Intranet Management Software Blog

Recently there are many discussions among our existing clients and partners about possibility extending granularity of the permission in Document’s folder within Claromentis.

This is our current standard permission where having “Edit” rights to a folder means you simply have rights to add and edit both documents and sub folders.

Some of our clients think that current “edit” permission is not flexible enough, they would like to split simple “edit” into sub-folders and documents.

After digging into our enhancement request database, I discovered that this is just one of the many request around the same subject.
Some says that having permission to view content of the folder should be different from permission to view folder’s properties and audit of the folder (usage statistics).

Others want to have flexibility where not all users with edit permission can run workflow on the same folder.

For a second I thought, “Hey this is getting ridiculous!”  Let’s mock-it up and see what happen if we accommodate all of them:

Can you see something is definitely not right, usability has been compromised to accommodate more granular permission, causing complexity to perform simple task which in most cases we just want simple “Edit”.

This issue raise a philosophical question, “Are we all so stupid so everything has to be over protective?” What’s wrong with a low-tech solution called “discipline”.

My niece is going to celebrate her 1 years old birthday next week. She starts cruising, walking short distances from object to object, she falls often and has many bumps and bruises, but she learns very quickly.

Aren’t we always told that allowing one or two bumps is a good thing?

Solutions Design, document management, fun, humor, intranet software discussions, user interface

Document Management System with Submission Wizard.

Maintaining consistency and integrity of the technical documents is a business critical issue for Crondall Energy Consultant. Crondall Energy is a Floating Production System consultant which helps their clients in many areas ranging from Strategic planning, Market analysts up to Project Delivery and Training.

Claromentis Document Manager

Utilising built-in Claromentis Document Management system, we recently develop bespoke document submission wizard based on specification and guideline from Crondall Energy.

The document submission wizard is not only helping users submitting document into the right storage path (folder), it also automatically creates documents with the right name convention and automatic numbering system.

The same wizard can also be used to make strict control on making revision to the existing documents.

Home, Products Design, document management, intranet consultancy, user interface

There has been many post on the subject related to permission lately, and I want to show a hidden ‘gem’ in the admin panel of Claromentis Document Management which is going to help us monitor and manage permission better.

Complex Permission System

Claromentis Document Management System has comprehensive permission system, which means you can define permission by extranet area, role, group down to individual users. The permission can also inherited from the folder above as well as applied on the individual file itself.

Access Report

When you logging in to the system of course you can only see the document that you are allowed to see, but as you know from admin you can see all files.
As a document administrator you may be asked by your manager to create a report showing what a particular user can see or not see on the system.

They might be a business partners or contractors, while you want to make sure they have access to the information they need, you want to make sure there is no permission leak. You don’t want the corporate sensitive information exposed to this type of users.

What’s new in Claromentis

We created  a new functionality called  “Document Permission Report” and it is available from admin panel from Claromentis 5.6.3 onwards.

Under utilities in Document Panel click on “Document Permission Report”
Where you can select a user and get the permission report instantly, you can also export it to CSV format.

Screenshot

Home, Prod-Project, Products, Resources-Technical Claromentis, document management, online collaboration

Document Auto Monitoring

There are actually 4ways to automatically get notifications when documents are updated in Claromentis. Three of these are available on the front end and one in admin.

All of them have their place and it is worth running through them to clarify the different functionality and usage, as some customers are unclear on the specific differences.

Different Notification Icons

Send Notification : a fast way to send a notification about the document to any permissioned group within the set of hose who have at least view perms. Easy to use dialog box allows you to add comments, and automatically populate description, link to details and link to view.

Basically you should use this when users seem to have lost awareness that this really useful document already exists.

Start Monitoring

Will monitor all updates until that users stops it. Set by the user, this is used when the document concerned is very important to you, and you want to be notified of all changes from now on, not just the next one. This will continue until you click again n the “stop monitoring” icon.

Notify me when this document is updated

This will only notify you the next time it is updated. You can of course then go back in and repeat the process. Normally used when you are not sure if continual updates are going to interest you, and wish to defer that decision until next time.

Document Auto monitoring – set in admin

When auto monitoring is enabled and the “auto monitor” check box for a document is set, everyone who viewed that document is automatically subscribed to get notification when the document is updated.

But only once.

