Document management (DMS)

bron: openerp.com

Information management has become a major strategic factor in companies’ development. It is
important to get the right information circulated to the right people, as efficiently as possible, yet
still keep it secure. Document management provides a way for companies to organize their
information, in all its forms, in one place.

The objectives of document management include easier archiving, access and reference, intelligent classification
and distribution of documents and the information they contain. It concerns sets of all sorts of company
documents such as work procedures, meeting reports, documents received from customers and suppliers,
documents sent to customers, faxes, sales presentations and product datasheets.

For this chapter you should start with a fresh database that includes demo data, with sale, document and their
dependencies installed and no particular chart of accounts configured.

1.1  The importance of good document management

Globalization means that workplaces are ever more geographically dispersed. This means that documents are
also used more than ever by people in several countries and continents for communicating and collaborating.

You will see communication problems even between employees in the same office because they do not have easy
access to the documents that they need. You find some documents kept by someone in the accounts office, shared
directories that serve everybody, some documents in paper form, others in electronic form – quite a free-for-all.

An explosion in the number of documents that a company needs does not help. If their storage and indexation are
badly organized, these documents become useless because they are almost impossible to find.

The results of poor document management can lead to a significant loss of time. Ask yourself how often you find
yourself looking for:

• A supplier catalogue that has been sent to a purchasing manager,
• A customer contract signed several months ago,
• The final set of Terms and Conditions offered to a specific customer,
• The documents required for employing a new member of staff,
• An order confirmation sent by a customer to one of your salespeople or, perhaps even more common, when
  the relevant salesperson has gone on vacation, if you ever received such an order confirmation,
• A procedure from your quality manual if there has been a process fault,
• An email which was sent to one of your colleagues,
• A document that you need to be a template for a specific type of contract,
• A complete history of communications between yourselves and a supplier about a given contract.

Even worse than the loss of time, perhaps, the lack of good document management is bad for the quality of your
organization and the service provided by your company. In such a company it is likely that:

• sets of documents do not follow a standard layout,
• all the salespeople prepare quotations in their own way and gradually change the way they do it for
  themselves but not for the group,
• a correction to a type of contract stays with a small group of people and does not percolate back into the
  rest of the company to benefit other users,
• version management is chaotic or even non-existent.

So a good integrated document management system can be a powerful tool to help in day-to-day company
management. With it you could also easily:

• Continue the work started by a colleague if she has gone on vacation, and respond to her customers if
  needed,
• Get hold of examples of all document types with just a few clicks, so that you can follow company
  standards in such areas as order confirmation, price requests, meeting minutes, customer deliverables,
  contract examples, and models for faxes and letters,
• Retrieve procedures and other associated documents if you do not know how to do a certain task – such as
  things you should do when hiring a new employee, organizing a conference, or structuring meeting
  minutes,
• Reuse work done by a colleague to meet similar needs and build on all the individual work done in your
  own company,
• Find all the orders for a customer or from a supplier in just a few seconds to answer questions or to
  continue a discussion when the initial contact point in your company is not available,
• Build on your working methods and enable your colleagues to benefit from each improvement in a
  document type or a procedure.

From these examples you can see the importance of a good document management system, and what it might
contribute to the improvement of productivity and the quality of the output from each employee.

1.2  Classic document management solutions

Faced with the need to organize documents, companies have looked at a number of document management
solutions that are promoted today, from simple email archiving to complete electronic management systems
dedicated to arbitrary documents.
Unfortunately, these solutions have not always been very useful because they are too little integrated in
companies’ management systems. Most solutions that we have come across, are underused by the employees –
often used by some of them but not by all.
The primary reason for this is that a document management system that is not integrated imposes extra work on
an employee. For example, a salesperson should ideally save each customer confirmation in the document
management system. Only that means quite a heavy additional workload just for an order confirmation:
1.  Receive and read the email from the customer,
2.  Save the email and its attachments on the desktop,
3.  Connect to the ERP system and confirm the order,
4.  Connect to the document management system,
5.  Look for the best place to store the document,
6.  Create a directory for the customer and the order if it does not yet exist,
7.  Copy the files from the desktop to the right place in the document management system.

This is obviously a lot of operations just to handle a simple order confirmation. You can understand why many
companies hardly use their document management system even if they have gone to the cost and effort of
purchasing and installing one.

It is very difficult to keep information in the company’s management system synchronized with that in the
document management system. For example, when a customer changes his address, users will modify the details
in the management software, but usually, not in the document management system.

Furthermore, since users should create the same storage structure in both systems, you quickly find after only a
few months that the information in the document management system is quite disconnected from that in the
company’s management system, if the two are separate. For example, how do you know where to store your
least-frequently used documents such as (perhaps) employee car-leasing documents? Also, document
management systems are typically very complex because they must manage user access rights in just the same
way as those that are available in the company management system. This means that you have to enter the same
sort of data about access rights twice for the system administrators.

