Document Management. Introduction. CAE DS Product data management, document data management systems and concurrent engineering

Transcription

1 Document Management Introduction Document Management aims to manage organizational information expressed in form of electronic documents. Documents in this context can be of any format text, pictures or even specialized application formats or any combination of these. Document Management is a subset of Product Data Management which, as defined in [2], posses four different management areas Item Management, Product Structure Management, Change Management and Document Management. Document Management is overlapping with sc. Content Management the differing aspects are discussed later. Electronic offices are de Facto today producing huge amounts of electronic and therefore easily shareable documents. Since these applications also possible easy change, joining and editing of documents also the importance of document management has raised as a central question. Problems related to deficient or lacking Document Management are commonly known featuring e.g. versioning-, retrieval-, mobility-, sharing- and access related issues. Users that are document creators tend to act differently and organize their documents tangled causing in the end an unmanaged pile of files. Considering the efforts spent on document creation it is intolerable to leave such valuable asset unused and not utilized which is the case if documents are not managed somehow. Depending on organization size, document amount / types and user dispersity different level of management on system level is needed to take full advantage of document creation efforts targeting to organizational efficiency. Management, as philosophical issue, can actually be organized on many levels starting from Operating System / File Management (which is usually not considered as actual management system) and ending to highly specialized applications covering areas of both Product Data Management and Content Management. Management features that is usually offered by normal operating system (encapsulation, storage, metadata ) and office network (sharing, backup, utilizes ) possible only a part of desired Document Management features, offers less robustness and is more vulnerable against errors. Specialized Document Management systems, featuring e.g. version control and workflows, are built to meet file system deficiencies and to enhance Document Management with numerous helpful features. Document Management can be considered in two dimensions; Document Life-cycle and Document Structure. Document lifecycle manages isolated document issues such as version history, location, related creation application (encapsulation), file locking in check-out operation and permissions. These are needed to control document as an object in the system. Document Structure manages document relations, configurations and classification for search and organization purposes. Many separate documents can be related to an item (~e.g. product) or document and vice versa one document can relate to several items or documents. Document Management - 1

2 Documents can also belong to descriptive classes forming, along descriptions and metadata, a base to search utilizes. These are needed to control objects as organizational resource. In this chapter Document Management is described as general task field but also some aspects of systems itself are discussed. Document Management Document Management is defined by [1]: A systematic method for storing, locating, and keeping track of information that is valuable to a business. The key characteristics of a document management system are the ability to manage information, to collaborate when creating information, to distribute the information, and to allow secure access to the greatest number of people. Document Management deals with four separate but integrated subjects [5], these are: People (users), Processes (information flow), Documents (content) and Technology (infrastructure). Users create, manage, administrate and use documents that are under Document Management. Since users are heavily involved, the system should therefore support actual practices of users in their document creation but also act as a resource for new information focusing to knowledge accumulation. User roles can be divided into three classes [5]: Creator, Coordinator and Consumer. One user can take each of these roles in his/hers different actions. Creator role means basically new document creation but this role also needs support from existing information (cf. consumer role) as well as support from technical infrastructure (e.g. scanning, network). Coordinator role is referred to producer. These roles relate often to middle-management e.g. division / department chiefs. Their task is to distribute and acquire information from / to subordinators. They also act as an information quality / approval persons both in good and bad ( information gate-keepers ). Consumers, of course, are ones that use the information provided. Consumer role is not axiomatic since there is always sending and receiving parties both has to be taken into account. In this case it usually means the formation of information in creation / coordination phase in order to make information understandable by the receiving consumer. Processes are the pipelines between users. Processes are present throughout the document life-cycle. Life-cycle is presented in figure 1 but can be simplified to Create-Manage-Distribute-Revise. Life-cycle requires certain functions from Document Management system; these are e.g. search, translation, join, classification, approvals and distribution. Document Management processes can be either traditional push-type, or as in new approach consumer driven pull-type. In pushtype document creator define the documents behavior in the system leading often to share to all practices with information flood. In pull-type the consumers themselves look for information. Pull-type focuses the information better but requires e.g. more efficient search and information quality features (such as document ranking). Document Management - 2

