Thanks Greg, I'm really happy with the way the site turned out, and inside the Intranet it works very well as is simple to maintain.
The system is totally soft copy, though I am still stuggeling with a few hold-outs regarding their personal form libraries.
I only recently discovered how powerful Outlook can be in a network environment. Take for example, an Internal Documents database. I created a new Public Folder which is based on a 'Task' type item (Outlook users will know what I mean). I then modified the task form by adding fields like revision number, review date, branch, etc and removing or modifiying the items I didn't need. For example, the task due date field was changed to the document due date (ie date to be reviewed). This enables the automatic formatting of Outlook to color this item red when it goes past this date. I then added a link to the actual document in each record enabling the user to open the record, see the information about the document, then open it (or a new document based on it if it was saved as a word template) from the one screen.
Other databases I have created include training (based on Contact type items), Process Improvement Notice (based on Task type items), Internal Review (audit) schedule (based on appointment type items), and it goes on.
The real bonus I discovered was using MS Frontpage and being able to add an "Outlook Control" to a web page. This effectively gives a real time window of the selected database right on the web page. The user doesn't have to leave the Documents page of the website to get to the database, and it is constantly updated, not like a list of Hyperlinks to documents, and much easier than a script to update the page. I'm finding it a bit hard to explain, but it works really well, is cheap, easy to set up and use. At the moment it work only inside the intranet, but I will look at MS's webfolders to see about extending it in the future.
Adobe documents are, like David said nearly tamper proof. Acrobat sort of creates an image of the Word, or Excel or scanned or whatever, document and saves it in a single file format. The free reader program lets users open it with no editing rights. The full version of Acrobat can mark up documents that have the appropriate permissions. I just distribute the reader to all the users, and have the full version with a few authorised users. We mainly used it because different offices have different printers which cause some documents to run over pages on some printers but not others. Acrobat has solved this. It is, for us anyway, for printed forms and handouts only. You can use it for online forms like the Word version but everyone would need a full version of Acrobat. I would stick with Word if you can as it removes an extra step. I try to use the online forms and templates in word but it is a bit flakey with different computers producing different results, and out IM&T department is not interested in supporting it (I'm not sure they understand it).
Speaking of which I'm interested in D-Copy. Do they have a web site. Our IM&T dept have decided to cut Intranet access to the far regions which basically screws my system (talk about a step forward
). So I need a way to do like you have and run a master folder which be duplicated from time to time in the regions servers. This might be one solution.
[This message has been edited by James Gutherson (edited 12 February 2001).]