You will see that the total integration of OpenERP’s document management system with the main company
management system, and plugins to Outlook and Thunderbird email clients, offers an elegant solution that
addresses these problems.

1.3  The OpenERP Solution

OpenERP’s management of documents is unique and totally innovative in its integrated approach. Its complete
integration with the company’s management system solves most of the problems that are encountered when you
use independent document management systems:

• Login and the management of access rights is integrated with that of OpenERP for controlling access to
  different document types,
• Ultra-rapid access to documents, which are directly accessible through your email client or through the
  company management software,
• Automatic assignment of meta-information comes directly from information contained in your OpenERP
  login registration,
• Document workflow, which automatically follows OpenERP’s documentation process, provides complete
  synchronization between the systems,
• Document classification is determined by OpenERP itself so that the structure that is created is always
  synchronized between the systems,
• Automatic indexation and classification of all documents produced by OpenERP for maximum efficiency.

1.3.1  Getting Started

This section is about how to get started with the document management system from its installation to advanced
use with FTP access.

Installation

To install OpenERP’s document management system, you just need to install the document and
document_ftp modules through the Reconfigure wizard by selecting Knowledge Management, and further on,
Shared Repositories (FTP) for installation. As the module installation proceeds, the system automatically
proposes that you configure the FTP server.

Screen for configuring document management

Once the module has been installed, you will see a new entry in the main menu called Knowledge.

The Knowledge menu

1.4  Internal and External Access using FTP

The first configuration step is to create a directory structure that will be used to classify your document set. You
can use the structure automatically proposed by OpenERP from the menu Knowledge → Configuration →
Document Management → Directories’ Structure.

Structure of directories when the document module has been installed

In addition to the usual access to documents through OpenERP, you will be able to connect to them directly
through the file system using the FTP protocol. To connect to the FTP server, use the following address:

Once you are connected using FTP, you get to the root of a directory for the document management system.
Once you enter that directory you find a structure that matches the structure defined in OpenERP.

Root of the database directory seen through FTP

Structure of the directories in the document management system

1.5  Mapping between OpenERP Resources and Directories

Each directory can either have the type Static or Folders  per  resource. A static directory, as with
operating systems, is the classic directory that can contain a set of files. On the other hand, the directories linked
to systems resources automatically possess sub-directories for each of the resource types defined in the parent
directory.

For example, you can look at the directory shown in Documents → Sales Order → All Sales Order. You will see
the directory for all the orders present in OpenERP that was created automatically by the system.

Orders in OpenERP

Directories representing all the orders in the document management system

Directories can follow a tree structure, like the tree of resources in OpenERP. For example, if you go to the
directory Documents → Projects you will see the structure of the analytic accounts.

To define a directory containing a specific type of resource, you have to define parameters when you define the
directory itself:

• Type : Folders per resource
• Resource model : Choose one of the system objects
• Domain : an event filtered so that it sees only a subset of the resources
• Tree Structure : to show the resources hierarchically

Configuration of the directory containing All Sales Orders

This is a very flexible approach because any modification of the resource in OpenERP is automatically reflected
in the document management system. So when the quotation gets confirmed in OpenERP the directory no longer
appears as a quotation through FTP access.

Here are some examples of directories linked to OpenERP resources that could be helpful when configured in the
document management system:

• Quotations and Order: storing documents that relate to orders,
• Products: for storing products’ technical datasheets,
• Users: to automatically define a directory owned by each user of the system,
• Employees: to store documents about employees, such as their CVs, your interview notes, contract details,
  and their annual assessments,
• Support Requests: storing items about requests or about technical support responses,
• Analytic Accounts or Project: to store project management and tracking documents.

1.6  Managing Attachments

As you see, you can connect any directory in the document management system to an OpenERP resource. The
system then manages its creation and keeps the directory synchronized with the reports generated by OpenERP
from its own data. You do not have to create or rename these directories because OpenERP does all this
automatically as it resynchronizes with its own database.

You can then copy the files in the directories that correspond to any of the resources. The files are automatically
attached to OpenERP’s documents through attachment management. Conversely, if you attach a document to one
of OpenERP’s resources then that document will automatically become visible over FTP in the document
management system.

1.7  Virtual Files

The most well-organized companies keep track of all the documents they have sent to customers in their
document management system. It is very useful to be able to retrieve every document about a customer or a
project. But the work of storing these documents can itself often take up quite a bit of time for staff. Each report
must be saved in the document management system as well as simply being sent by email to the customer.

That is not the case in Open ERP. To automatically make Open ERP reports available in the FTP server, Open
ERP automatically uses virtual files. You can put virtual files into directories that have the special type of linked
resource and link the virtual files to Open ERP’s reports.