3 Documents are the objects in the management space. The Document concept is discussed later in this chapter. Issues to consider about document are that it usually represents the organizational knowledge and that the documents informative value varies. A document can be type of critical (obligatory for the business) or support type (ad hoc information). The more critical document is the more rigid management is needed. On the other hand the more ad hoc and around the subject the document is looser management can take place (e.g. even simple based or communal communication system to act as an infrastructure for createmanage-distribute-revise process). From technology perspective the document management is quite straight forwarded issue. To build a Document Management infrastructure one needs 1) tools to create digital documents (office software, expert applications, scanners ), 2) hardware to run management software and store documents, 3) network that is capable for data flow, 4) the management system itself. Document Management Benefits Common advantages expected to reach implementing Document Management are expressed in [5] and [6]. These are (adapted): Decrease of costs in document creation and dissemination Better access to documents Faster document creation and update processes Increase in document reuse and utilization Enhanced collaboration Reduced cycle times and quality improvement Better compliancy to regulations and legal issues Enhanced managerial control, reports and statistics Better document control and security issues Improved productivity Better user and client satisfaction Decreased information loss and document mistakes Formation of staff knowledge records On addition some other kind of advantages can be seen considering the case if Document Management is not used. Typically these relate to use of old or unapproved documents in later actions or physically lost files through hardware failures or inefficient information sharing. There are also disadvantages, or better said; challenges, in implementation of Document Management. These can be found e.g. in poorly defined workflow control of document publishing document can be approved to internal use but usual triggered document conversions hidden into system publish the document also to external audience. Evidential challenges are also in the area of scalability and information organization. Usually in the beginning Document Management covers only part of organization documents, later expert system information or organizational specialties can cause conflicts. Also information quantity can exceed intended complicating system utilization or overloading company network through constant check-in and check-out processes. Document Management - 3

4 The concept of document Document is a combination of content and properties. It is not necessarily analogous to file since content can contain several independent files. Through the years beside technological development the concept of document has changed. During first years a practical concept of document was a file. Since technologies enabled use of embedded objects (e.g. a linked picture on Word document) the concept of document was extended to cover all files of document, in this case picture file and text file. Analogously all other joint information elements form today the concept of document. Document concept is defined by [5]: A document is a container which brings together information from a variety of sources, in a number of formats, around a specific topic, to meet the needs of a particular individual. Document life-cycle starts with creation, optionally enters edit phase where also joining takes place, is optionally approved if workflows are used, published to desired extent and retrieved for use. Document life-cycle ends when it is removed from archive. During the life-cycle there are utility properties taking care e.g. of storing and search functions. Figure 1: General document life-cycle In Document Management use of document templates is common. These templates, defined usually according to document types, reduce the amount of work in checkin phase. Document types can be for example minutes, feasibility studies, reports, instructions, feedback etc. Templates have respectively pre-defined attributes and other document type dependent rules. These rules affect to how document is treated in management; rules on templates define e.g. workflow, distribution, versioning or validity of document. Document Management tasks and features Document Management has some typical tasks. Adapting Wikipedia s list [3] of typical tasks can general tasks be defined that are possible but not obligatory properties of document management system: Location (path) and time control Retrieval (check-in, check-out, file locking, version control) Filing (storage, search criteria, document relations) Security (permissions, file protection, authentication and authorization) Archival ( storage) Retention (legacy data) Distribution (sharing, collaboration) Workflow / Approval (document state management) Document Management - 4

5 Analyzing normal Document Management system certain functional areas can be found and reflected to tasks and system architecture. [5] Mentions these areas as: Repository a place where objects are stored and which interacts with other areas. Conversion a way to translate content from system to another Searching the methods to react on queries to stored documents Creation the tools and practices to construct the content Workflow the control of actions taken onto a document Distribution the sharing; right information to right persons at right time Common Document Management system architecture System architectures can be organized in different ways. Basically all systems have a user interface that communicates over the network with Server Application that uses database and optionally file system as storage. User interfaces can be built for workstation as operating system dependent solutions or onto an internet browser that is operating system independent but can possess restricted functionality. Server Applications and underlying repository arrangements can be in any form that fulfills needed properties. Most common is to have a database and often also a file system / server as a storage support. Figure 2: Usual system architecture for Document Management Document Management systems use client interfaces to pass user commands to the system. These can be e.g. document queries or document check-in. Nowadays it is more and more common that there is also (or only) internet browser option as client technology. Basically there is no difference on which technology client is based. Browser applications can be more restricted but are more mobile. Client itself can do a part of system tasks (e.g. in order to diminish Server Application load), such as indexing of document in check-in phase, but main tasks are usually done by Server Application. Server application handles e.g. search queries coming from client and returns documents from File System / Database. It also performs most of the system functionalities such as workflow tasks, file locking, configuration management and version control. Usually both File System and Database are used as repository. Database is usually in charge of metadata small but numerous data bits. File System is assigned to store (large) files whereto database has a pointer (~path) to. Pointer is used e.g. when passing actual file to user to client interface. In cases of using file system as a file storage security issues must be considered. Document Management - 5

