Brava! Desktop is an affordable, easy to use application designed for viewing, printing, and marking-up documents and drawings. Brava! Desktop provides support for most major document formats including MS Office Documents, CAD and other engineering formats, as well as PDF format types. By using a powerful markup/viewer application, users have the advantage of being able to open proprietary file formats such as Autodesk CAD, Bentley MicroStation, and Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks 3-D models without owning the original development software or a purpose built viewer for each application.

What truly sets Brava! Desktop apart though, is the ability to markup and annotate files for collaboration. For example, an engineering firm can distribute floor plan drawings for review to the contracted architect and construction company, allowing them to digitally markup each drawing where they have questions. Brava! Desktop is purpose built for this form of paperless collaboration and includes powerful AEC industry features including measurements, drawing magnification, stamping, markup burn-in, save as PDF, and more.

When viewing and digital markup technology are incorporated into an existing document management system that supports metadata searching, workflow routing, notifications, security, records management, remote web access, and email archive – you have a full featured project file management system that will allow collaboration within the organization and to outside vendors, suppliers, sub-contractors, and more. Imagine a system were design drawings (submittals/transmittals) were automatically routed to the necessary reviewers for the project and their responses were electronically captured and returned.

Included in the next release of Document Locator v5.3 will be integration into Informative Graphics Brava! Desktop 2.2 – previous integration support included up version 1.3 of Brava! Desktop. In addition to supporting the latest release, functionality is expanded, allowing users to create and apply dynamic stamps using Brava! Desktop that automatically extract profile property information from Document Locator as the stamp is applied. This means that generic stamps can be employed that will dynamically embed project related information onto drawings including project number, project engineer, or dates by reading the values from the metadata associated with the drawing that is open.

Proposal processes are complex. Whether they are done on an ad-hoc basis by a single person at a smaller company, or they are rigidly-managed by a proposal team at a large firm, the details of putting together a proposal project for RFPs, RFIs, or other submittals are a complicated mix of content, planning, and good old fashioned project management. To begin, there is the development of documents, schedules, and benchmarks by which the proposals will be measured. Then there is the actual launching of the proposal – making it public, which often involves an inordinate amount of notifications, distributions and question periods. Finally, the whole process turns back internal for a review and selection cycle, which itself can involve multiple people discussing, grading, scoring, and voting.

Document management systems help manage the proposal process by offering tools for collaboration, document version control, notifications and workflow, voting, and more. We plan to discuss the role of document management, and just how it can help, in a webinar coming up next Thursday. If proposal management is an area of interest to you, feel free to stop by our document management webinars page and register.

Whether it’s employee requests for benefits information; managers looking for past employee reviews; or the accounting department trying to find W-4 tax forms… it all comes through to HR. Human Resources professionals wear many hats, and one among them is that of controller of all records workforce-related.

Bet when looking at the entire picture of document management in HR, there is much more than just the management of employee records. There is also the automation of workforce processes; things like expense reports and time off-requests are good examples. Then there is the management of workforce resources like training manuals, employee handbooks, or company policies. And don’t forget the issue of security… all that regulated content must be controlled.

We’re going to look at document control the Human Resources department in a webinar later this week. If you are interested, feel free to join us.