Included in Document Locator v5.2 are several enhancements to the workflow system. One enhancement already generating enormous fanfare in the user community is the overhauled notification system. Previous generations of Document Locator dutifully rendered and distributed email messages to the appropriate users notifying them based on the required task. These notifications included relevant information such as workflow task details, file index information, and user entered comments.

What ColumbiaSoft heard from our user community was that the existing messaging solution worked. The notification messages contained the appropriate content and were reliably received by their intended recipient notifying them of subscription events, pending workflow tasks, or user initiated notifications. As with anything, however, there is always room for improvement. Many customers told us they wanted to have the capability to design custom notifications.

The result: we designed a configurable email notification template architecture in v5.2. The new HTML-based template framework allows users to merge variable data from Document Locator into pre-configured HTML-based email templates. This architecture enables customers (maybe with help from their graphic designers) to create templates based on the company’s own brand or look and feel. These templates can include embedded images, CSS styles, table formatting, confidentiality statements, and more. Because the templates are HTML-based, any standard design tool can be employed including graphics-based design tools such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver.

One of the 5.2 beta customers “test drove” the new email notification system and created a report-style email for customer distribution via a workflow process. The notification system uses tokens to dynamically merge metadata attributes into pre-configured HTML templates. The design also supports one-to-many data relationships as it loops through sections creating multiple lines. This enables the report-style email notification being tested by the customer. In their example, the email report included their corporate logo along with detailed information pertaining to all of the files being distributed through their workflow process.

Configurable email notification templates are included as part of Document Locator v5.2, so note to DL customers… get ready to brush up on your design skills and start gathering your thoughts about how configurable notifications could benefit your organization. I’m looking forward to hearing your stories about implementing the configurable notifications and how it impacted your organization.

Written by: Scott Zieg

When Document Locator v5.2 is made available, some new bells and whistles are included that existing and prospective customers have requested. I could certainly go into endless detail about the various product enhancements that have been added or mention the notably increased performance made against our internal benchmarks, but not today. Rather I felt like commenting on how PDFs – now officially accepted as an ISO 32000 standard – are increasingly being utilized for electronic markup, digital signature and digital turnover in the AEC Industry (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction).

The allure of the “paperless office” has been marketed to most every industry since the early days of digital imaging – aka the early 80’s for those of us not old enough to remember. There is certainly a minority of companies and industries that have been successful digitizing their paper-intensive operations. However, the majority of business operations fail to become paperless when their operational documents require a human signature or any form of manual markup process. The release of MS Office 2007 and Adobe Acrobat 8.0, both of which include a secure digital signature technology, present mainstream platforms that eliminates the historical road blocks to running a paperless operation.

Imagine having a digital workflow for your organization that automatically creates electronic documents, routes them in a workflow process, includes digitally stamping and signing documents, and provides for easy search and retrieval along with bulk distribution. That electronic world has become a reality at several Document Locator shops. With the addition of the Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat add-ins to Document Locator v5.2 (part of the base product offering for those existing customers who are dying to know), customers will be able to easily check-out documents and apply comments, digital signatures, stamps and more to PDF documents directly from inside of Adobe Acrobat 8.0 (and Reader) or newer.

Thus far the feedback from the beta customers using the Adobe Acrobat integration has been terrific. The add-in functions in a similar manner to the existing product add-ins presently found in the majority of the MS Office applications, Brava! Desktop, and AutoCAD. With the technology to easily store, route, search, and now digitally sign documents, Document Locator will continue to improve business efficiency while reducing paper waste and storage. Enjoy.

Written by: Scott Zieg

A quick trip over to our engineering group today (the smart side of the office) gave me a heads-up on a neat new technology being worked on for an upcoming Document Locator release. It’s not fully baked yet - it doesn’t even have a name… so there’s no chance of getting more details from our crew in the front-office. But, here’s some inside details for all the fellow Document Locator followers out there: The new feature will allow you to, really easily, and really quickly, save-off files from your managed repositories and share them in an organized way with non-Document Locator users. Useful things like ‘project close-out’ and ‘customer or vendor hand-off’ come to mind, so stay tuned for more details… And if you’re a Document Locator customer, be on the lookout for a new version release later this spring!

Written by: Jim Kemp

The brain trust here at ColumbiaSoft has done it again. Officially, we can’t announce anything yet (it has to wait for our next version of document management software to be released), but what I just saw in an insiders’ demo will certainly be a big hit with anyone who has ever faced the challenge of inter-departmental collaboration and the incompatibility of different business systems.

People share documents across different business units all the time. Yet document management that is tied to individual business applications fail to consider this important fact. We don’t. Stay tuned for details to come in January.

Written by: Jim Kemp