The screen Virtual files for Sales Orders in Open ERP shows the parameters of the virtual files in Orders. You
define the virtual files using the name ORDERNUM_print.pdf, where ORDERNUM represents the reference to
the order. To do this you must check the option Include Record Name of the file for a directory. You can then find
a virtual file for each report associated with an order.

Virtual files for Sales Orders in Open ERP

To see the effect of this configuration, connect to the FTP server and go into a directory for an order such as
Documents → Sales Order → All Sales Order → SO003. You can then just click the file SO003_print.pdf to get
a printout of Order SO003. You can attach it to an email or put it on your desktop.

Virtual files for Sales Orders through FTP

This system of virtual files is very useful in a lot of situations. For example if you must quickly re-send a
quotation to a customer you do not have to open Open ERP, you can just attach the relevant virtual file to your
email.

Importantly, once files have been read or copied they become real files, taking up real space, rather than just
virtual. This means that you can keep a legal record of all documents that have been created and sent to
customers and suppliers.

1.8  Standardizing Structures

You now have a configuration that enables you to automatically get a directory structure linked to Open ERP for
each resource, such as for projects and orders. The ideal situation would now be to automatically structure the
documents about projects, say. For example, you could classify them depending on their type:

• Quotations,
• Meeting Minutes,
• Delivery Documents,
• Documentation.

Open ERP provides you with a system that lets you create a structure type for each type of a given document. It
then provides that classification for all documents in the directories structured in that type.

So create the structure above for your project management system. To do that, create the four directories above
and give them the following data:

• Type : Static Directory,
• Parent Model : Analytic Account.
  Then in each project (represented by analytic accounts) you will get this substructure for organizing your
  documents efficiently.

Substructure common to all projects

Once a new project has been defined in Open ERP, the system automatically creates a directory corresponding to
the project in the right place in the document management system, and creates a structure type there for
classifying documents.

1.9  Searching for documents

You have seen several methods of accessing documents quickly:

• From attachments to an Open ERP resource,
• Through FTP access to Open ERP,
• Using the menu Document Management → Structure of Directories.

But if you do not know where a specific document can be found, Open ERP also has a search tool integrated into
its document management. To search for a file use the menu Knowledge → Documents → Documents. You get to
a document search view that lets you search amongst all the attachments and all the documents in the FTP server.

You can search for a file using various different criteria:

• The attachment name,
• The attachment type,
• The filename,
• The owner of a file,
• The directory that it is found in,
• The indexed content

Notice here an important advantage for an integrated document management system. Information such as which
partner is associated with a document is automatically detected by Open ERP when the document has been stored
in a directory. This information is never input by the user – it is detected automatically using the information
about the resource when it is being saved as a file.

But your search is not limited to these few fields. You can also search on the content in the files. Each file is
automatically indexed by the system to give you a search engine rather like Google’s on the whole set of
company documents.

This functionality is very significant. All you need to do is search for a partner name or an order number to
automatically get all the documents that are referenced there. And you can use a fragment of text to find the
document you need from within that subset.

1.10  Integration with emails

1.10.1  Using Outlook and Thunderbird

Sending an attachment that is in the document management system from Outlook

1.11  Working with users’ changes

To make the document management system’s use as unobtrusive as possible the system’s users should easily be
able to store all the documents that they produce or receive from their customers and suppliers. So Open ERP
supplies dashboards to help system users approve their acceptance of such documents.

So you will find two dashboards in the menu Knowledge → Reporting → Dashboard. One dashboard is for the
document management system manager and one dashboard is for tracking use by different users.

The first lets you track the change of documents by month, by customer and by type of resource. You could also
quickly assess the use that is made of the system by the various users.

Dashboard for the document management system manager

The second dashboard shows you how different employees use the system. You can see the number of files sent
by each user and who uses the document management system the least. That tells you something about your user
training and whether you need to do something about changing work methods.

Dashboard for the document management system analyzed by user

1.12  Version Management

There is usually a need to keep track of all the important documents that you have printed. For example, when
you send an invoice to a customer it is a good idea to store a copy of that invoice internally in paper or electronic
form. Then you can reprint it exactly in the same format as when you sent it, even if the company’s details have
changed in the meantime.

To do this, Open ERP can automatically store as attachments the different reports printed by users. By default,
only invoices are saved as attachments, and they are saved when they are printed. That is because they are
commonly legally required.

But you can configure the system so that it does not matter which type of report is printed - they can all be stored
automatically. To activate that functionality on another type of report, modify this in the menu Administration →
Low Level Objects → Actions → Reports. To be able to access this menu, the user should be added to the group
Useability / No One.

Modifying the definition of a report

Select the report that you want to change and complete the field Save As Attachment Prefix. Once you have done
that, each document print action will automatically be saved as an attachment to the document.