What Do You Use For Document Control?

Document controllers have a number of applications they can potentially use for document control. Most however aren’t doc control specific and weren’t designed with their needs in mind.

Plus, they often have difficulty getting their superiors to understand the value of using an actual document control application for this important work.

When speaking with document controllers, they typically mention that they currently use one of several apps to handle their document control work with various levels of success, namely:

• Microsoft Excel
• AutoDesk Vault
• Sharepoint
• QDMS

Most of these apps are non-document control specific while others might have some document control functionality.

Let’s take a closer look at each below. Then we’ll discuss how DocBoss was actually designed with you, the document controller, in mind.

The common alternatives

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application that is clearly non-document control specific and requires you to manually update files using publicly accessed folders with no submittal or other document-control specific functionality.

Autodesk Vault is a data management tool that helps design teams track work in progress and maintain version control in multi-user environments. Autodesk focuses on managing design assets and the relationships between design assets i.e. CAD data management. They don’t get into submittals, workflows to the extent that DocBoss does. Vault is a client server application with a SQL database and Autodesk Data Management Server (ADMS) applications installed on a Windows-based server.

Sharepoint is a web application associated with Intranet, content management and document management that organizations use to create websites and to store, organize, share, and access information between different staff members from almost any device. Users can work with others on the same document at the same time so the focus of Sharepoint is really about collaboration and sharing of information not on document control and submission. Sharepoint is an application that Microsoft has closely integrated with its MS Office suite with an Office-like interface.

QDMS is a PC and LAN-based document control application for engineering and construction firms. The software is installed on your company server so up front sunk costs can be higher since the software is purchased outright, it is maintained by your IT staff, and upgrades must be purchased as they are released.

INTRA vs INTER company document control

Controlling documents edited only inside your company is the focus for most document solutions. Open a file, edit it, and save it. Don’t change the file name. All the edits – the who, the what, the when – are all stored by software like Sharepoint as metadata. It’s easy to look back, easy to initiate workflows to get approvals for your changes, easy to automate revision numbering (as metadata) and lock versions.

But what these systems do wonderfully for intracompany changes, they do poorly for intercompany documents.

When sending intercompany documents (such as between yourself and an external client), each company needs to record what they receive and send. You are not necessarily all using the same editing solution so you rely on markups and not just editing the live document. You probably don’t have the same file naming formats, and you don’t have one person deciding how all of the control processes are to be policed. Often you are working with “RECORD” versions of files (non-editable issuances of files in PDF).

In the simplest terms: you need a file cabinet for each record/document you are controlling. You need to see what was sent and what was returned, and other metadata about each of those transactions. It’s transactional, not edit centric.

In Sharepoint this can only be accomplished if the file name is exactly the same as the file you exported. If the file name is different at all, the system makes an entirely new file cabinet. This quickly spirals out of control with very small mistakes.

DocBoss replicates the idea of a file cabinet for each record/document. Sure the file name can be the same (we still save a new entry), but it can also be different. We associate your metadata – both the unchanging data like doc numbers, doc codes, linked tags/equipment – to that file cabinet. Drop a file in and we know what metadata belongs. If a file gets returned from another company we automatically put it into the correct cabinet even if the file uses the customer number and not your number.

Sharepoint is a great tool for intracompany document control. But rest assured if you are using it for intercompany document control, you are not as “in control” as you suspect. Note that document control systems generally use a document “management” system in the background. But it is the control system which provides the structure – AKA the file cabinets required for intercompany tracking.

What DocBoss does for document controllers

DocBoss is an application that was designed specifically for project document control. DocBoss helps you meet customer specifications for managing and submitting documentation to engineering firms and other end user organizations. The document control function requires activities that document management systems normally don’t provide such as merging of two or more previously and independently released documents or updates to them. In a nutshell, DocBoss helps process equipment suppliers take away the pain of document control.

Rather than discussing all the things that these other apps don’t do, here’s a list of some of the things that DocBoss does do to help document controllers make their lives easier. You can compare this to what you require in your day-to-day document control work and see how DocBoss stacks up to your current processes.

DocBoss:

• automatically generates and maintains the project document register from the bill of material (BOM) data.
• uses customer document codes and statuses.
• stores BOM level tags for use on coversheets, indexes and transmittals.
• names every outgoing file according to engineering company specifications.
• supports 4 distinct numbers per register: sub-supplier, users (internal), engineering company, end user
• gives you the option to Auto-number all registers using engineering-company supplied format (you can auto-number engineering company number and user number separately if desired.)
• enables users to choose a custom cover page template to be applied to every outgoing document.
• enables users to create transmittals by uploading a custom template for every project (both in PDF and XLS)
• automatically compiles custom record books and compilations at the end of projects to your customer’s specifications.
• provides workflow functionality, routing documents to users for review/approval.