Routing Rules
A document workflow occurs when the same type of documents are circulated to the same group of users in a business process for further action by them. For some time, CogniDox has supported a feature where automatic reviewers, notifiers and approvers can be specified for documents or categories of documents.
This is fine for simple workflows, but needs more to cater for sophisticated cases where documents require a flexible set of rules. For example, instead of creating a rule where all Purchase Order requests need to be approved by a named user (e.g. the Finance Director,) you can instead specify that it can be approved by any 2 users from a set of 5 names. You can adjust the rules depending on the type of request (review, approval, and notification); version status (draft, issue); type of document and security profile. By using configurable meta-data a company can extend the rules in many directions.
Another example is where CogniDox is used to share documents with external users (customers, suppliers, manufacturers, etc.) using the Extranet Publishing feature. A rule can be created where any changes to documents that are issued and published on the Extranet must have one of the Product Management group act as an approver. If the license enables a particular customer to download the document, then the Account Manager in Sales must be added to the notified users list.
If there are multiple rules set, then they are combined so users selected from multiple rules can apply to approval, notification and review events. For example, most sales quotes may require a set of approvers, but quotes that match some meta-data attribute may also require approval by the CEO.
One usability challenge was to provide flexible routing rules without making it a complex task for users to create and use rules. Using the rules is part of the normal document operations web page, so it’s a very integrated and natural operation.
Online Editing
Most documents uploaded to CogniDox are created using authoring tools such as Microsoft Office, LibreOffice or specific applications such as a CAD tool. In 8.6 we’ve added the ability to create XHTML files directly in CogniDox.
This is done by marking any document type as “online editable”. This provides a hyperlink which opens the file in an online editor when clicked. That provides users with a "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" editing area and enables them to create valid XHTML markup without the need for HTML knowledge.
The feature was developed in direct response to a CogniDox customer request: they wanted to be able to create and edit Knowledge Base articles for inclusion as frequently-asked questions on their help desk / support site. Because the content is highly technical, they needed to be able to review and approve articles before they were automatically published on the Extranet. They liked the review and approval process CogniDox provides, and wanted the same thing when creating content for their support site.
The other part of this solution is additional support for document tagging. This enables documents related by tag to be grouped together e.g. in a document search operation. A new Tag Cloud portlet displays tags sized according to frequency of occurrence, and each tag name becomes a link to search for all documents that share the tag.
About CogniDox
CogniDox is a web application that serves two purposes: it improves internal document management for product development teams with workflows and re-usable knowledge repositories; and it enables rapid deployment of Extranets such as Customer web portals with entitlement-based publishing and secure document downloads.
We provide highly-integrated support for system engineering workflows and the product lifecycle. Plug-ins are provided for CMS products, software SCM tools, EDA tools, CRM systems, CAD tools and Help Desk applications. Our "instant Extranet" solution enables companies to add a secure self-service customer portal onto their public web sites.
CogniDox delivers enterprise software features within the budget of start-ups and small companies; yet can scale to many thousands of users.
Formed in 2008 and based in Cambridge, UK, CogniDox has an impressive and growing list of customers in the High-tech sector – see examples at http://www.cognidox.com/customers
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CogniDox 8.6 release provides workflow routing rules and online editing
30 August 2012
CogniDox, the smart document management solution with integrated support for product lifecycles, has released version 8.6.0 to full production. The release,available for download by customers from the extranet site, provides a number of features, the most prominent of which are support for workflow “routing rules” and an integrated online rich text editor for XHTML files.