Document Control Blog

Workshare Professional 5.2 SR1 BETA

Matthew Brown — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:13:00 GMT

Over the past 6 months we have spoken to over 400 customers in order to have more direct input into each of our releases. Your input is heavily reflected in the upcoming service release of Workshare Professional 5.2 which has resulted in the following key areas of enhancements for Workshare Professional 5.2 SR1:

Significant performance enhancements to Email, MS Office, Interwoven & Citrix integrations
Smoother & faster installation
Simpler and easier to use

We are currently gearing up for the BETA program for this release so if you are interested in evaluating any of the above improvements to the product and would like to participate in this BETA program, please register your interest here.

Best regards,

Matthew

Merging or Combining Docs into PDF's

David Brennan — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:50:00 GMT

I was speaking with a customer the other day and it became clear a relatively unknown feature in Workshare Professional 5 would solve an immediate need.

This particular customer needed to “package up” all matter related documents into one PDF and send it over to a client before submitting it to the court. They actually already had a master PDF document and simply wanted to add a few more documents to it. No problem!

In Workshare Professional 5 when you are converting documents to PDF you have the option to append other documents to an existing PDF. And you are not limited to adding just documents; you can add any file format to the end of an existing PDF, such as an email or a web page.

In order to merge items into an existing PDF here are the steps to follow:

Open an existing Word document that you’d like to merge into an existing PDF
Choose File-Print, select "Workshare PDF Publisher" as the printer and click OK
In the Save Dialog box, you'll notice a box called "Concatenate". Check this box. Also, browse to an existing PDF file
Open that PDF file and scroll to the bottom
Notice that the text from your Word document is now appended to the end of that PDF. It does not replace any existing text in the PDF but adds to the end of it

Look for more advancement’s to this feature in future versions of Workshare Professional.

Today's Fragmented Contract Management

Matthew Brown — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:56:00 GMT

The number, size and complexity of contracts managed by enterprises has increased dramatically in recent years. At the same time, company executives have become more aware of the material risks associated with contractual obligations and rights and the need for better document control. Contract management software needs to focus on streamlining the communication, collaboration and contract assembly process to create accurate contracts with accurate terms and conditions as efficiently as possible.

Quite often contract management software does not meet the needs of today's organizations. With workgroups spread across the globe exchanging contracts and managing changes can slow the document review process to a crawl. Current practices for dealing with large purchase agreements, outsourcing arrangements, sales contracts, and lease and licensing contracts can create a litany of problems.

Are you losing opportunities due to contract management inefficiency?

Slow contract turnaround times are often due to manual processes
Paper based documents are hard to manage and hard to find in paper-based archiving
No central storage or consistency in contract templates slows you down
Lack of proper processes and controls affects the process

Are you at risk? Do you lack security?

Missed renewals and liabilities often occur due to out of date or inaccurate contracts
Inconsistent language and sub-optimal contract terms and standard templates is a risk
Accidental leaks of hidden or sensitive information occur in contracts

Are you ready for the cost of legal discovery?

Slow responses to discovery requests affects your bottom line
Lack of automated reporting of contract activity and history is an issue
No search capabilities to find relevant contracts is a problem

There are better ways to track, manage and secure business documents using document control software.

Common contract management software issues:

Slow user adoption
Process redesign inefficiencies
Software training costs

To manage contract lifecycles accurately and cost-effectively, a solution needs to include:

Event management of contract changes: Change control to alert on changes to key contract milestones, terms and conditions
Multi-party parallel review and authoring: Streamlines document review and approval processes and allows for easy contract authoring
Contract lifecycle auditing and reporting: Contract and email activity reporting to refine standard contract templates and to respond fast to legal discovery requests
Policy-enforced content security: Classification and policy-based content analysis and security removes hidden metadata and alerts to sensitive information in order to more easily control who can open, copy, print, or forward information at any stage of the contract lifecycle
Tight integration with Microsoft Office and Document Management Systems: Fast user adoption and reduces process redesign issues as users work with tools they are familiar with

Complete document lifecycle control is not easy, but with effective solutions you can manage contracts efficiently with fewer mistakes and security risks.

Collaborating with Customers on Extranets, SharePoint 2007, and Deal Rooms

David Brennan — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:02:00 GMT

Watch a new webcast on collaboration, security and the challenges organizations face today with deperimeterization.

Collaborating with Customers on Extranets, SharePoint 2007, and Deal Rooms
Learn about the latest technologies to support collaboration, security and the challenges organizations face today with deperimeterization

At this webinar you will learn:

How extranets and transactional orientated deal rooms are increasingly being used to automate information sharing between organizations.
Microsoft will introduce how SharePoint is impacting team collaboration and streamlining the authoring, editing and publication process.
Learn how business operations are becoming increasingly distributed and new applications are enhancing communication with clients.

