Re: Organising documents

["Engstrom, Douglas D." <EngstromDD -at- PHIBRED -dot- COM>]

Charlotte:

This is written in reply to:

***************
I am new to the list, and I have listened in for a couple of days. I am
also new to the entire "computer world" - I have made a career (? -
sorry
for my language, I am a Dane!) shift and am at the edge of starting to
write technical documentation.
***************
Someplace else... That's where most tech writers come from!!  :-)

***************
My idea for my new job is to organise all the company documents in a
central database of a sort.
***************
What you're describing is document control and management software, or
DCMS.  The good news is that this is a hot development area right now,
and there are lots of choices.  The bad news is that this is much harder
to set up than most people realize.

***************
In that database I will store...
<<<Description of document types snipped>>>
***************
In general, you don't store the documents themselves in the database.
You store pointers to both the document and the application that can
read the document.  This keeps the database from getting bogged down by
sheer size, and avoids data type problems.

***************
The entries in the database should be tagged in a way as to enable me to
drag out specific information for specific use. For example, I would
say:
"show me what we have for a sales presentation"
Then the database would produce links to such kind of documents, and I
should then be able to choose and make a nice collection and
representation of textual and graphical documents.
***************
Yup.  Any DCMS worth having will do that for you....  It should also
painlessly store earlier versions of documents, and help you manage
archiving and deleting documents when their active life is over.

***************
Everybody in the company (approx. 20 persons) should be able to use
(i.e.
both put documents into and drag them out of) the
database from their own computer
***************
You probably don't want them to do that, but rather to work with Library
copies under the control of the database.  Otherwise, you've got
uncontrolled copies all over the place.

***************
We do have an intranet.
***************
It's possible to set some systems up to publish automatically to an
intranet.  (I haven't done this, I just know it can be done.)  This is a
great idea if a given group of documents is worked on by a small number
of author/editors, but read by a wide audience. (And the author group is
well-defined.)
ISO 9000 and other procedure applications come to mind.

***************
So, if anybody has put up such a system or something like it, read about
it, heard about it, seen it, has an internet address, ... , I would be
very interested to hear about it.
***************
I've posted some stuff on DCMS's before, including other 'Net resources;
it's in the TECHWR-L archive.  If you can't find it there, let me know
and I'll send it to you privately to avoid inflicting it on the list
again.

Skoal,

Doug Engstrom                   "Paper is like steel."
engstromdd -at- phibred -dot- com          -- Naum Staroselsky

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My opinions only, not those of Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.
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