Document Management

Document Circulation and Workflow System

The objective of this article is to introduce a simple document circulation and workflow system which may find flavour in the small and medium enterprises while large enterprises may address the same through either ECM (Enterprise Content Management) or DMS (Document Management System). I intend to write my experience in this area starting with this simple solution and expanding to the other popular open source ECM and DMS solutions a little later .

Enterprises irrespective of their size and nature of business encounter various forms of Document Management and Circulation within their business processes. This article shall elaborate on how enterprises could utilize one such existing solution to implement a document circulation and workflow process through one of the best know open source system called by name "CUTEFLOW" (http://www.cuteflow.org/).

• Creating user-friendly document structure containing many fields and grouping the same.

• Using the favourite email route for document circulation

• Status Overview of the workflow at any stage of the in process document circulation.

What ?

With the document circulation and workflow system, the users shall be able to define "documents" which need to be sent in a linear manner to every station/ user through email. Please refer to figure 1 for a schematic representation of the process.

How?

The process owner / user could assemble various input fields of different types in the form of a document and circulate using a web based system. The document is circulated using the pre-defined user list through email. The recipient can fill the values in the document directly from the email client. After all the user interactions with the document and at the end of the circulation, the completely filled in document is available for further processing by other systems. The users can attach documents (i.e. for illustration material) wherever necessary. The system has an easy to use web interface to view all activities such as document creation, starting a workflow, tracking the workflow, workflow definition or status monitoring.

Create Document Structure

• A document circulation and workflow can contain a lot of different fields that are grouped by so called slots.

• The definition of a document can be done easily via the web interface (Templates menu)

• The same document definition can be used in several circulations or mailing lists.

Circulate Document

• Every workflow has an attached set of receivers. These receivers will get the workflow document via e-mail.

• Workflow documents are sent by e-mail. Every received user shall see all data in the document, but can only change the fields in his/her slot.

• The fields of a workflow document can be from very different types. There are simple text fields, radio and check boxes, select fields and many more. Each field can have a default value and you can add a validation rule.

Document Circulation Status

• An overview list shows the status of all workflow. The sender can easily see where and how long the workflow is at the current station.

• A mighty filter function allows the customizing of the list to your own needs.

• If the sender needs more specific information about the status of a circulation, he can use the details view.

Why?

For obvious reasons, this part of the article shall cover mainly the benefits of the system rather than justifying the need for one.

- The software is free and open source (business friendly license - BSD)

- Web based user interface

- Easy to install, setup and use (Cloud compatible)

- Integration of workflow documents in e-mail message. Which means you can easily access from your smart phone without any native apps.

- Support for different workflow "mailing lists"

- Workflow can attach data and files

- Runs on Apache as web server, mysql as the backend and PHP for client interface.

- SMTP E-Mail server for sending workflow e-mails

Note: If you prefer to know more about document management system, please visit the wikipedia url at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_management_system