Project Paper Trail

[shaugh1784]

I'm looking for some insight into how people do Faxes, Transmittals, Meeting minutes, Phone notes, etc. My company used to run on macs & we had a great filemaker program that held all correspondence in a filemaker database - so you could open the job database & create a cover letter, write a memo etc and it's all warehoused in a single database file. you could search, create, etc. This dB was linked to a contacts database & all you do is type a name & it inserts fax number, address, etc.

Well now we run MS Office and all that functionality is gone. Every letter, memo, etc is now a separate MS Word file and it's a PITA to organize.

Ideally I'd like to be able to do all this from a browser, including emailing and sending/receiving faxes, scanning & attaching incoming stuff as well...

Anybody happy with the way you do it? How do others do it?

Is this what Buzzsaw Pro does?

Thx for any insights

[Allen Lacy]

I haven't explored it too much, but Outlook has a feature called Journal that might do what you are talking about. It tracks all Micorsoft Office documents that are created or accessed Also in Outlook, plus you can add Journal entries for phone conversations, etc. You can use Contacts to track activities associated with that peson or organization by clicking on the Activities tab on that particular contact. HTH. (I'm not a huge Microsoft fan, but it's what I have to work with :( )

[PeterJ]

Buy yourself Filemaker Pro for PC and I believe that you will find your DB works with minimum recoding.

[David Sammons]

In MS Office, you can combine and organize related files by using Office Binder. MS WordHelp provides instructions on how to create and use binders. You will find these instructions by using the keyword 'binder' in the MS Word Help menu.

Good luck! I hope this helps.

[shaugh1784]

In MS Office, you can combine and organize related files by using Office Binder. MS WordHelp provides instructions on how to create and use binders. You will find these instructions by using the keyword 'binder' in the MS Word Help menu.

Good luck! I hope this helps.

I appreciate the info - but I looked into it & turns out that Binder is no longer part of MS Office in the XP version.

[PeterJ]

Two things....

Firstly, now I think harder Filemaker for the PC cannot use applescript so depending on how the database was previously put together you should be able to achieve what you want. There is a UK architects practice that uses a filemaker solution similar to that which you describe and they have great success with it.

Filemaker is slighty dated I think in terms of its integration with the web which to me has never seemed as slick as it might be. This will also be true of the intranet if your office is so inclined.

Secondly, Buzzsaw won't do what you want. It can record documents and allow tracking but you still have to produce each one and upload it. It is more aimed at project documentation sharing.

[Thomas Cummings]

Fellows,

I use Business Contact Manager which is an extension of Outlook 2003 and is from MS. You can create an account for each business contact and have one click access to any document or file relavent to that client. You also have a paper trail of contacts made with the client. 8)

Thomas

[lennartik]

It's strange that it is so hard to find a cheap application that would be web-based and handle documents & logs. We have just evaluated Buzzsaw, it is nice, but hardly worth the $6000-9000/a year for a small firm.
Right now we are looking into docushare by Xerox to see what it can do for us. Anyone have any experience with that?

[PeterJ]

You are almost looking at what you need Lennart. This type of php based forum with a mysql or postgres database backbone can go a long way to being what you want. Make a job a Forum and a document a thread, that way you can annnotate issued drawings, upload revisions and always have the issue history to hand.

It would need some modification but it shouldn't be beyond the wit of man.

[shaugh1784]

Two things....

There is a UK architects practice that uses a filemaker solution similar to that which you describe and they have great success with it.



Peter, do you have any way of looking into what the firms you know of are using?

thx

[shaugh1784]

Buy yourself Filemaker Pro for PC and I believe that you will find your DB works with minimum recoding.

I have FM4.1 for the PC & am hoping to get an update to the latest version soon. I was able to resurrect my old mac databases... looks fairly promising if I can get the various reports to know each other. Looks like I have a weekend project..

[shaugh1784]

It's strange that it is so hard to find a cheap application that would be web-based and handle documents & logs. We have just evaluated Buzzsaw, it is nice, but hardly worth the $6000-9000/a year for a small firm.
Right now we are looking into docushare by Xerox to see what it can do for us. Anyone have any experience with that?

That was my first impression of buzzsaw - but I saw it at AIA expo 2002 in Charlotte & a guy named Chad Baldwin, one of the buzzsaw insiders from autodesk showed me a [then] beta version that seemed pretty complete with email interface and so forth..

But I agree with you on the cost.

Kyocera Mita is another company with document mgt/imaging services here in the states - will have to look into it. Will you please post back anything you determine pro or con with regard to Xerox?

Thanks

[GuyR]

Make a job a Forum and a document a thread, that way you can annnotate issued drawings, upload revisions and always have the issue history to hand.

If you want a php solution no need to muck around with phpBB. Try these:

http://www.phprojekt.com/

or

http://phpgroupware.org

for a python solution

http://www.conflux.ee/index.php

and for a cheap exchange solution:

http://www.billworkgroup.org/billworkgroup/home

and another...

(cheap) http://www.teamspace.de

[PeterJ]

At present we use something called Workgroup Share (http://www.workgroupshare.com)to allow sharing of Outlook data on a peer to peer basis. Which provides the kind of sharing that msmail allowed up to XP and Office XP so it is clearly not designed as an exchange replacement, but does give quite sophisticated user access rights and was cheap.

Longer term I am interested in OpenGroupware (http://www.opengroupware.org) which aims to be a Linux based exchange killer. It would be hosted in our office rather than offsite and allows connections from Mac's native calendaring and contact products, plus Outlook, and a variety of other products. It also allows various web interfaces so in theory one could have direct access from any location, which would have its uses. There are costs associated with its implementation though these are much less than Exchange and its free instead of a grand or morre.

I still don't think any of these will do what sphaugh is looking for quite so seamlessly.

[Martin P]

Wont help you immediately, but I am sure Chris Y posted that he was working on creating something like this? might be worth seeing how it is going.