The good thing about this blog is that I don’t really need to have answers. That is especially good since I am re-visiting the discussion about working documents versus final documents. It comes up in most every discussion about effective document management – how do I have one system that provides the functionality that I need for both working documents and final documents.
Recall from our earlier post about how creators of working documents tend to like fast and simple – a system where the user can create any collection of folders and subfolders to suit their needs and drag and drop files at will. A user of final documents requires structure and certainty because having quick access to the right documents gets the job done. However, at some point the documents…
Keeping it simple is not always the answer
Recently we helped a client convert a small amount of paper documents related to a one time transaction into PDFs. The PDFs would simply be in a folder and viewed or emailed as needed. To keep it simple the files could be named in a structured format, ie. “ABCCo-Contract-060116-Brazil-Engine-D-JF.pdf”. Most of that short hand is clear except the “D” is for diesel engines and that the Sales Rep was John Franklin? Seemed simple enough and so we proceeded based on the clients requirements.
In this case, the volume of documents was small, but the documents had a significant amount of descriptive information that could be captured. Each piece of information could be captured in a document management system database and ready for user searches. For example, find all contracts for Brazil or all…
Make my day – delete those records
Records retention and records management are very important principles in dealing with corporate information. Records management being the overall guide book for employees on to how to store and classify information. It is also about proper management of that information including legal holds (don’t destroy if litigation is in process), access to information and records retention.
Records retention is basically an information destruction plan based on business or legal requirements. A business doesn’t necessarily want the burden of securing confidential, but outdated information for ever – ie. former patient records. Creating a records management policy and records retention schedule requires a lot of effort and yet the actual deletion of records is a very difficult step to take. Here are some thoughts on how to feel better about pulling the trigger.
First, you need… Do you need Sherlock Holmes or Martha Stewart?
We have heard it from nearly every company that we have come into contact with over the past 20 years – “the entire office was recently consumed by the search for the Pensky file”. Most likely 15 to 20 years ago they were absolutely referring to a paper file. Now this reference is to a digital file, which in some cases makes it even harder.
If finding documents in your document system (SharePoint, network folders, Box, etc.) is painful and time consuming, you could call Sherlock Holmes or try to reorganize the files with the help of Martha Stewart. Reorganizing is of course the better approach and therefore, you should take some time to learn about Taxonomy.
According to Webster’s, the definition of Taxonomy is “classification; especially: orderly classification of plants and animals according to…
What is Normalization and Why is it Important?
Put another way – Quelle 弱形 normalization and Поче is it महत्वपूर्ण? Think for a minute about trying to read your email but every email is in a different language? What happens if you don’t know the language or the coworker you forwarded it to doesn’t know that language? Then it becomes a real problem and very inefficient. If you could always funnel those emails through a translator before they hit your inbox, the problem disappears.
Now think about document and electronic file storage for most companies; paper documents, files on a shared drive, files in the cloud, files everywhere. There are probably many different paper filing methods, digital files in personal folders with a unique and less than intuitive structure by employee, one PDF file that actually contains 10 documents, or file… - « Previous
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