6 Database usually has good enough security as a built in property which is not the case in file systems. Building the architecture also questions of scalability must be taken into account. This involves many aspects of hardware, software and network performance and possible limitations. Document Management implementation To head for Document Management one needs a clear plan to go with, just like in any Management system implementation. The plan should address those questions that ensure that nor technical, business, usability or other issues that can have an effect on Document Management system implementation come unexpectedly and that issues are discussed in the right spot. Some technical issues, e.g. bandwidth, are easily evaluated but there are also some deeper considerations to make during implementation. One of these could be the decision of approach to manage documents system/document centric or user centric. According to [5] Document Management in user centric approach should be considered as enabling technology vs. document centric that focuses to control. Enabling technology could rather be seen as a support for knowledge explication over document control. One example of implementation plan to follow is represented in [5]. Plan is divided into six phases: Planning, Prototype, Design, Develop, Implement and Post Implementation. In planning the Document Management is analyzed focusing to Organization, users, systems, and documents itself. In this phase requirements are set e.g. studying the Creation-Management-Distribution chain. This phase is much to understand and to have vision of future concept. In Prototype the supply of possibilities is to be studied; supplier negotiation and benchmarks are done and reflected to requirements. One can form sc. analysis model that joins requirements and actual features to visualize the gaps between. Typically also some kind of actual prototype is built either on concept drawing level or maybe also by tuning systems for pilot use. General purpose of this phase is to understand the solution possibilities of concept vision but also to raise ideas to possible needs in process re-engineering. In Design the system architecture is built, first from the point of view of hardware and networking secondly from the point of view of functions and features. The design determines the information flows in the processes and even the details of the systems it is a plan that documents how the objectives of implementation project are actually met. In Develop phase the installation issues, administrative training and systems administrative documentation are covered. Finally in this phase the system is ramped up through system configuration, development and testing reacting to design determination. This phase prepares the system for the use of users. In Implementation the system implementation is prepared. This involves e.g. final template design and start of user training. Also translation / creation of documents start. There should not be any re-design/develop in this phase but it should be taken into account since real life can show some missed issues that are uncovered by actual users. In Post Implementation the system maintenance details are planned and scheduled. Also support activities and further developments are organized to this phase. Document Management - 6

7 Document Data Management As a counterpart to Document Management a special field called Document Data Management is introduced shortly. Document Data Management term relates to techniques that decollate content and format which allows managing the document itself. These techniques are typically some sc. Mark-up languages, for example XML. Mark-up languages commonly known today, e.g. HTML and XML, origin to Standard Generalized Mark-up Language (SGML). SGML was developed to help to share sc. machine-readable documents, mainly in large governmental cases. XML is actually subset of SGML which is easier to parse / process and is used in industrial documentation and data exchange as template or platform. XML is also used in other applications popular in information and communication technologies such as XHTML, RSS, Aton, or SOAP [7]. Basic idea of mark-up languages is to use tags : a) To format the outlook of the document, e.g. in HTML <b> means bold and <p> inserts a paragraph. b) To allow portion specific operations inside the document, that is to embed external objects between the tags or otherwise manipulate the document content. In SGML the recipe of the document is Document Type Definition, DTD. DTD defines the mark-ups and structure of the document in question. In HTML the DTD is fixed by standard, therefore since interpretation is common and embedded similarly into browsers it is easy to share HTML-documents. Basic advantages of use of Mark-up languages from document perspective are: Portability between platforms, smaller file size vs. traditional documents, emphasis on content creation not document formatting, easy content manipulation and interpretation using tags, structure and re-structuration possibilities, possibility to configure output results (e.g. print format). [8] References [1] [2] Peltonen H. & al. PDM: Tuotetiedonhallinta. Edita, IT Press. Helsinki ISBN [3] [4] IBM Redbooks. Document Management Using WebSphere Portal V5.0.2 and DB2 Content Manager V8.2. Durham, NC, USA: IBM, p 6. [5] Bielawski L. & Boyle J. Electronic Document Management Systems. Prentice Hall PTR. New Jersey ISBN [6] Anttila J. Document Management; in finnish: Dokumenttien hallinta. IT Press. Helsinki ISBN [7] [8] Document Management - 7