However if they respond to that notification, and look at the document again, then they will automatically be subscribed to be notified the next time it is updated.

This is actually very useful document management functionality – it allows administrators to suggest a document is important for a group of users, without spamming them with too many notifications – if they ignore the update the first time they will not be notified again.

Conclusion

As always it is a question of choosing the most appropriate method for each document and user – keeping a balance between ensuring you are informed of updates to important documents, and avoiding getting too many notifications.

Prod-Document document management

We are all familiar with tagging and how the so called wisdom of the crowd can help quality information reach the top of searches as part of a natural process.

However in a recent project we have experienced the opposite end of the spectrum, where our client required that the organization should be able to indicate in an unequivocal way the quality of a particular document.

This was particularly relevant to policies and procedures, where they wanted the policy owners to be able to indicate the best procedures, and flag up those where they felt more work was still required.

By using the Claromentis API we were able to rapidly develop a small extension to the document management system that allows for a 3 tier red – amber – green system to be applied to these documents and restrict this by the permission system to ensure that the control is applied appropriately.

The result is made very visible to the users using the traffic light approach, exactly as the client required.

Prod-Document document management, Quality

After applying permission to a folder or document, have you ever wonder that you need to make sure the right person can view the document? Let’s say you added Group:Marketing, until now there is no to find out who are the member of “Group Marketing for instance” unless you have to navigate away to ‘People’ application and run a search or filter.

But now in 5.6.1 we’ve got a nifty solution. It’s called “View effective permission”, as you can see you can now review the permission on every single permission dialog box to make sure the right people has the right permission.

Resources-Technical Claromentis, document management, Prod-Intranet, update, user interface

Document Workflow is one of the key modules of Claromentis Document Management System

There are three basic terminologies in Document Workflow:

Category: It is a grouping mechanism for Workflow. Permissions are set default through Category

Workflow: A Document Workflow containing set of States

State: State of Document, for instance “Draft, Initial Review, Revision, Ready to Publish, etc”

Each State has one “Action” and one “Transition”

Action: Here we are able to specify what action is to be taken on the document at certain State of the Workflow. There are following actions we can select from: “None, Feedback Request, Move to a designated Folder and Send Email”

Transition: Here we are able to specify what type of transition is to be carried out at certain State of the Workflow. There are following transitions we can select from: “Not Auto (Manual), Auto:Based on Approval (On All Approve, On One Approve) and Auto:Time Based(On Time Elapse, On Date/Time)”

By using Document Workflow, you don’t need to worry about manually chasing each user to look at the document and give there feedback or approve it, it’s all done for you

Prod-Document document management

Claromentis Interview with Sean Boos -  Information Technology Director of Preferred Brands.
Burnsville, Minnesota.

Hi Sean, tell us a little bit about Preferred Brands

Preferred Brands is the parent company to some of the interior design and decorating industries’ leading marketing companies. Included are such brand leaders as Floor To Ceiling – a network of over 200 independently owned and operated retail showrooms located throughout the U.S. Each store specializes in offering a combination of flooring, kitchen & bath products and decorative accessories,best suited for that particular market. Also included in the Preferred Brands family is World of Floors, a leading flooring retailer, primarily serving Michigan and the upper Midwest.

Who were the intended users? How many of them?

We have 200+ dealers throughout the US.

Did the portal itself have a project or codename?

We call the portal: InFlo

What applications were most useful or essential in this project?

Document management and forms were probably the most important things.

What was the user response and take up of the system?

We found that the users have been very responsive to the new portal.  They have found the address book to be very helpful along with the instant messaging.

Is your business more efficient? Have fundamental processes changed?

We have 100’s  of vendors that we do business with which translates into tens of thousands of products which all need pricing files.  The indexing/search and meta data features have been a pleasant surprise within the portal.  The really allow us to provide detail custom properties for each file which makes finding what you want a snap.

Were you under any deadlines – if so what was the nature of them?

We had an extremely tight timeline.  We had our national show in February and InFlo was the primary focus of the show.  All  products tested were becoming disasters in the making.  What we typically found through our testing, was most portals did a great job of providing a hierarchical security model for one business unit, but when you starting to add more business units to the portal the security model really didn’t do what we wanted.
I contacted Claromentis 2 months before our show.  Although I was very reluctant that anyone could really pull this off in 2 months, Nigel assured me that, while the timeframe was tight, Claromentis could meet our deadline.

