Document Management System

Hi all,

At the moment we use the highly sofisticated method (literally said by higher management) of storing our quality manual on a networked hard drive. Problem was that the network drive was almost completely full, so a member of higher management did a hard delete of the folder containing the digital version of the quality manual since we had a paper copy anyway.


Making something good from this management flip-up, i took the opportunity to revamp it all and to prevent idiots from messing the new system up, i'm thinking about using a dedicated document management system allowing to set permissions to different users. Any suggestions and/or experience with DMS programs are welcome...

We use a web absed system out of Canada. You can check it out at www.intelex.com

Right now, we are only using the document control module but it is actually a total quality management system.

I suggest make your documents read only.

Hi Janvm,

I nearly choked on my scone when I read your post. I’m sorry but this member of upper management is not very bright.

Some time ago when developing our own Document Control module I did some research on Document Management Systems. While most of the very many Quality Management Systems (including Intelex mentioned above) will include some kind of Document Control module, the following applications are all dedicated Document Management Systems.

Also, under the ‘Components’ section of this Wikipedia page you will see the various attributes that a good Document Management System can have. This could serve as your checklist matrix when reviewing different systems.

Huddle
Box.Net
DropBox
Microsoft Sharepoint
ThinkFree
Alfresco
KnowledgeTree
OpenKM
Zoho Docs
Google Docs

Note that all of the above are web-based ‘cloud-type’ systems. My personal favourite for its utter simplicity is Dropbox. If you want something more advanced with serious granular control on permissions etc then Microsoft SharePoint is a really good product. We happen to use both of these products within our own organisation.

When developing Safefood 360 we opted for a really simple Document Control module which offers infinite storage and infinite versioning. So anytime a document is changed its previous version is automatically archived and always available should you need to look back. It also caters for Approvals, Notifications & Audit Logging. It does yet not cater for "advanced" folder or file-level permissions, nor does it provide full text search. Both of these (& much more) are in the pipeline.

Hope you find this helpful Janvm and let me know if you have any questions.

Philip.

I use SharePoint, but it may be too "sophisticated" method for you management, since it requires some IT implementation.(Installation in server and set up). Once installed and running you have different options depending of your resources, from very simple store/sharedocument sites with assigned permissio nlevels, all the way up to create ""workflows" to manage all from creation, approvals, reviews...etc.

Also, as Phillip mentioned, most of all of QMS systemswill have a module for document management, but you will have to get the whole application futures in order to use only that.

Phillip, We talked few weeks ago and I still looking into Safefood360. It seems to be a verywell planned and designed tool that provides good solutions for the Food Safetyindustry needs, and I expect it gets better with time. The Document Management moduleis one that I would like to test.

Regards

Hi.

I'd recommend Q-Pulse. http://www.q-pulse.com/

It's fantastic for document control and keeping your documents secure. Each user must have a password and as administrator, you can assign permissions in order that only authorised users have access to the documents. It gives a complete audit trail of revisions, review dates etc and document acknowledgements and stores obsolete documents incase you need access to them again.

It's not a particularly cheap option but works for us.

Hope this helps

Pops

Dear All,

I'm waiting for someone to suggest a free one which is (independently) claimed to be "on-a-par"

Of course, if an unlimited BRC budget is available ?

Rgds / Charles.C

Janvm,

How many documents are you going to have to control? All organization-wide, or there are local? How many pemployees in your organization? If you mention those, perhaps we could provide some additional inputs.

There are factors to consider when choosing a document control system. All require some sort of compromise (cost, user friendliness, and system maintenance)

I've used QPulse before. The document section is good but the audit section is better. Only problem I had was getting the rest of the site to buy in and use it; without that it's nowhere near as good.

Thanks for the suggestions so far!

Currently the DMS would need to handle 1 location, with expansions to a second site in the near future. Organisation size is 50-100 persons.
Budget is limited but there is some room to maneuvre.

So far, I've convinced top-management that the need for a DMS is clear and present, but they have there minds set on a local IT developper who will devellop an application based on access that will vastly surpass any ERP system currently on the market (he's already working on it for 2 years with no delivery date in sight). Saying I'm not really convinced that that will be the solution is an understatement...

As per my experience with this, all I can tell you is.."Do not try to re-invent the wheel". Especially if IT development is not yourcompany business... You are going to lose time, money, and more likely thefinal product would not be anything better of what is already available on themarket. I see is not your call, but just saying…

If you have a shared network drive between your two [potential] sites, just password protect them from changes and keep a mirror copy on your personal flash drive and perhaps a backup of that as well. It sounds like a relatively small operation where going simple can be much better than going sophisticated. I think Antores' post on losing time, money, etc hits the nail on the head. In the meantime, pray that IT developer never brings his/her brilliant system to fruition.

Hello

We are using .NET Document Management,which is a professional third-party imaging toolkit with strong

document viewing, redacting, tracking, manipulating and annotating functions.

We use, DocuWare. DocuWare is a document management and electronic filing system that stores and organizes documents. The document management software allows users to electronically manage, store and share documents, regardless of format.

I use Dropbox (free) to store word docs/excel spreadsheets that have been password protected so changes cannot be made and to 'read only'.

We have used QT9 software for several years  for both ISO 9001 and now ISSO 22000.  It's pretty flexible and does a good job on all fronts.

 

Dave

I meant to add this link.  http://www.qt9software.com/  sorry.

Dave

I've used QualityOnline Knowledgetree and Q-Pulse all good at document control and require varying degrees of buy-in from IT and rest of the business.

Quality Online http://www.qualityonline.com/en/ shading it in document creation control but very much a big business tool Q-pulse is good but a little clunky at times.