Disaster Recovery planning, Storage and Backup, Security Issues or general IT support, give us a call or email EBS and we will be glad to be of assistance: 713.522.3480

*Sources:
[1] World Software
http://www.worldox.com
[2]Microsoft @
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP052422291033.aspx
[3]Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/4282263.html

Microsoft has just released a long awaited major upgrade to the Internet Explorer browser - IE 7!

A very cool feature of the new IE 7 is auto correct printing.  Tired of printing web pages that are chopped off along the side? Internet Explorer 7 automatically shrinks text for improved printing , so all webpage content fits on your final printed page. Print options also include adjustable margins, customizable page layouts, removable headers and footers, and changeable print space.

Firefox 2 has also just been released. How does it compare with IE 7?  An interesting comparison review was recently published in the Houston Chronicle [3].  The author, Dwight Silverman, gives the overall edge to Firefox 2, but goes on to say that he will still use IE 7 day to day because of its better interface and strong new page tabbing.  Silverman gives the edge on security to Firefox.  Although he acknowledges the strong efforts Microsoft has made on security with this release, he basically says it is too soon to tell if that work will pay off.