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Distributed Document, Contact, and Appointment Management SystemOne goal of the "information society" has already been achieved: PCs have access to vast amounts of information – especially when they are connected to a network or even the whole Internet. But a second, much more important goal is still a dream: finding relevant information fast – without having to read through masses of useless data. SoftMaker Office's Document Management System offers an all new approach to that problem. Every company has to deal with large amounts of documents:
All these kinds of documents contain information that has to be found again when it is required – as quickly as possible, of course. Additionally, people collect nuggets of information from web pages they consider useful, or scan articles from newspapers and magazines and store them on their PC. This kind of information also has to be accessible fast, whenever needed. There's one thing all of those different types of documents have in common: They contain information that has to be stored somewhere, has to be searchable, and has to be shareable with others, if required. But there's also a crucial difference: These documents are stored in completely different file formats. They can be read only with the software that created them. Therefore, users searching for a certain bit of information will have to launch numerous programs with completely different and often rather weak search functions. In practice, searching for a certain piece of information often tends to become a large-scale operation: Where did I store that again? In a Word document? No, didn't find anything with Word. Was it an e-mail message? No, the search with the e-mail program didn't have any results. Was it on a web site? Or hidden deep in an Adobe Reader file? Or... Lots of manpower and computer power to find a simple piece of information... That's why SoftMaker Office anywhere uses a different approach: All documents created by a user – be they text files, spreadsheets, memos or e-mail messages – are stored in one central database. Let's call it the user's individual "knowledge base". If desired, the database can also store all incoming e-mails, incoming and outgoing faxes, web pages saved by the user, scanned newspaper articles, etc. All documents stored in that database are automatically indexed. Therefore, users can find a certain author, date, subject, etc. very quickly. Even full-text searches display their results very quickly, no matter how large the database is.
Using "Categories"Additionally, users can create "categories" and assign documents to one or more categories. For instance, if you had three documents – one about Microsoft Word, one about Internet Explorer, and one about TextMaker – you could assign them to the following categories:
Now, when you look up the category Microsoft in your knowledge base, SoftMaker Office anywhere displays the document about Microsoft Word and the one about Internet Explorer. If you select the category word processor, the document about Microsoft Word and the one about TextMaker is displayed. Users can create their own categories and assign documents to as many categories as they like. This way, they automatically create a network of relations between their documents, making it a lot easier to organize their data.
Systematic Document StorageCurrent applications lead users to store their documents wherever they want. Users are free to create folders anywhere and store information without any kind of system. The result is obvious: important information might get lost, simply because nobody can ever find it again! With SoftMaker Office anywhere, all data is stored in a central database. Every single document a user creates can be found here. Users won't have to search for where a document is stored, they just search for what is inside this document. Another advantage of SoftMaker Office's document storage system is the included document browser. It not only lists the names of the documents (like Windows Explorer), but also displays their content. This makes browsing through a list of documents more comfortable, since you always see a preview of each document. You can then open, annotate, or print it with a single mouse click. Office anywhere can display all major document formats, e.g. text documents (TextMaker, Word), spreadsheets (PlanMaker, Excel), web pages, scanned newspaper articles, Adobe Reader files, etc.
Data SynchronizationA user's document database can be stored locally on his PC, or – if the PC is connected to a LAN – on a file server. If desired, the server can even be connected to the Internet, letting users access it from everywhere in the world with a portable computer. Whenever users are not connected to the PC carrying their database, they simply activate the Offline mode on their device. In Offline mode, users can continue working on their documents with e.g. a notebook computer, Pocket PC, etc. As soon as the mobile device is reconnected to the PC again, they can go online again and all changes to their documents are automatically synchronized between the two devices.
Sharing InformationDocuments stored in the document database can be accessed like any other file stored on the user's PC. Additionally, users can share documents with others. Of course, users have full control about which documents they share, and with whom they share (no sharing, shared with certain users only, shared with the whole workgroup, or shared with everyone).
Shared documents are automatically added to the other users'
databases and, of course, automatically indexed to accelerate
full-text searches.
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