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Kathleen Parrott's original question: <<Can any of you kind folks tell me
how you
have resolved the problem of users being unable to locate documents?
Our online system is huge and the options are endless, but it seems no
one can find what they're looking for...>>
I recently wrote an article in the Intercom about document control. (If you
would like a copy, just email me off-list.)
In a nutshell, I said that there are three parts to document control:
software, hardware, and business rules.
For good document control, you should have some sort of software. This
could be an application dedicated to software control, such as Documentum,
or one that is already being used for controlling code, such as Visual
Source Safe. In my little world, we use AgilePLM, which is designed to
track inventory.
The hardware solutions must include a central server, which a good backup
procedure. Here, we provide hourly snapshots of our shared drives, and
nightly physical backups.
The business rules are the hardest to create, and the hardest to enforce.
We have a central server space to store all of our documents. If you are
working on project XYZ, you simply need to go to the XYZ folder to find all
documentation about the project. This took a while to create, and is still
not 100% enforced, but we are getting there.
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