Fetching appropriate information from piles of documents is probably one of the most tedious and challenging task that any company is facing today. And when we talk about the publishing companies, the problem multiplicates many-folds. It is a daunting task for them to maintain their workflow manually. As in the case of certain documents a lot of people might be working on the same document simultaneously. And the document flows past a lot of people right from writing the content to editing and then publishing.
These days either a single writer or multiple writers might write a book. So all the writers have to have both read and write permissions on that single piece of document. There are chances of conflicts as well as they have an ardent need of versions so that they can have a clear comparison between the edited and original documents.
With this comes a totally related problem of tracking. When more than one individual is involved in an activity, tracking becomes very vital. Tracking ensures credibility of information. In the publishing sector the document goes through a number of review cycles. So it is important to be aware of the sequence of flow as well as to know at which phase is the document at present? It is also important to keep a record of when, why, and who made updates.
Fetching the right information smartly is important because most of the valuable information in organizations is in the form of lots of well-managed and not-so-well-managed documents such as reports, letters, memos, agreements, policy statements, contracts etc. So most of them these days are opting for an automated document management system which not only simplifies accessing the correct information but also helps to keep a proper track of the records.
Role of Alfresco document management:
It is at this crucial time that Alfresco document management comes into use and becomes the ideal best friend of the publishing companies under such circumstances.
Fed up with your legacy ECM system? Join @johnnewton 7/8 Jul and find out how to transform content management http://t.co/Rgr0FWDEXB
— Alfresco (@Alfresco) June 30, 2015
The number of ways that Alfresco proves it’s own worth are as follows:
Automating the workflow:
Alfresco is a sturdy document management system with the concept of customization. Customizations are any such changes incorporated to the Alfresco default functionality as per the requirement. These changes can include adding a web script, editing an existing configuration file, or developing a full-featured module as per the need of the enterprise.
Alfresco is of utmost importance for workflow automation- workflow which includes structured processes with a sequence of connected steps. Workflow services manage business processes around content using user-assigned tasks, automated steps, and flow control and a lot more. The domains that are taken care of here are as follows:
1. Repository Management:
Alfresco at its core is basically a repository that provides a store for the content and a wide range of documents, and that can be very efficiently used by the content applications.It is a strong content management system. The content metadata is stored in a relational database, while the content itself is stored directly on the file system. The relationships between content items, and their various properties (metadata) are defined in one or more content models.
It proves to be of great help for the publishing companies as it stores the files in proper folders which becomes easily accessible. One can be perfectly sure of reaching to the appropriate file without wasting the time to reach it. The metadata is extremely vital which carries all the relevant and important information related to a particular file such as who is the author, time of creation, when was it last modified, the main keyword and a lot more.
Jos Wilschut, CTO of Infinitas, moving from Documetum to Alfresco – mobile book publishing time took 3 weeks now 30 minutes #AlfrescoSummit
— Paul Hampton (@PaulDHampton) October 9, 2014
2. Document Management:
The publishing companies also face hardships in managing their document details. It is very crucial to track a document in a publishing company as it goes through a number of editing and review cycles. Alfresco gives them a proper document management system.
- In the first case they help in customizing the metadata of the document. It holds all the information relating to that particular document, such as the writers who are writing on that document or the reviewers as well as the editors. It also gives the provision of tracking who and when was the document edited. This increases the credibility and security of the information to be published.
- Alfresco also helps in folder management. It helps to customize the permission on each and every folder thereby playing a vital part in role management. In the publishing company the document goes through a number of review cycles. So it becomes pretty difficult to determine the status of the document in a certain folder. So alfresco provides the ease of setting read and write permission on a particular folder on different people who have access to that folder. As the document has been marked reviewed, the document automatically moves to the next folder where the next reviewer has read and write permission for the document and gradually moves to be in the ready to be published state.
- Alfresco provides real time collaboration which solves almost all the problems of the publishing companies. It often so happens that when two or more people are working on the same document there are high chances of conflicts. So for that proper collaboration is needed. Alfresco not only shows who are working on the current document but also keeps a track so as to who and when changes were made in that document. Thereby it gives the provision of real time collaboration.
- Lastly Alfresco caters to the aspect of versioning. When the document flows through a number of review cycles it is of utmost importance that there remains a copy of the earlier versions of the document as it becomes essential at times to compare the documents. Thus keeping this in mind Alfresco also gives the provision of versioning. When changes are made in a document then according to the need of the reviewer and writers a prior few versions of the documents can be saved for future assistance.
3. Search Management:
The publishing companies have TBs of data to handle. Thus it is practically impossible for them to access any document after a long time of a certain domain. Many a times they need to find out a document relating to a particular topic or any article of a particular author. Therefore they need an extraordinary search tool as well. Alfresco content management also helps in customizing the search. It can be configured in a way such that the metadata along with other relevant information also holds the tags relating to that article. And hence the search filter can be customized and made capable to access a document depending on the content of it.
Alfresco Content Auditing : Tracking Made Smarter
A great tool for Publishing Enterprises
Indeed Alfresco proves to be a rock solid platform for all the publishing companies and is capable of catering to all the problems associated with it. It not only automates the entire process but also helps to keep a record of all the changes so as to who and when was it done. Thus Alfresco-a highly efficient content management system can also be coined as the ideal match for the publishing enterprises.
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Pratyush Kumar
