Anyone recommend or use other systems for general document management for documnets like SOPs, work instructions, training docs, etc related to business processes?
Currently we use SolidWorks PDM for a number of these, however we are moving more into Windchill and global only wants product data there. This leaves us with a gap for these other document types. We are looking at Sharepoint but need a basic workflow (WIP, Review, Release), basic versioning, and view/edit permissions based on workflow status. Some googling indicates that some of this maybe possible in SP with some Power Automate possibly but as with all things Microsoft, I do have concerns that they just drop functionality out of the blue.
There was a great program for this that did not cost much. Think that they got bought out. So the only thing I have for you is folder control. To make them read only for everyone but the few that have permission to change and update the files.
It would be nice to have a searchable web page that all the files could be accessed from so that it would be easy to search and access the information in the files with out the chance of finding an outdated copy.
My experience with SharePoint is that it’s a Pandora’s box. It seems to be easy enough to set up, but you will find after using it for a period of time it really needs someone to manage it that is very SharePoint knowledgeable.
This is going to sound odd, but have you looked at Subversion?
Our company won’t likely use something like that for document management. Whatever this ends up being, it most likely has to be web based. they are trying to get rid of most all servers/VMs where possible. It doesn’t have to be cloud hosted, but it can be internally.
Something to be aware of with SharePoint, is you get different options or behavior when you deal with files in Windows Explorer, Teams, and SharePoint. We are still figuring out what we are doing with our documents/spreadsheets/etc. We are keeping them in SharePoint. Controlling folder permission is not straightforward with SharePoint.
We have not tried the workflow options in SharePoint yet.
We have found that if you are selecting a file in the SharePoint file list, you can check it out and check it back it. When you check it in, you can add a comment. This lets us mark particular file versions to be able to find which one was used to create the released PDF.
There are a number of solutions depending on budget and the size of your team. The best DMS system that I have worked with in the past was a proprietary in-house system built based on Lotus Notes!
Currently, we use a DMS called Cognidox. It is a full DMS that can cover other areas such as QMS, and Learning/Training management. Its interface is browser-based, does version control and formal release of documents. It is aimed mostly at regulated industries, such as medical devices and pharma, but I don’t see why I cannot be used in other industries. I like it. It is simple to use, it integrates well with Word (i.e. fields within documents for version numbers, and document numbers can be automatically updated), and offers enough flexibility to adapt to your business processes. We currently use that for all our business documentation and DDM for our CAD data.
Sharepoint is the wild west… anything goes in there! In my experience it is very difficult to maintain.