DOCUMENT LIFECYCLE

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How you can boostproductivity around business documents.

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Organize Documents

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Manage Documents for Control and Discovery

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Every day teams across your organization work together to create sales proposals, marketing collateral, and legal agreements. You and your colleagues create these new documents and work with team members to improve their quality. But with multiple locations and groups, it is critical to have business-class document management tools to make the process efficient.

KnowledgeTree boosts team productivity throughout the document management lifecycle. We enable organizations to:

• Create documents collaboratively as a team• Organize documents the way you do business• Manage the lifecycle of documents and processes

In this paper, we’ll explore how a project team works together to create a proposal for a new client. The project leader wants to gather feedback early, and efficiently incorporate feedback into the final document.

TEAM

CREATE DOCUMENTSA S A

The project lead created a draft proposal in Microsoft Word, and now wants to share it with colleagues. Rather than emailing the document among colleagues, it is more manageable to provide a central location where documents can be organized and controlled. So, she drags and drops the document into KnowledgeTree via a browser, and the draft document is instantly accessible to her colleagues.

At the same time, she needs to add supporting documents and collect related materials from her colleagues. She uses the bulk upload tool to add documents from a zip file, preserving the folder structure she set on her desktop. And she provides her colleagues with a unique address that lets them add documents to the project folder via email.

ADD DOCUMENTS TO THE VAULT

GET STARTED

Once the documents are added the project lead looks at the draft proposal in KnowledgeTree. Each document has its own unique view. Here authorized team members can perform a variety of organization and management tasks. But first, she wants to start the collaboration process by soliciting feedback from her colleagues.

Of course she wants to stay on top of the feedback, so with KnowledgeTree a simple click lets her ‘subscribe’ to a document. That means that as documents are changed or commented on, she’ll be instantly alerted to the modifications.

Once subscribed, the project leader now shares the draft document with her peers. With KnowledgeTree she can easily share a document with internal or guest users, granting them the appropriate level of access depending on your scenario. The project leader can even share the contents of her proposal folder to ensure smooth collaboration.

EASY ACCESS TO ENTERPRISE-CLASS DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

Now that she has shared the document with her team, she needs to start gathering feedback. Rather than having comments spread across dozens of versions of her draft proposal, she gathers feedback in an ‘activity feed’ that is specific to the document. That means that colleagues can post suggestions for improvement in one central location. Their comments don’t get lost in the shuffle, and there is no document version management challenge.

GATHER DOCUMENT-SPECIFIC FEEDBACK FROM COLLEAGUES

The team is now accessing the document, commenting on it, and editing it. That can mean a lot of different versions of the document to manage. With KnowledgeTree you have the tools you need to control document versions. That means an instant productivity boost, as the time wasted sorting through old versions disappears.

A simple click allows the project leader to open and revert to prior versions of the document and its metadata. No longer does she have to sort through large volumes of documents with cryptic names to find the latest version. And it lets the project leader determine whether changes made by colleagues ought to be to included or eliminated.

CONTROL VERSIONS

Now the project leader returns to KnowledgeTree to evaluate the new document versions that have been added and the feedback within the activity feed. She opens the latest version of the document in Microsoft Office, directly from the vault via the KnowledgeTree plugin. The plugin allows her to open the document in Microsoft Word without having to download and save the document.

She starts to edit it based on the changes suggested by her team, and periodically saves the document. Each save instantly synchronizes with her vault, keeping the latest version always available in KnowledgeTree. Plus, within the plug-in she can access related documents and monitor new edits directly from the Microsoft Office interface.

While she is working on the document one of her colleagues also starts editing it. KnowledgeTree instantly alerts her that there is another version. She can compare her version with her colleague’s and merge the changes, or even save as a new and separate version. That makes collaboration easy.

COLLABORATE IN MICROSOFT OFFICE

KnowledgeTree makes it easy to create, share, and collaborate on your business documents. That lets teams work together to build great documents -- fast.

CONCLUSION

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W X P

CREATION

Is there an easy way to create and

edit documents?

How do I manage the many versions

of a document?

How can I get feedback from my

colleagues about a document?

Upload documents and folder structures, and connect fax or scanning servers for high volume uploads.