Did the project meet your deadlines?

Yes.  We actually had it live a week before the show

How involved were you in the design process?

Other than supplying some ideas, most of the design process was done by Claromentis

Do you have any comments on the final design?

As far as the UI, we gave our ideas to the Claromentis design team and after a few revisions, we got it done in about a week.

Do you find the system easy to use from an end user point of view?

We’ve had very positive responses from our end users.

How did you find the Claromentis pricing model?

Pricing, like most small businesses, is a very important part of the equation.  Compared to other portal solutions, Claromentis was the best value for with probably a better feature mix.

“InFlo has allowed us to become more efficient in both time and money.  In these difficult economic times, being able to stretch your dollars if very important.   It has allows us to focus more on our core services and products and better serve our dealers.” Sean Boos.

Would you have any advice to companies considering Claromentis? Were there any special factors that were part of your selection process?

Claromentis is a very flexible platform.  I come from more of a development background and I was amazed at how much I could integrate with the system.

Thank You Sean, we appreciate your time.

Learn more about soluton for franchise based company

Solutions Case Study, collaboration, commercial, document management, e-forms, intranet consultancy, online collaboration, user interface

Claromentis Intranet & Extranet manager provides several ways to collaborate and share information within an organisation. We have application called ‘Documents’ (Document Management System), ‘Publish’ (Content Management System) ‘Wiki’, and our new member of the family ‘Bookshelf’ (online policies & procedures).

In early phase of intranet deployment we frequently being asked by our clients, “Which tool is the best to share and collaborate a piece of information or should we  just stick with an existing company shared drive?”.

There isn’t one solution to all problems

The good starting point is to be aware of the pros, cons and applicability of individual tool available.  Unfortunately as an Information Architect we always says “There isn’t one solution to all problems”. The idea is by having the right solution (with right technology) to a specific problem, we can make everyone’s lives easier.
Let’s start with…

Shared Drive

Typically before an organisation deploys an intranet they have existing growing unmanageable shared drive(s). Shared drive is relatively easy to setup but it suffers from these issues:

• No version control - You ended up having similar files with version number scripted at the back of the file name for example:  “MyPresentation_ver2.doc” not to mention the frustration of someone overwriting the file you’re currently working on.
• Searching – Does everyone feel that it is easier to search information on the internet than on the share drive?
• Limited Access - When you’re not in the office, say on the road or working from home,  you either have to use slow & complicated VPN software or not having access to the company files at all.
• Security – There is no easy way to setup permission on a shared drive, typically it opens to everyone or if you have permission it’s so complicated to set up and configure.
• Audit - You can’t easily check who did what, when and where.
• Duplication – since a single physical file cannot exist in two places at once, you ended up with duplication everywhere.

Documents – Document Management System

Claromentis document management system is designed to address all of the common issues with company Share Drive. The heart of it is the application called ‘Documetns’ It provides built-in version control, searching & indexing, permission layer, easy access, and many enterprise features.

What are the Cons?

• It is not suitable for managing extremely large files. (Larger than 30Mb)
• Files are kept in native format, which means users need to have the application to open / view and edit the file.  For instance not all users within organisation have AutoCAD software needed to open a *.DWG file.
• Speed to upload and download the file stored in Documents are limited to the speed of your network / internet connection
• Extra steps may be required to edit a file. Typically you have to download it (temporary), make changes and upload them back in, although we have several solutions to make this relatively painless such as webdav.

Publish – Content Management System

Using publish, users with no web publishing skills can collaborate & create web pages easily.

• Better access - Information displayed as web pages are widely accessible. Users don’t have to download the file or installing software to view. They can simply read them online.
• Information Hub - everything can be connected in publish page, link to documents, link to other pages, or links to external website. For example you can create a health & safety page which may have link to ‘health & safety assessment guide.PDF’ which is store in Documents as well as link to HSE websites.
• Mash-ups – Publish allows you can embed rich media such as online videos, podcast, web widgets and much more.
• Enterprise features– Publish has everything you need to manage online content, from built-in version control, security & permission, reminder, audit trails, multi lingual and much more.

