SharePoint-based Document Management System

Introduction

An effective and convenient way of managing documents is a big challenge, encountered by any company, despite of it's size. We have implemented a range of solutions, based on Microsoft SharePoint to solve this problem. There is a plenty of scenarios to be used together with SharePoint, but whichever you choose - you can be sure of it's high quality, cost effectivity, scalability and maintainability.

Document management

SharePoint has a solid "out-of-the-box" document support, which is done through the Document libraries. Document libraries are collections of files on SharePoint Foundation that you share with other site users. Most document management features are delivered through document libraries. As part of document management planning, you should determine the kind of document libraries that best fit your organization's needs.

Next step is structure and attributes specification. Additional properties and tags are to be decided for the documents which will be used by SharePoint as well as end-user. Additionally it is possible to define Document workflows, or library behaviours (like catching emails, or saving attachments).

After attributes and behaviours are defined, document library template is created as a part of SharePoint solution. This is a flexible way to deploy needed functionality to any server, running SharePoint. Below is a screenshot of Knowledge Library, planned and developed using this approach.

Records Management

SharePoint has powerful capabilities of managing any data, which can be represented as a set of records, where a single record could hold any type of information. It could be a Personal Employee Card, Production Item, Vacation request or a Contract - virtually anything is possible to encapsulate here.

Records can be customised to meet all your requirements, they can be added, removed, edited, put into automatic or human processing according to Business workflows, included in Reports and processed by BI systems. And all with the standard tools from SharePoint with a minimum of development effort and high flexibility.

Conclusion

Usability, functional richness and cost-effectivity are the advantages of Document Management system, based on SharePoint. Basic functions can easily be customize to extend Foundation core with the features, needed specifically for any business purpose.