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Document Management Systems

SarcasticDwarf

SarcasticDwarf

Diamond Member
One of my tasks as an intern for a small company is to evaluate document management systems for the company.

Background:

The company is something like a small (2-3 person) regional chamber of commerce. One of their functions is to gather data and distribute it as needed. This mainly consists of gathering existing data and manipulating it to suit client needs. Oftentimes there is overlap between projects, so it is not at all uncommon to grab pieces of data from older reports.

Currently there is one person that currently handles all information requests. This person is leaving in a few months and may or may not be replaced. She wants to make sure that the replacement or the existing staff is able to find the data needed. To do this she has a sort of spreadsheet of the ~80 existing (electronic) documents.



Note the 80 documents part. We are not talking about a large number of documents, so an enterprise-level system is unneeded. What they need is a document management system that will allow them to input the metadata for documents that will allow them to be easily retrievable through search/browse functions. No other features are needed.

Is anyone familiar with software that would do this that will not be more than say $500? (Windows based)
 
You could probably have a custom application written for you that does what you want for under $500. I've done things like this before (not this exact project, but custom applications). Personally, I don't know of anything available commercially that will do what you want, although I would assume that just about any OCR software out there would have the feature.
 
Originally posted by: BigPete
You could probably have a custom application written for you that does what you want for under $500. I've done things like this before (not this exact project, but custom applications). Personally, I don't know of anything available commercially that will do what you want, although I would assume that just about any OCR software out there would have the feature.
Click to expand...

OCR has nothing to do with it. The documents are already in electronic format. Most are in Excel or PDF format. We just need something that will handle the data better than a spreadsheet.
 
Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf
What they need is a document management system that will allow them to input the metadata for documents that will allow them to be easily retrievable through search/browse functions. No other features are needed.
Click to expand...

I understood your post completely. I wasn't suggesting you needed an OCR program rather most OCR programs include some kind of Document Management. Hence, it might be something you may be interested in, not for the OCR but, for the Document Management.

 
Have you looked into Windows SharePoint Services? The new version has a lot of features, and has an incredible amount of features. Runs free on Server 2003. PM me if you need more info.
 
Originally posted by: ACruzer
Have you looked into Windows SharePoint Services? The new version has a lot of features, and has an incredible amount of features. Runs free on Server 2003. PM me if you need more info.
Click to expand...

Interesting. It looks like "Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services" comes with SBS 2003, but this seems to indicate that there are different versions?

 
SBS 2003 comes with Windows SharePoint Services 2.0. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is out and free, so I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work on SBS 2003.

Do not get confused with SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (which complements WSS 2.0) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (which compliments WSS 3.0). Those two products are not-free and extend the functionality of Windows SharePoint Server.

However, Windows SharePoint Services is not a true document management system. It's more of a document repository on steroids. But it doesn't sound like you need a real document management system which allows for real change control and managed archives anyways and I'm sure you're not going to find a good one for $500. 😉
 
I was able to put the following together:

The first application to consider is MediaWiki, used by Wikipedia.
MediaWiki Feature List


Free Wiki Software


There is a large category of free documentation repositories under the name Content Management System (CMS).

Here is a large list of open source CMS applications

Here are a few well known specific product examples.
Drupal - Wikipedia - Drupal
Joomla - Wikipedia - Joomla
Mambo - Wikipedia - Mambo


Then there is the topic of Document Management (Wikipedia Overview).
Another Overview of Documentation Management
DocBuilder
KnowledgeTree - Free download
Document Management System - Sourceforge
EMC Documentum
OpenText




Maybe this conversation can be given new life. I need to find a good replacement for a medium sized company to store and serve its documentation. The documentation is currently within the Lotus Notes documentation database. It typically comprises a text description of the issue with a few image files and sometimes small snippets of SQL query code. An MS Word or Excel document will often be attached. The current number of documents is about 200.

I do not have any experience with the Content Management or Document Management Systems and am not sure which system would serve the purpose better.

Does anyone have experience with any of these applications or work in a company that uses any of these applications?
 
My company develops solutions using FileNet's Content Manager product, but that software and our solutions are more geared toward large enterprises with hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of documents. For the amount of documents you are looking at, you'd be better off exploring options such as Sharepoint or Alfresco.
 
My company, Risk Sciences Group, has decided on the Novo Solutions software suite. This suite provides the following products:
  • Service Desk,
  • Knowledge Base,
  • Help Desk,
  • Customer Support,
  • Asset Manager, and
  • Document Management.
Apparently, we currently have just under 1,000 documents for a medium sized company with 5 locations.
 
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