It may sound like a good idea to convert all documents into publish pages, but there are several points to consider:

• There is not much point converting complicated document such as spreadsheet into a publish page, you probably better of store them in Documents and just link it from a publish page.
• Content for publish page should be relatively short, concise and to the point. Remember the information is designed to be read on the screen just like web pages.

Wiki

A wiki is designed to enable everyone with fast and volatile collaboration. Claromentis integrates with Media WIKI, one of the most popular open-source wiki software. Wiki focuses on fast and real-time collaboration by minimising complexity in content creation. There are several issues to remember here:

• Wiki tend to have open access for everyone - You have to keep sensitive and proprietary data off the wiki.  Avoid posting sensitive data such as financials.
• Wiki syntax to learn, Wiki may focuses on simplicity but there is whole new syntax to learn. Wiki is typically very popular within IT department but what’s popular in one department may not be suitable others.

Bookshelf

Bookshelf is the application behind Claromentis Quality Manager; it is the latest addition to the information layer suite. Bookshelf is designed specifically for managing Company Policies & Procedures. It allows online procedures creation making sure that there is one version of the truth across entire organisation.

• Bookshelf allows company procedures and policies to be maintained online allowing true collaboration of subject matter expert.
• Once the policies or procedures are created online, it can then be read online or exported in various format such as MS Word and PDF.

Summary

These are just a few of the tools available in Claromentis Framework. There isn’t one perfect solution to all problems but at least you can choose ‘the best kit for the job’.

Any comments and feeback welcomed.

Solutions collaboration, document management, intranet consultancy, intranet software, online collaboration, Prod-Intranet, quality management software

With 5.6 Claromentis now supports WebDAV – including the automated preservation of version control – to provide drag and drop file management in parallel with the rich browser based visual interfaces of Claromentis. For those that haven’t used this protocol you can read about it here

Set Up

Setting it up is simple, here on my laptop using Vista Add a network location by right clicking the computer icon:

I will then be asked to provide the URL of the Claromentis system that I need to manage I will also need of course to provide my access credentials for the intranet : Right away the new drive is available to me.

It appears like any normal drive, a very familiar environment for the user.

We can directly compare this with the rich browser based experience of looking at exactly the same document folder using the Claromentis visual interface through the browser - as the screen shot below shows :

This of course is just the central part of the document management interface.

What are the Implications?

Users that don’t need a graphical interface can just work with drag and drop on their PCs IT departments or users themselves do need to set up the shortcut to the file system on their local PC – so a slight disadvantage over strict access anywhere using only a browser that the Claromentis VI provides.

Claromentis have made sure that adding later versions of files using drag and drop in WebDAV does indeed create a new version of the file in the Claromentis system.

Lets look at this : I navigate to >testing >001 folders in both systems : Here in the Claromentis rich interface

Lets look at the individual file “summary.doc”

Using the interface :

I can look at the properties of this file as normal : here is just a part of the screen :

Notice there is no version TAB at all, as there is only one version of this document in the version controlled library of the Claromentis system.

Now without touching this file in Claromentis I decide to just open it in windows using WebDAV. Word fires up just like in any local directory, to me it is a local file system.

I then edit it, and I just save it from MS Word as normal – in this case I added some content relating to Voltaire.

Refreshing the browser back on my Claromentis interface – and indeed – I now have two versions of this document!

More details

I can of course just create a shortcut now on my desktop that represents the local file system - expressed as a normal folder - for the version controlled document management system of Claromentis.

I can also just drag and drop any file into it :

and there it is :

And after refreshing the browser - the file is there as normal for all users in the normal visual interface.

To complete this story - lets say a normal user in the rich browser based visual interface now searches for “Voltaire” - you recall that was the content I added locally - then dragged that file into the WebDAV folder locally..

The file is there - adding it via WebDAV still invoked the full automatic searching of content in the normal Claromentis indexing system.

Conclusions

Claromentis has always provided a rich browser experience for the manipulation of documents using check in and our icons, or renew functionality.

There is now an alternative for certain types of users  - or even certain tasks – where the ability to just drag documents into a “local”  folder makes life a lot simpler!  The browser based Visual Interface is always available – users can select the best environment for the task at hand.

I am sure certain companies will find this extremely useful.

Resources-Technical document management, version control, WebDAV