> Watch here

Find Out What's Next in Document Comparison

David Brennan — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:25:00 GMT

The What's Next in Document Comparison webinar was so popular the first time we have decided to do the event again. If you compare documents, work with PDF's, worry about document corruption or deal with metadata in your documents you will not want to miss this event.

This event covers the latest advancements in document comparison technology.

Webinar: What's Next in Document Comparison?
Date: Thursday, March 13, 2008
Time: 8:30am (PDT)
> Register here

Top 10 Features of Workshare Professional

Zanecki — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:51:00 GMT

Here's your chance to see a quick overview on the latest features of Workshare Professional. Watch this webcast to see the latest in document comparison, PDF comparison, document review, and information security. Matthew Brown, product manager for Workshare Professional, review's the Top 10 Features.

Learn about:

Document Comparison: compare Word and PDFs
Document Review: eliminate multiple versions
Document Security: stop information leaks

> You can watch the webcast here

Webinar: What's Next in Document Comparison?

David Brennan — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:11:00 GMT

If you compare documents, work with PDF's, worry about document corruption or deal with metadata in your documents you will not want to miss this live event. Join us for 30 minutes to see the latest advancements in document comparison technology.

Webinar: What's Next in Document Comparison?
Date: Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
Time: 8:30am Pacific Standard Time (PST)
(11:30am EST, 4:30pm GMT, 5:30pm CET)

>> Register here to join us for this live event

WRITE A REVIEW Win a $400 Apple Store Gift Card Contest

Zanecki — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:54:00 GMT

Before December 15th, write a review about a Workshare product on a public review site (see links below), and we’ll send you a coupon for HALF OFF a copy of any Workshare product sold in our online store - AND enter you into a drawing to win an APPLE STORE GIFT CARD valued at $400.

TO PARTICIPATE:
Submit your review to one or more of the online review sites below, print a copy of your published review, and fax it back to us with your name, telephone number, and email address. After verification we’ll email you the coupon and notify you on Tuesday, December 18, 2007, if you are our prize winner.

FAX YOUR PRINTED REVIEWS TO: +1 (415) 358-9727 (attn: Workshare Reviews)

Here are the review sites listed by Workshare product (please add another reputable review site to this list if you know of others we don’t have listed):

Workshare Professional:

Workshare Protect:

Amazon.com
CNet's Download.com
CompUSA
Programmer’s Paradise
SoftPedia
Windows Marketplace
Workshare Community

Amazon.com
CNet's Download.com
Programmer’s Paradise
SoftPedia
Tucows.com
Windows Marketplace
Workshare Community

Please Note: Most of these sites require you to register with them to write a review. Please contact the review site for assistance if you have trouble.

Thanks for your participation!

Terms & Conditions:

1. Only one entry per product, per review site (if you have used more than one of our products you may review each of them once per site).

2. All entries must be faxed by midnight Pacific Time, 15 December 2007 to +1 (415) 358-9727, Attn: Workshare Reviews. We will not accept late entries and we are not able to make exceptions.

3. All faxes must include your full name, telephone number with area code, valid email address and a verifiable print-out of your review. We need to log onto the review site to verify it.

4. You will receive your Half-off store coupon by email within a few days of your faxed submission once we have verified your review. The coupons are limited to 1 license per shopper per unique review submission. Each coupon you receive will be good only for Workshare products (not third party) purchasable through the Workshare online store, and the coupon will automatically expire after one use.

5. All verifiable reviews will give you an entry into the Apple Store contest for a giftcard valued at $400 USD. Only the winner will be notified by email. The winner’s name (with no other personally identifiable information) will be posted to our website.

Reviewer Gives Professional 4.7 out of 5

David Brennan — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:30:00 GMT

In this week’s top news, Workshare Professional 5 received top rating in a bottoms up TechnoFeature review - 4.7 out of 5 stars!

“Workshare Professional 5 delivers an elegant and robust set of features that are increasingly critical in today’s law practice environments.” - Marc Lauritsen

Like many of us Marc Lauritsen has spent a lot of time working on documents. In his review he calls out the specific benefits users will see as they create, share and exchange documents.

I would like to thank Marc for taking the time to review and critique Workshare Professional. His feedback has been shared across the organization to help us improve our products in the future.

You can find this latest review of Workshare Professional here.

Is PDF a Secure Format?

