Omega Technologies

Definitoin of a Document

Efficiency

Value

Future Trends

Complementary Technologies

Standards

Back

Document Management -MANAGEMENT

Omega people

Since the advent of paper as media it has been an enormous problem to manage it physically and with the advancement of computer technology and its concomitant influence on the definition of document has made it a nightmare.

To simplify the process of management one could look at the life cycle of a document and find solutions to the requirements that arise through the life of it.

Archive/ Destroy

In this pace a document will either be destroyed or will be archived for future reference.
Generally archives are spring-cleaned time-to-time based on the Document retention policy. There are few other important aspects as well that need consideration in the archival process.

* Retrieval frequency
* Legal aspects
* Retrieval time accepted
* Technology obsolescence

Retrieval frequency or how many times an archived document being access over a period of time. This could vary from few times a year to few times an hour based on the application. This is a major factor in considering different storage mechanisms, like automated filing cabinets, large electronic image storage units Juke Boxes or standard boxes etc.

Legal aspects also will depict how the archival should be done, by defining accepted media types, procedures and rules making it a decision factor for selecting the right archival method.

Though we know how frequently a document can be requested for reference, we also need to understand how quickly the document should be available for reference. This will decide again whether the documents are to be stored in a slow response media and a mechanism or a fast response media and a mechanism

Finally one of the most important factors is to understand, when we archive a document how are we going to refer to the same in future where the technology is changing at such a rapid pace. This is called technology obsolescence. An example is how many of our old WordStar documents can be read by current word processors. Also how many of new personal computers got a traditional
5 ¼ inch floppy drives.

Active Cycle

In the active cycle of the document it is being
* Generated
* Shared
* Referenced
* Routed

depending on the type of document, there may be little or no document management required. As an example a travel expense report will have some figures to be filled up for accounting purpose, where a legal document related to a large project may require many revision cycles, review procedures to accept the content of the document, annotation and redlining features, etc. Further, the document itself may require input from a variety of sources.

Therefore, to manage a document during the generation phase, we may need library services for authors to check revisions in and out, and ensure that only one authorized writer is working on a piece of the document at a time; we may need some workflow to route revisions for critiques; we may need revision tracking to facilitate inclusion of previously excerpted text; we may also need various authoring and capture tools, including scanning, e-mail, Internet access, etc.; and we will need some sort of indexing criteria to find documents and revisions in the system, such as author, revision number, date, project, etc.

Exceptions

While a document is in the processing it will again subject to be
* Shared
* Referenced
* Routed

This transforms the document again to an active document. A good example is an erroneous contract document or an improperly processed cheque will have to go through the processing cycle before it can become idle again.

Document Management | Software Development | Call Center | SIP
Home | Contact Us