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Every department in every company in the world is going to have to deal with documents. Where a long time ago, this was all done on paper – and yes I know that in some types of companies this is still the case – now most companies use digital documents. The big idea behind the digitalization of documents was that it would be a lot easier to share documents, work on them simultaneously with more than one person and store and archive them more easily.
The problems with the document digitalization quite rapidly followed the actual introduction. Because it was so easy to share, store, etc. all of a sudden a lot more documents popped up. Then came the version issues. Who was working on what version of the document? And then it was time for the storage issues. Where could you store all of these documents, and all of their versions, so that people could actually find them when they needed them?
Throughout the years there have been quite a lot of document management systems that tried to provide answers to these problems. All had their strengths, all had their faults. The biggest issues were that they focused solely on documents and where/are notoriously hard to integrate with other systems. Besides providing the standard document management answers, SharePoint now tries to provide an answer to the DMS problems too.
The idea behind SharePoint DMS
The big idea behind the DMS in SharePoint that sets it apart from quite a few of its competitors is the fact that it was not perceived as a document management system, but more as an information management system. Why just limit yourself to documents, when all information might have to be treated in the same way. Documents for SharePoint are just a form of information that gets some special attention.
SharePoint will provide you with all the tools you need for working with documents in your department or organization. It provides versioning, limitless workflow capabilities, easy sharing and maybe most importantly a powerful search engine to find the documents you need. So if you wouldn’t consider SharePoint for anything else, consider it for document management. All your business processes that are centered around documents can be pretty much set up in SharePoint out of the box.
Although all of the following features are provided for all information in SharePoint, they might be most important for working with documents.
Versioning
Versioning of documents was one of the first problems the digitalization brought with it. Without a DMS system, you had to save new document versions someplace else until they were reviewed and approved. Only then could you replace the “official” version with the new one. This left a trail of documents behind that for instance a search engine could not distinguish between. So people often started working with information from documents that were not yet approved. Document management systems solved this with versioning and so did SharePoint. In SharePoint the versioning provides that not only can you distinguish between major and minor versions when changes happen. You can also hide these versions from other people until it gets approved. So one document is only saved on one place and only the “official” version is public, eliminating the change that people base their assumptions on wrong versions of a document. This makes the versioning in SharePoint very powerful out of the box.
Workflow
Because most documents need to be approved or at least reviewed before they are published, the combination of versioning and workflow make for a very powerful tool when automating business processes. Workflows can be started when a document is created or updated. The workflow can create review or approval tasks, change the status of the document and even publish it all in one workflow. Simple approval and three-state workflows are provided out of the box, together with more specific workflow possibilities through SharePoint Designer. If that still doesn’t cover your workflow needs, custom development based on Windows Workflow Foundation can still provide you with answer to your workflow problems or needs. So if you have business processes that involve documents, approvals, reviews, etc. SharePoint can provide you with the answer all in one platform which makes it easier for you to maintain and you people to work with.
Alerts
Although alerts are one the most general features in SharePoint, it can serve as a very efficient way to broadcast new documents and versions. Forget sending out memos that point out new procedures, new policies, etc. Alerts can do this for you automatically and efficiently. It’s also very handy when you want to be alerted when anybody changes documents you have published, because when your name is under a document, you are going to want to know what happens to it.
Starting with DMS
One of the biggest mistakes that are made when starting with SharePoint DMS is, when migrating documents from a folder structure, that structure is copied in SharePoint. Folder structures are almost always flawed. So take advantage of the implementation of a new platform to take a very close and analytic look at the structure you want to use in SharePoint. One of the best practices for migration of documents in folder structure is actually not to do it. As strange as that might sound, the best way to start working with SharePoint DMS is to start fresh. Just migrate the very important documents like policies, procedures, etc. to the new and improved SharePoint structure. So what about all the other documents? Well, since the search engine can also index shared folders, have the SharePoint search engine index all of those “old” documents. That way, they are still available through search and you won’t have to spend too much time figuring out how to migrate all the legacy documents into SharePoint.
So the major effort of starting with SharePoint as a DMS is not in the migration of legacy documents, but in optimizing the structure of the SharePoint sites and document libraries. The legacy stays available and will fade out in time when all the new versions or replacements of the old documents are stored in SharePoint.
Content Management Systems for Archiving
A lot of departments will face the challenge of having to archive documents in a secure and sometimes even legal way. This is mainly done in Enterprise Content Management systems. For Microsoft SharePoint is an ECM on its own, but we have to be honest enough to say that SharePoint will not be certified as a secure archiving system any time soon. So as for many other things, integration with ECM systems will also be very important when working with documents. It’s safe to say that Microsoft and many of the ECM vendors have integration controls for SharePoint and the ECM systems. The details of this are found throughout the web and are a very big article in its own. So if you want more information on how your ECM integrates with SharePoint, check out the vendor’s website or consult your favorite online search engine, but know that it will be possible to integrate the two.
Conclusion
When it comes to DMS in SharePoint the conclusion is quite simple. Start using it! Take a few days to draw the structure you need to store and work with the documents. Make sure this is a logical as possible within the context of your department or company. Once the structure is there, start using it by creating documents and workflows on the document libraries. Don’t worry too much on the legacy documents. Migrate the vital documents and leave the others where they are. Just make sure you can search them via the SharePoint search engine. That way, you can use SharePoint as the central document platform without having to spend the enormous effort of migrating all your old documents.
By Ronny Gabriels, Functional Analyst and ex-.net Solution Architect