Matthew Brown — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 21:36:00 GMT

Not all PDF documents are the same and not all PDF documents are secure. The PDF format is often perceived as a secure method of distributing and publishing documents but often it is inappropriate as authors of the document cannot edit the content and sensitive information can be exposed. Also, PDF documents are always a derivative of another format which has been converted. This means that often sensitive information from the previous format is carried through to the PDF without the author's knowledge. An example of this is PowerPoint speaker notes that are converted into PDF comments which can often reveal unwanted information. In the case of Joost, a PDF revealed speaker notes detailing confidential deal plans as PDF comments.

Secure PDF's should be created by enforcing organizational policy for when PDF documents should be created and at the right time i.e. when the document is final. A secure PDF should eliminate the risk of inadvertantly distributing confidential information by either alerting to sensitive content in the document or removing hidden information before PDF conversion.

Locking down access rights to PDF documents is also important to control distribution and access to confidential information. For example, if a PDF is marked for internal use only, it should remain within the organization or if the content shouldn't be copied or pasted then the PDF should have encrypted rights applied to avoid any reuse of the content.

One particular leak reminds us that unsecure PDFs are dangerous. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) placed a blacklined PDF on their website that clearly stated it contained confidential information. Unfortunately for the CAA it was relatively easy to read the content behind their attempt to hide the information:

In summary, the PDF format is a great format for publishing final versions of documents but it is important that they are created at the right time and securely.

Key requirements for creating secure PDF documents:

Create PDF documents from any application
Abilty to Combine documents, emails and web pages into PDFs
Policy-enforced PDF creation
Alert on privacy or confidential information
Remove sensitive hidden data before PDF conversion
PDF access control using 128-bit encryption
PDF document rights and risk classifications to control distribution

Introducing Professional 5

David Brennan — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 23:37:00 GMT

Top New Features of Workshare Professional 5.0

Document lifecycle management inside the 2007 Microsoft Office System
Workshare Professional 5 is the first document control product to be fully compatible with and take advantage of the infrastructure and Open XML file formats delivered by the 2007 Microsoft Office system infrastructure.

* Embeded Lifecycle Workflows
Embeded Lifecycle Workflows inside the 2007 Office Ribbon Bar and Task Pane ensure policy enforced and compliant document lifecycles.

* Improved Collaborative Workspace Capabilities
Review and comparison capabilities are fully embedded in 2007 Sharepoint Extranet and Collaborative Workspaces as well as Live Meeting for real-time collaboration.

* Content and Context Aware Policy Enforcement
Extend the power of Office 2007 Document Inspector and Vista Rights management by providing content and context aware policy enforcement and usage auditing of these capabilities.

The World's Most Secure PDF
With complete policy based and auditable risk discovery and remediation prior to PDF conversion Workshare Professional is the first and only solution to offer leak proof PDFs.

* Policy Enforced PDF
Policy-enforcement for secure PDF creation in motion over email, portals and removable devices, including enforcement of 128-bit encryption and signing and PDF restrictions, ensures the PDFs you share are secure.

* PDF From Any Application
With Workshare you benefit from secure PDF conversion from any application or Document Management System, including support for PDF files.

Complete Endpoint Information Leak Prevention
Receive complete protection from Privacy, IP and confidential information leaks when sharing documents over email, removable media, and portals.

Through seamless integration of Workshare Protect, Workshare Professional now delivers Information Leak Prevention (ILP) security. Fully configurable with extensible risk alerts, centralized security policy management, auditing and reporting provide complete endpoint protection.

In addition, Workshare Professional can take advantage of Workshare Ready partners such as Interwoven and Documentum for risk classification and Microsoft RMS, PGP, and others for rich risk mitigation.

Exclusive Document Control Functionality
New document sharing and control features based on customer feedback include centralized, fully auditable track changes and DeltaView redlines stored independently from the source file.

* Unmatched Accuracy
Complex table comparisons, and intricate numbering and formatting changes set the standard for document comparison with unmatched accuracy.

* One-to-Many Comparison
The new One-to-Many comparison shows multiple document comparisons across different versions inside an easy to navigate tabbed view.

* Standard DeltaView Output
Comparison options now include standard DeltaView output, DeltaViews in Secured PDFs and editable Track Change redline options.

* New DMS Features
Metadata links allow document management systems users to track matters across documents when sent for review from and to anywhere, all while maintaining a full audit trail of review and sharing activities.

>> Learn more

Workshare Professional:	Workshare Protect:
Amazon.com CNet's Download.com CompUSA Programmer’s Paradise SoftPedia Windows Marketplace Workshare Community	Amazon.com CNet's Download.com Programmer’s Paradise SoftPedia Tucows.com Windows Marketplace Workshare Community