If you work with people in different locations, such as home or another office, it can be difficult to keep shared documents up to date. Making sure that there is only one up to date document can be difficult, especially if your office does not have a remote connection or not everyone is connected.

One person might email a copy of a document to themselves in order to work from home, but in the meantime someone else opens the one at work and makes some changes. What happens to the copy the first person brings back from home? Most DMS systems have an option to check out or lock a document temporarily but most don’t have notes to say why, just who did it. This is ok, but what happens if someone needs to use the document, opens a copy and saves it as another document.

There is another option, an online file host, or hosted DMS (Document Management System). These can be a great option, you can organise your files, but keep them all online. When one document is opened it is checked out, like a book in the library. Documents can be checked out from any computer that has a web connection, and are held securely. Each user gets a unique log in and as long as the computer they are on has internet connection and the correct software (such as Microsoft Word to open a word document), they can work from anywhere.

If you have ever had to go into the office on a weekend because something came up that you had to work on documents that were not available at home, a web DMS means you can work anywhere.

I wish I had them on several business trips where I had my memory stick and laptop but not all my files. I could have logged into the system and retrieved the documents that I needed and not have had to write entire documents again or get up early and try and contact the first person in the office to email the document I needed.

If you are looking for an online or web DMS, start with google. The only one I have worked with is NetDocuments which has been extremely flexible. If you list out what you need then contact a couple of them and ask for demonstrations you can then decide which one is for you. As they are hosted off your site also ask what their data recovery plan is, and how many times they have been offline in the last year. Once you have all the information see if you can test drive each and see which one you find easiest to navigate.

When trying out a DMS have a couple of live documents that you are going to use over the next week and see how you work with them. Can you organise them so others can find them? Can you open them up, how quickly do they open. Can you integrate other software you need such as Delta view or PDF Docs? If you find something that the software does not do, how receptive is the software company at listening to your views. I only found out this week that NetDocuments has a suggestions forum that people can vote for their favourite suggestions. Once you find some software that you can work with and checks most or all of your boxes then that is the software to sign up with.