ADD DOCUMENTS

EDIT DOCUMENTS

ACTIVITY FEEDSMonitor colleagues’ feedback on documents and whether they are approving, liking, viewing, and commenting on documents. This helps teams spot relevant content and keep approval processes in gear.

VERSION CONTROLStop searching for the latest version. No more time is wasted sorting through revisions since users can merge contributions with ease.

Integration into Microsoft Office lets teams work together to create, edit, and share content in the tools they use everyday.

MANAGE CHANGEStay on top of colleagues’ modifications and comments by subscribing to documents and folders.

SHARE DOCUMENTSDistribute documents to colleagues, bothinternal and external, to gather feedback and support businessprocesses.

Your business depends on being in control of invoices, presentations, contracts, and proposals. But your team creates, edits, scans, or otherwise adds thousands of documents each week. So, how do you organize your documents so you and your colleagues can discover what they need? Productivity depends on document management tools that let you structure documents based on your business model.

KnowledgeTree boosts team productivity throughout the document management lifecycle. We enable organizations to:

• Create documents collaboratively as a team• Organize documents the way you do business• Manage the lifecycle of documents and processes

In this paper, we’ll take a look at how a project team can efficientlyorganizeitscontenttomakeretrievalasnap.A project leader has prepared a draft project proposal and wants to organize it so that colleagues can quickly locate it as needed.

GET STARTED

Many organizations are structured based on business unit, department, geography, and similar hierarchies. These groupings provide a useful way to organize content. With folders and sub-folders you can group your documents into hierarchies that make sense to your team. And because folders are a well understood model by all users, it is easy to organize content in a way that makes sense to you.

CONTROL DOCUMENT HIERARCHIES WITH FOLDERSO R G A N I Z E

BUSINESSD O C U M E N T ST H E W A Y Y O U D O

The project leader created a draft proposal for a new customer engagement. Because new customer engagements are a highly repeated process it makes sense to standardize how you organize your folders. With KnowledgeTree, she can establish Smart Templates for her folders. That means that each time she creates a folder for a new client, KnowledgeTree can auto-generate a set of sub-folders like “Contracts”, “Proposals”, and “Correspondence”. Whatever makes sense for your team can be applied, ensuring consistency.

And with folders she can perform a variety of more advanced document management functions. For instance, she can restrict access to her project folder to just the project team. She canevenfine-tunepermissionstoallowcertainteams to add documents while other teams can only view their documents.

Folders are a powerful way to organize documents. But documents often cross multiple categories. For instance, the new project proposal template may be equally applicable to a number of business units. So, theprojectleaderneedsaflexiblewaytoorganizeherdocuments.

KnowledgeTree’s Smart Tags provide the answer. Smart Tags allow users to apply metadata to their documents beyond the standard information that KnowledgeTree collects. The project leader returns to herrefinedprojectproposalandstartstoadjustherSmartTags.

Shebeginsbyapplyingbasictexttagslike“template”and“projectproposal”. These tags are easy to add, with an auto-complete that minimizes tag proliferation. And these tags are clickable and searchable,lettingyouquicklyfindrelateddocuments.

But the project leader needs to go beyond these standard tags. KnowledgeTree lets her add more sophisticated Smart Tags. She can createorreusetagfieldswithpicklists,datepickers,textfields,andmore. No matter what kind of data needs to be collected to support how she organizes her project documents, she can create the right tags.

She can assign the document to a document type called “Proposals”. By setting a document type, KnowledgeTree auto-generates a customizablesetoffields.Becauseitisaproposal,shehassetseveralkeyfieldslike“ProjectDueDate”and“CustomerName”asrequiredfields.Thathelpskeepherproposaleasytoorganizeanddiscover.

FLEXIBLE DOCUMENT ORGANIZATION

Anaturalwaytofindadocumentistobrowsethroughthefolderstructure.Butitisoftenmoreefficienttosearchfordocuments.Theprojectleaders’colleaguesin sales may start looking for the project proposal draft document, but not know where to look. Search makes it easy to quickly locate the correct document, boosting productivity.

Basic search looks within the document title and content. Plus, because KnowledgeTree provides built-in Optical Character Recognition technology, even imagescanbesearched.Thatmeansthattextwithinscannedcontractsorfaxedproposals is now visible to searchers.

