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Dear Sir,
== This question was precisely declared by fully descriptive answers of Mr. Khalid Noor and Mr. SUBHASHISH BHATTACHARYA, and I anticipate if my participation would be included in their side as well.
== Organizations today are floating in a virtual sea of documents. Once upon a time, this ocean was limited to computer files and printed documents, but these days we must also keep track of the information we email, broadcast, publish online, collaborate on, compare, and present — as well as the related content that others send us.
== Document management, often referred to as Document Management Systems (DMS), is the use of a computer system and software to store, manage and track electronic documents and electronic images of paper based information captured through the use of a document scanner.
== Document management systems can be used to:
a- Allow documents to be modified and managed but typically lack the records retention and disposition functionality for managing records.
b- Be a further burden on organizations to produce more documents and track them more methodically.
c- Not only do these documents contain information we can reuse; we can also study them to understand past organizational decisions and parse them to produce metrics on organizational goals and efficiencies.
d- Provide invaluable document searching, versioning, comparison, and collaboration features.
e- Offer integrated features to support Google-sequel searching, document versioning, comparison, and collaboration.
f- What's more, when you save a document to a DMS, you record summary information about your document to a database. That database can then be used to analyze your work in order to improve your organization's efficiency and effectiveness.
== Key DMSs features are numerous, and here some of the main ones:
1- Metadata:
- Metadata is typically stored for each document. Metadata may, for example, include the date the document was stored and the identity of the user storing it. The DMS may also extract metadata from the document automatically or prompt the user to add metadata.
- Some systems also use optical character recognition on scanned images, or perform text extraction on electronic documents. The resulting extracted text can be used to assist users in locating documents by identifying probable keywords or providing for full text search capability, or can be used on its own.
- Extracted text can also be stored as a component of metadata, stored with the image, or separately as a source for searching document collections.
2- Document check-in /check-out and Version Control (Versioning):
- If you try to open a file that someone else is already editing, a network operating system, like Windows Server2003, will alert you that the file is in use and offer you the option to make a copy.
- Versioning is a process by which documents are checked in or out of the document management system, allowing users to retrieve previous versions and to continue work from a selected point.
- A DMS will tell you more; i.e. who is editing the document, what time she checked it out, and the information she provided about the purpose of her revision and when she plans to be done with the document.
3- Document Recovery or Retrieval:
- DMSs typically provide strong support for document backup, archiving, and disaster recovery, working in conjunction with your other backup systems to safeguard your work.
- DMSs retrieve the electronic documents from the storage. Although the notion of retrieving a particular document is simple (by allowing the user or system to specify the unique document identifier), retrieval in the electronic context can be quite complex and powerful.
- More flexible retrieval allows the user to specify partial search terms involving the document identifier and/or parts of the expected metadata.
4- Roll back and Indexing:
- Indexing tracks electronic documents. Indexing may be as simple as keeping track of unique document identifiers; but often it takes a more complex form, providing classification through the documents' metadata or even through word indexes extracted from the documents' contents.
- Indexing exists mainly to support retrieval. One area of critical importance for rapid retrieval is the creation of an index topology.
5- Document Comparison:
- A DMS not only supports Word's track-changes and document-merging features, but allows you to compare your edited document to an unedited version, highlighting the differences between the two within the DMS.
- This is a great feature when your collaborator has neglected to track his or her changes, particularly because it allows you to view the updates without actually adding the revision data to your original files, making them less susceptible to document corruption.
6- Web publishing:
- Most DMSs provide content-management features for intranets and even public Web sites. Often, you can define that specific types of documents should be automatically published to your intranet as soon as they're saved to the DMS.
- Note, however, that if your core need is to publish documents on a Web site, rather than track versions or support check-ins and check-outs, a dedicated Content Management System [CMS] will likely be a better fit than a DMS.)
7- Workflow automation.
- A DMS can incorporate approvals and routing rules to define who should see the document and in what order. This allows the system to support not only the creation and retrieval of documents, but also the editing and handoff process.
- For example, when multiple authors need to work on a single document, the DMS can route the file from one to the next in a pre-defined order.
- Manual workflow requires a user to view the document and decide whom to send it to. Rules-based workflow allows an administrator to create a rule that dictates the flow of the document through an organization
8- Email Integration.
- Most DMSs integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, and other email platforms, allowing you to not only view your document folders from within your email client, but to also to save emails to your DMS, as well as you can make changes, and save the changed document back to the DMS repository as a new version all without leaving the application.
- If, for example, you send out a document for review, you can associate any feedback and comments you receive via email with that document, which you can retrieve whenever you search for your original file.
- Integration often uses open standards such as ODMA, LDAP, WebDAV and SOAP to allow integration with other software and compliance with internal controls.
9- Capturing:
- Capture primarily involves accepting and processing images of paper documents from scanners or multifunction printers. Optical character recognition (OCR) software is often used, whether integrated into the hardware or as stand-alone software, in order to convert digital images into machine readable text.
- Optical mark recognition (OMR) software is sometimes used to extract values of check-boxes or bubbles. Capture may also involve accepting electronic documents and other computer-based files.
10- Collaboration:
- Collaboration should be inherent in an EDMS. In its basic form, a collaborative EDMS should allow documents to be retrieved and worked on by an authorized user. Access should be blocked to other users while work is being performed on the document.
- Other advanced forms of collaboration allow multiple users to view and modify (or markup) a document at the same time in a collaboration session. The resulting document should be viewable in its final shape, while also storing the markups done by each individual user during the collaboration session.
11- Publishing and Distribution:
- Publishing a document involves the procedures of proofreading, peer or public reviewing, authorizing, printing and approving etc. Those steps ensure prudence and logical thinking. Any careless handling may result in the inaccuracy of the document and therefore mislead or upset its users and readers.
- A published document for distribution has to be in a format that can't be easily altered. As a common practice in law regulated industries, an original master copy of the document is usually never used for distribution other than archiving. If a document is to be distributed electronically in a regulatory environment, then the equipment tasking the job has to be quality endorsed AND validated.
With all respect to your efforts and my wishes to add new advantage,
Lubna Al-Sharif
A Document Management System is a solution that organize the files and let you access the documents in electronic format. In this sense, it is usually associated with file management and document scanning processes – phase of dematerialisation of documents.
Adding to the whole process of dematerialisation of documents with the physical origin, a Document Management System also allows the inclusion of unstructured documentation of an organization (fax, email, etc..), Thus allowing an aggregation of these two sources of documents.
Normally Documental Management systems include powerful search engines, as well as management and permissions management processes and robust flexibility.
There are more some important key features:
a)Document Origin and Control
b)Document Processing
c)Document Access and Knowledge Management
d)Security and Audit
e)Publishing and Archival
f) Integration
Document management, often referred to as Document Management Systems (DMS), is the use of a computer system and software to store, manage and track electronic documents and electronic images of paper based information captured through the use of a document scanner. The term document is defined as "recorded information or an object which can be treated as a unit". DM systems allow documents to be modified and managed but typically lack the records retention and disposition functionality for managing records. Key DM features are:
Document management systems today range is size and scope from small, standalone systems to large scale enterprise-wide configurations serving a global audience. Many document management systems provide a means to incorporate standard physical document filing practices electronically. These include:
The management information system will take one of two major forms. In a manual format, an MIS is a written body of protocols that managers follow to make decission...
