Document Management Business Software              

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Document management business basics

   A business document management software manages electronically paper documents that are scanned or electronic documents created by an application. These types of business software also allows employees share and work with colleagues and other internal or external contacts to handle the same document multiple times and/or at the same time.
   When Windows 3.0 came out, its file structure was a graphic transposition of DOS file structure. It was a simple to use interface, designed to handle and archive files.

   Other subsequent operating system versions, such as Windows 7, improved the file archive structure slightly, but they are all basically the same. A tree or sub tree of folders and files. Searches can be done based on file name, extension and sometimes by the file creation date.

   But it became obvious that such a simple system would not be a good solution for handling business documents. More often than not, a document needs to be retrieved not only by its type, whether it is an invoice, a receipt or a birth certificate, but by its date, ownership, title and several other attributes.

   Over time, software engineers came up with a document archival solution. It uses a database structure for backend. Below, you can see how a document archival structure looks superficially like a file management structure. But there is a fundamental difference. Instead of having just a file name for identification, each document can have several attributes attached to it. Then the application user can setup index fields matching the document's attributes for easy retrieval.

   If necessary, the user can also use OCR, a scanning process that retrieves the document's written content. Then, a search can be done for any part of the document's text.




  

   With such a powerful tool, individuals and business are able to organize their documents on a scale never seen before. Doctors and hospitals, for example, can store patient data and retrieve them by several ways such as name, social security, admission date, wrist band tag number, etc.
   Businesses can store client invoices, vendor invoices, scanned receipts, employee information. A business can comply and respond to an IRS audit much faster and accurately, thus avoiding fees and penalties, than it would if it had the same information stored on paper that can be misplaced or lost.
   Contrary to paper documents, these electronic documents can be easily edited, redacted, approved by one or more individuals. Companies often have several departments accessing and working on the same document. On the picture below, a document received an electronic stamp from the finance department.

   When a department employee reads or edits a document and sends it to the next department, it creates a workflow of documents, which is another major point for electronic document management. The picture below show a typical workflow fluxogram.

  
   Other features were built to manage electronic documents. The Dokmee document management application is able to offer robust packages under several competitive prices and features tiers to address home users, small/medium size business and large enterprise business. All documents, images, forms, emails and more can be instantly retrieved. At the office, at home, wherever you are, whenever you want.

Enter Documents: Import electronic documents of all types into Dokmee, such as: TIFF, JPEG, PDF, Word, Excel, Power Point, Emails, Auto Cad and many more! During this process, full text information can be extracted automatically from the Windows documents to enable full text searches along with the index field searches. Index information may be imported with documents and matched with corresponding index fields if desired. Using Active Import, jobs may scheduled to monitor folders on a local or server computer for automatic import on a regular basis. Scan documents in paper form directly into Dokmee using a Twain Source. Documents input into Dokmee from a scanner are stored as TIFF or PDF files. Use the Merge Tiff Files function once documents have been scanned to combine TIFF files as one if desired. As soon as they are filed, all documents will be accessible by all authorized Dokmee network users.

Organized Index: Organize documents into folders. Index documents inside of Dokmee, or import documents with index information. Folders may be searched just as an index field is searched.

Retrieval and Launch: Perform full text searches of documents within Dokmee as well as multi-level searches. This unique multi-level search capability allows users to perform a filtered search. End users may perform a search, and then perform another search within the result list. Search for date ranges as well as number ranges.

Multiple users can access the same document simultaneously, so a document is never unavailable. For displaying and editing Windows generated documents, use the Launch function. Specify for each individual file format, which viewing or application program to use when launching a document. The Dokmee viewer itself can display documents of the most Windows applications.

Edit Documents: Edit and save documents directly from the Dokmee viewer or when launched to an external program. If two users edit a particular document simultaneously, Dokmee will save the changes of the last user to edit and save the document.

Document Annotations: Annotations such as colored marks, text, highlighting, drawing objects, and inserting images can be added to a TIFF document in an overlay or burned as part of the image. The overlay technique ensures that the document itself remains unchanged. When the overlay technique is used, it is optional for annotations to appear when documents are printed or emailed from Dokmee. When annotations are burned to a TIFF image, they become a flattened part of the image that may not be removed or altered.

File Notes: Add File Notes to documents. File notes are comments that may be added to all file types as an attachment to a document rather than an annotation.

Email & Print: Documents Email documents as attachments directly from Dokmee. When emailing TIFF files users have the option of sending the file as a PDF rather than a TIFF to reduce file size and ensure a successful delivery. Print documents directly from the Dokmee interface. If annotations have been added to TIFF files but not burned, users have the option to email or print the documents with or without annotations.

Export Documents: Dokmee exports all file types in the same file format in which they are stored. Export documents from Dokmee individually or in groups. Export entire contents of a folder within a database as well as an entire database. The folder structure of a database may be replicated in the export directory if specified. Export indexing information of documents into a flat file.

Document Security: Dokmee is User Name and Password protected. Dokmee stores all documents that are in the database in a location specified by the Administrator. Documents stored by Dokmee may be encrypted, so that the native format of the document is unknown when accessed outside of the program. Documents that have been encrypted may only be opened viewed with Dokmee. A highly sophisticated HIPAA compliant Audit Log is kept in the administration section that records all activities performed within Dokmee. Records are kept with file name, user name, action taken, memo/decription of action, time stamp, and date stamp. Items stored in the Audit Log include, but are not limited to: viewing, emailing, printing, workflow activities, import, export, index modifications, etc.

Email Management: The integrated MAPI interface enables documents to be stored automatically and manually from Microsoft Outlook. Information such as send/received date, to, from, subject, and attachments may all be captured.

WorkFlow: Dokmee has an integrated Workflow Manager. This feature allows the Administrator to create workflows within the database and assign authorized user and security protection to these workflows. A "watch folder" may be set within a database so that a folder is monitored within the database, and when files are added, they may be automatically entered to a particular workflow. Workflows may be set up to send reminder emails to users when documents are ready for processing. Workflows may contain as many steps and users as desired.

Link: A Hot Key Link is installed with Dokmee that enables users to create hot keys on the keyboard that will automatically open Dokmee and perform a search of the index fields. This function is specific to individual computers, even on a network. Once the hot keys are setup, users may highlight a word or phrase in any Windows application (Word, Explorer, Internet, etc.) and hit the hot key combination. This will open Dokmee (if it is not already open) and search for the word or phrase highlighted in the corresponding index field(s) specified for that key combination.

Document management Dokmee user guide