But KnowledgeTree goes even further. Users can construct sophisticated searchesthatlookfordocumentsthatwerecreatedbyaspecificuser,onaspecificdate,andwithacertainsetofmetadata–orevenbasedonwherethedocumentisintheworkflowprocess.

Plus, these searches can be saved and shared with colleagues. So, repeated queriesarealwaysatyourfingertips.Thatmakesiteasyfortheprojectleadertolocate all documents created by her team or documents related to her project.

SEARCH TO DISCOVER DOCUMENTS

It’s one thing to browse or search for a document you know you want. But what happens when there is a great template or document that you don’tknowabout?Howcanyoufindwhatyou’renotevenlookingfor?KnowledgeTree’sSmartInsightsmakeitsimpleandfuntofindrelevantdocuments.

KnowledgeTree’s dashboard view provides social tools that help. The dashboard includes analytics that highlight the most relevant documents to you and new documents that may be relevant to your team. That means that the project leader’s colleagues in sales can visit the dashboard and quickly discover that the new project proposal template exists,andstartusingitinthefield.

DISCOVER NEW AND RELEVANT DOCUMENTS

Teams are always on the move. So, it is important that all team members can access their documents from wherever they are. KnowledgeTree’s focus on mobility makes that possible. With browser-based access teams can manage documents from anywhere with Internet access. Support for iOS and Android also permits teams to securely view documents on their handheld devices, and even edit associated metadata.

Plus, KnowledgeTree tools let users sync documents between their desktop and the cloud. The technology brings new documents and new versions from your vault directly to your computer. And the reverse is true, so as you save new documents to your KnowledgeTree folder on your desktop, the content is instantly shared with authorized colleagues via the cloud. For the project leader, that means she always has the latest version of her project documents accessible on her laptop. And she and her team can be productive from anywhere.

ACCESS DOCUMENTS FROM ANYWHERE

With KnowledgeTree it’s easy to organize your documents based on frameworks and groupingsthatmakesensetoyourteam.Thatmakesiteasytostore,share,andfindthedocuments that you need to get business done.

CONCLUSION

Smart Templates make it a snap to manage repeated processes. Define and manage standard sets of documents, alerts, and workflows, which are automatically applied to a new folder when you create it. That means more standardization for how you manage documents across your teams.

ORGANIZATION

How do I organize documents that applyto many subjects and projects?

What is an easy way to organize all thedocuments needed for one project?

If I make a change to a document, how will my colleagues know about relevanttemplates and supporting materials?

SMART TAGS

FOLDER TEMPLATES

Customize Smart Tags to assign documents with descriptions and group them based on keywords like lists, dates, and rich text fields. This allows users to browse for what they are really interested in.

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Track popular documents by highlighting ones that are downloaded or viewed the most. Teams can “like” especially useful content so that it’s easily accessible for future use. Send notifications to colleagues whenever a document is created, needs to be reviewed, or has been modified.

SMART ANALYTICS

Find and get documents on your desktop, mobile device, and from wherever you are.

MOBILE ACCESS

Use powerful search to locate documents by content, tags, or metadata. OCR lets you search even within scanned documents.

SMART SEARCH

Documents are at the heart of your business processes. Budgets support financial planning. Contracts enable customer management. And proposals are the basis for consulting projects. So, these documents need to be reviewed and approved by the right people. And, as business needs change over time, they must be revised, replaced, or retired, depending on the need. Using document management tools to do so can dramatically increase productivity for business processes.

KnowledgeTree boosts team productivity throughout the document management lifecycle. We enable organizations to:

• Create documents collaboratively as a team• Organize documents the way you do business• Manage the lifecycle of documents and processes

In this paper, we’ll see how a project team manages the lifecycle of a project proposal document. The project leader has created and organized the document in KnowledgeTree, and she is ready to get buy-in from the legal and sales teams.

GET STARTED

Your documents are business assets and they should be managed as such. That means granting appropriate rights to certain groups and users in an organization. Not everyone should have access to the project proposal document. And not everyone should be able to perform tasks like editing it, moving it through a workflow, or changing its name.

