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Document Management Systems
From NGOPedia
| ICT Guide for Decision Makers |
This article is part of a series called ICT Guide for Decision Makers, a guide for non-technical decision makers of NGOs in Africa, to help them make more informed decisions about ICT strategies for their organisations. For an in depth and more technical article read Document Management System on Wikipedia.
Contents |
Introduction
Working on documents is one of the most performed activities on our computers besides communications. We read, create, edit documents on our PCs – and by documents I mean not only text documents, but also presentations, spreadsheets, pictures, graphics/drawings, charts, and such. And in many cases we have to collaborate with others to create these documents, or at least share them, or have someone approve them before we publish them. So all the process from creating, editing a document to publishing, and then as it happens to all when the time comes retiring (or archiving) is called document management – and systems that can help us with this are called document management systems.
In most of the small to medium sized organizations that I have visited in Africa, the “document management system” in effect was the email. People create their documents via various programmes (Microsoft Office, or Open Office, or whatever) then when it comes to collaborating or sharing with each other or asking for approval or comments, or sometimes even publishing, people just email them to the next person – sometimes even to the person sitting next to them. Well, it works… does it really? When you ask comments or contributions from a number of colleagues, how do you collect them back? How do you keep track of which version was what version? How many times do you go through your email attachments and decide where is the latest version of a document to send to publishing? How do you manage who can access to your documents that need to be kept confidential if you are emailing it to a person?
Main Functions
Document management systems can help you to with these problems: as I mentioned before from creation of the document until archiving it. Before we go on and talk about various options here let’s have a look at the main functions of a document management system. All or some of these functions can exist within a document management system:
Storage
All document management systems provide a central or sometimes distributed location to save our documents – so that we know where to get them back. And with that comes the ability to back up the documents or recover when needed.
Versioning
This function lets you to save another copy of the document every time you edit it. This way you may revert to previous versions or always know which one is the last version – and this is done without changing the name of the document.
Check in/out
In order to prevent two people editing the same document at the same time, document management systems give the right to edit to one person at a time. This is done by checking out the document for editing. So no one else can save a new version until the document is checked back in by the last editor. Just like checking out a book from a library. Other people can only open the document as read-only. Very important…
Workflow
Suppose, you are drafting a press release for your organization, which has to be reviewed by Jane (whose language skills are better than yours anyway) and after her edits, it has to be approved and signed by the executive director then it should be published on your website and sent to press. Well all this flow is called a workflow. You can define workflows for different types of documents (in this example a press release). It works like this: (1) you edit the document and save it as, say, press release (and check out), then it starts a workflow process, (2) which in turn notifies Jane that she has to review a new document. After Jane checks in, reviews, edits, and checks out (3) executive director receives a notification (email) that asks her to review and approve a press release. After she is done, (4) the document is now final and sent to the web content manager and press contacts for publishing.
Tagging/Indexing
Well, you have a prolific organization that creates or saves lots of documents. Now you need to find one of them… Many document systems let you tag them with certain keywords, and some index them with their content automatically. This way you can search and retrieve easily…(see next function)
Search and retrieve
As a natural extension to tagging and indexing this function allows you to find whatever you need to find in the haystack of documents that your organization piles up.
Rights Management
Sometimes even within the same organization some documents are not shared universally. Such as job applicant information, or patient reports, all are shared only with people that need that information to perform their jobs. In order to keep the documents in a central location we need to make sure only the people who need to access the documents can access it and others can’t. This can be done by classes – such as putting document in certain protected directories or classifying them individually. This is called Digital Rights Management. Some systems can even limit the ability to print or send the document to someone else.
Archiving
Or more appropriately, document life cycle management. All documents have a life cycle. They are born, edited, published, and retired (or archived). For example you may determine the retiring date of an announcement when you create it. When that time comes the system takes the announcement from public consumption and puts it into archive (retire). In many cases you wouldn’t know when you should archive the document at the time you create it. For this, organizations create document life cycle policies. Such as when document reach a certain age (say 2 years) the responsible person receives a notification asking him to decide whether to archive or add 2 more years to the life of the document… Very useful when dealing with public repositories…
Publishing (distribution)
As we mentioned in workflow document systems can help you publish selected documents automatically to a public repository (such as a website) or a mailing list or even a CD.
Things to Consider When Acquiring a Document Management System
Integration with your existing productivity applications
Productivity applications are the software that most of us create/edit document of all sorts, such as Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint…), Open Office (a free and open source office productivity suite, Google Docs (an online productivity suite from Google… Many document management systems provide seamless integration with them. So you can directly save or retrieve documents from within these applications. This may be important as it reduces the steps in between thus making it more usable and productive.
Transferring Paper Documents
If you have already a good amount of paper based documents, or processes that require them, such as photos, forms, consider a practical document scanning solution to transform them into a digital format. Depending on the documents these can be converted to text and stored like that, PDF format documents allow you to do that, and many scanners nowadays come with that function. Or there are some solutions that convert fax or paper based forms into data if you need.
Document Lifecycle
The document lifecycle are all the stages from document creation or capturing (scan) till the document is destroyed or deleted or preserved (archived). Paper based or electronic you should think about having a document lifecycle policy. There are some legal issues, too. You may need to retain certain types of documents for some period and such. For your website in many cases retiring documents that are not relevant anymore keeps your website from looking stale.
Common Taxonomy
As we store the documents in the system, we may need to tag them with appropriate keywords (and sometimes folders, structures) which make it easier to be found later. But the challenge here is to use a common terminology for the same concepts rather than having it free for all – so that everybody in your organization calls apple an apple – or have a common taxonomy for each subject. Let the stakeholders within the organization come to terms with a common taxonomy. Some systems do limit the tagging (or metadata) to the taxonomy you select.
Form/Workflow
Document workflow is the defined steps required to complete a process involving a document or form. This can be complex such as receiving approvals and additions from several departments or as simple as creating and printing a document. Many document management systems come with simple workflow capabilities. But more complex automation requires extensive customization thus increasing costs.
Backup strategy
Your organization should have a backup strategy for all electronic documents. A backup strategy should include how often should you save which documents (or repository) to where and how should this new physical record (tape, DVD, hard disk) be protected – then in case of a disaster how should you revive the documents back into your system (recovery). Talk to an expert IT person to consider your options.
Document Management Options
You have to consider two options:
- Running the server application (Document Management Server) locally within your organization
- Or using an online service that takes care of all work for you.
If you run the server within your organization, you will have to purchase/host the server and application and manage it. But of course you can have more flexibility, customization and speed since it runs on your local area network.
Using an online service gets you started immediately. In many cases flexibility is limited, but for simple document sharing this is not a deterrent. Since you use the internet to access the service it is significantly slower for Africa and internet access costs apply.
For both cases there are cheaper or free alternatives for qualified NGOs. For example, you may get most Microsoft products for a minute fraction of the market price from TechSoup/SANGOTech or directly via Microsoft grant depending on where you are in Africa. Or you may use free open source versions, or even you may use free online services (up to a limit).
Let’s have a look at some options – although this list can be extensive, I chose some common ones that can be used by small to medium sized organizations:
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)
(or SharePoint Foundation 2010 with its new name) If you have Microsoft Windows Server running on your network you may use a free add on product, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) from Microsoft. It provides a basic platform for document management and a basic workflow. You can also have team sites, share calendars and etc. Tightly and seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Office products and your Windows network.
OpenKM
Open KM is an open source document management system with commercial support. You can get the software but for support and customizations you will need to pay. There is also a hosted version which you can use it as an online service.
Microsoft Office Live Workspace
It is a free web based service from Microsoft. You can create workspaces and share Office documents. Integrated with Microsoft Office. The workspace doesn't offer offline collaboration - instead documents are "checked out" and "checked in," but the service does integrate with SharedView for real-time screen sharing.
Google Apps (for Non-Profits)
This is an online service from Google for non-profits. You can get Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs for free as a non-profit for up to 3000 users. You can create and share documents with your team online from anywhere. For a comparison of Google Apps and Microsoft Office Live Workspace: visit here
OpenDocMan
Is a free open source document management system. It provides a centralized document storage for any type of files. You can use a web browser to access. It handles access management (i.e. limits access to certain documents to certain people) and versioning. It has a simple review workflow capability.
KnowledgeTree
Is another online service solution for document management and collaboration. It is a commercial solution.
Constituent Relationship Management Systems | Project Management Applications 
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