With KnowledgeTree it is easy to control permissions for your documents. The project leader can set up a new group called Project Team and limit folder access to just that team. It’s easy to assign new and existing users to certain groups and roles. Plus, integration with user authentication tools like Single Sign-On, Active Directory, and LDAP make user management easy.

And since she is working with outside consultants on the project proposal, the project leader can use KnowledgeTree’s flexible sharing tools to give limited access to guest users.

CONTROL DOCUMENT ACCESS

M A N A G ED O C U M E N T S

BUSINESSL I K E A

Smart Processes can also be configured to address business process needs. The project leader may decide that only her colleagues and managers are allowed to see the document when it is still in its draft state. So, she can adjust her workflow so that document permissions change with each step in the process.

To keep processes moving along, the tool will notify users by email and on their dashboard that they need to review the document. The review process is auditable, so the project leader can see which documents are stalled in a given state. And she can see who has approved a document for future reference.

Plus, as documents move through their approval process, they may need to be physically moved between folders. For instance, the draft project proposal may be shifted from a “draft” folder to a “finalized” folder upon authorization. You may also want to change a document to become a “record” that can’t be altered by other users. KnowledgeTree lets you control permissions to do exactly that.

As documents are created they often need to be reviewed and approved by appropriate team members. That means advancing a document through a workflow to get the right people the right level of visibility. For the project leader, that means passing the proposal through consulting management, sales, and legal before it is finalized.

The current model of emailing documents and gathering feedback verbally or via email is not efficient. Inefficiencies add up especially as large volumes of documents are managed. No one is sure which documents are unapproved and where documents are in their approval process.

With KnowledgeTree the project leader can create and customize a workflow specific to the project approval process. She can assign the right groups and roles to take a look at the document. And she can save the workflow as a Smart Process template that can be reused by colleagues as a standard process.

KnowledgeTree’s Smart Processes are highly flexible and support automation. So, as new project proposals are added to the proposal folder they can be instantly enrolled into the proposal workflow. Alternatively, workflows can be triggered by document type. So, any time a document is assigned the “Project Proposal” document type it can be added to the correct workflow for approval.

FLEXIBLE DOCUMENT ORGANIZATION

Documents change over time. Budgets may need to be revised. Contracts might need to be renewed. And marketing collateral may need to be refreshed. But if you are managing reminders within a calendaring tool, your team may be in the dark about changing documents. And it is just plain difficult to manage large volumes of reminders within your calendar.

KnowledgeTree simplifies the process by letting you set alerts for your documents. These alerts remind you, or selected groups, to act on a specific date. Alerts can be attached to a specific workflow so that teams can be reminded to advance the approval process. And alerts can be automatically triggered based on document type. So, each time an invoice is created, a renewal reminder can be generated. Deadlines are never missed and processes keep moving along – boosting productivity.

STAY ON TOP OF CHANGING DOCUMENTS

With KnowledgeTree teams can efficiently manage the lifecycle of their key documents. This leads to more efficient business processes and better control over the documents that run your organization.

CONCLUSION

LIFECYCLE

How do I stay on top of documents

that need to be reviewed or archived?

How do I ensure that documents have

been reviewed and approved?

How do I find out which documents are

stalled in their approval process?

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Smart Alerts prompt you and your team when a review is needed so business processes are never delayed. Customize alerts so that you can update specific colleagues or departments to review a document, store it, or destroy it.

ALERTS

Control document lifecycles by assigning approvals so that the right people always have access to the document. Assign workflows by document type or by which folder they are placed in. Customize these processes so important documents are never stalled.

WORKFLOW

Feeds and reports keep youon top of where documents are in their lifecycle, helping you unstall documents andboost their quality.

MANAGE CHANGE

WHAT IS KnowledgeTree?KnowledgeTree makes documents matter. Miramax, Alcatel / Genesys, Fuji Chemical, and hundreds of other companies use KnowledgeTree to drive productivity by working smarter with documents. KnowledgeTree helps legal, finance, HR, and sales teams easily develop and execute business processes around documents, and drive productivity and actionable insight.

Using our Smart Tools for documents, you can boost productivity across your teams and get more efficient. And with actionable insight into your secure document vault, you can uncover and share valuable business documents faster.

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© KnowledgeTree 2012. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA