What are Document Management Systems?

A document management system (DMS) manages, creates, tracks, and stores images of physical documents and electronic documents such as word processing files, and PDFs. It provides automatic organization and tracking for files that are made or edited many times a day, as well as version control to allow users to go back to previous versions of documents to check for errors. Permissions can be restricted based on department so no one is opening the files they shouldn’t. Backups and data protection are also critical components of document management systems. Any business that functions will have some amount of its work online. A document management system is the easiest way to store and manage data for any business in any industry.

For businesses that need a document management system, there are many options to choose from. The amount of choices can be overwhelming, and the variety of DMS tools on the market aren’t necessarily all geared for the same kind of work. Some are made with specific industries in mind, and others are made for users with a higher level of computer use understanding. There are entry level programs and more involved platforms for larger scale operations.

Compare document management systems by feature

Many document management systems platforms provide very similar functionality. This comparison distinguishes between some of the major features: cloud backup, major integrations, and real-time sharing.

	Cloud Data Backup	Integrations	Real-time Sharing
	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Yes	No	Yes
	Yes	Yes	No
	Yes	No	Yes
	Yes	Yes	No
	Yes	Yes	Yes
	No	Yes	No
	No	Yes	No

 

The best document management systems and software

Here is a list of 10 document management systems solutions and what they offer for businesses of all kinds.

OnlyOffice

Ascensio System brings OnlyOffice, an online cloud storage document management system which is incredibly cheap and geared for smaller businesses. It has a strong set of core features and exists as an excellent entry point for utilizing document management systems in a regular business environment.

The main draw it offers is the shared online space where documents can be uploaded and simultaneously edited by multiple users. This way, files can be seen and shared for the entire company or for teams within a company, as the file system also allows multiple folders with different names and permissions to be made in the shared cloud server.

OnlyOffice can cost as low as $1 per user for larger businesses and starts at a low monthly subscription service that comes with 40 gigabytes of online storage. It can also connect with DropBox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive business accounts for increased integration with pre-existing company software.

Also Read: SharePoint vs. OneDrive for Business

OnlyOffice is excellent for businesses that don’t have experience with how document management systems tools work and need a stepping stone to learn. It’s not as feature rich as other solutions, but it’s priced for entry-level users and smaller businesses. It allows administrators to bring the entire company together and give them all a level field to work and collaborate from.

SharePoint Online

Microsoft’s SharePoint Online comes directly from the same software suite as other Microsoft Office products, and integrates them easily. It even comes with Microsoft Office 365 and functions as the default sharing and collaboration tool provided by Microsoft itself.

SharePoint is geared as a major business infrastructural document management system, something that comes with a matching price point, and requires assisted installation to fully integrate an environment by Microsoft software engineers. Once that’s completed, it will open up online, shareable versions of essential Office software like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

SharePoint synchronizes files for all users, which allows for real-time updates across wide networks and multiple users. Documents can be shared or restricted to specific people, and all changes and edits are logged with individual versions that can be accessed and recovered as necessary.

It also has enhanced safety features compared to other solutions. In addition to basic data loss prevention and document retention, documents can be given labels that give them restricted access. These documents may include sensitive information like credit card numbers, and will be locked from sharing except by privileged parties who are given administrative access within the system by supervisors. It’s an excellent service for legal or healthcare fields and even comes with pre-made HIPAA compliant securities to keep patient confidentiality safe online.

DocuWare

DocuWare has been around since Windows 3.0 — right when document management and interconnected networks became part of business environments. This is a long lasting enterprise system made for larger businesses and carries a larger price tag than some other options on this list.

With decades of experience to build on, DocuWare Cloud offers advanced features that increase effective collaborations between teams in shared files and documents. Its main draws are how it handles document importation and forms.

Importing documents into DocuWare gives users several options for increased efficiency, such as scheduled uploads from select directories across multiple user workstations. This allows documents to be uploaded automatically to the cloud on a set timeline. Documents can also be directly uploaded and placed within the cloud environment by admins. Optical Character Recognition is also a built-in feature with highly customizable parameters so each document uploaded will be automatically scanned and checked for business-related keyphrases and hard to spot errors.

Forms can be designed and filled out based on content sent through documents into the cloud. The forms can be worked with and built in the cloud system without any additional software, and the editing process can be controlled so only select members can edit and work with the forms before they are put into use.

Hightail

Hightail specializes in sharing and editing images and video files, and is much more of a creatively geared sharing space for editors and content creators who work with large files that need to be uploaded and shared repeatedly. It’s cheap enough to work for solo artists who work by commission or smaller businesses that do video editing for high end customers.

It starts with a free plan that has limited support and sharing space. The Lite plan has 2 gigabytes of storage and a maximum file size of 100 megabytes, which works for smaller video files and moderate quality images. The Pro plan is still geared towards single individuals as a business but opens up to 25Gb files and unlimited storage. It also adds more security and support. More expensive plans are open for established teams and small business sized operations.

Hightail is centered around image and video sharing and storage, primarily the MOV video type, JPG and PNG images, MP3 for audio and DOCX or PDF for basic text. It also has a customer-access feature that allows end users and customers to collaborate with threaded comments and suggestions, so that the work can continue without either side having to download or re-upload the content. It also has an Uplink feature, where customers can upload their files with a special one-use hyperlink that sends their content directly to the cloud for receipt.

Rubex

Rubex is a highly mobile document management systems software with a focus on data sharing and security, and less of an emphasis on live editing and collaboration. Documents cannot be edited in the system itself, but every new upload and change is tracked and monitored carefully, detailing where the new forms came from and what changed between them.

Rubex primarily focuses on the storage and security aspect of a document management systems. The most basic package is priced by user with up to 25 GB of storage, and the plans scale up from there. It integrates with Microsoft Office products. Higher tiers of payment plans come with more features that are made to assist with enterprise-scale smaller businesses that can make use of the higher level features regularly.

The main feature the storage tool boasts is advanced search. Users can search with a wide array of parameters to find documents in a highly populated environment. It also uses OCR capture and various automated processes to store and describe documents as soon as they are uploaded.

User experience is prioritized to make searching and finding documents as easy as possible for all end users. It scans all documents for keywords so they can be found and picked through, not unlike a digital filing cabinet, and then downloaded at will.

eFileCabinet

eFileCabinet Online is, as described, like a filing cabinet that can be accessed online. It’s a quick and efficient storage solution for all kinds of documents. Its main focus is on searchability with OCR implementation and file compatibility with Microsoft Office and all forms of text based documents.

While it is fairly pricey, it does have a 30 day money back policy, so a company can try it before committing to it fully. If they do stick with eFileCabinet the business will find a decent suite of features newly built to support strictly online file processing and storage.

One thing it can’t do is edit files on its server. It makes up for that by having in-depth tracking and version control of the files that are downloaded and then uploaded with changes in place. Higher tiers of service will track each change and scan files using OCR integration for keywords and phrases to make later sorting even easier.

File sharing comes with built-in protections. Users can add password protection so that files can only be shared with specific users or even add expiration times to files that will automatically be removed if not accessed in time, for sensitive information that shouldn’t stay online for long.

Ademero Content Central

Ademero has a strong following for people who regularly use business document management systems tools. This is because it is highly customizable, and offers as many features as its competitors with even better implementation. It’s a solid choice for a business that is already used to document management systems but wants more in the way of direct control over the system at hand, which makes it an administrator’s choice in document management systems.

Part of Ademero’s appeal is its integration with other business software such as QuickBooks and Workday. Its integration is so good that it has a developed feature called Zonal Recognition, where documents uploaded will be scanned, compared to other documents, and any patterns found will become part of an automated template that Ademero will recognize as a specific kind of form. It can detect forms without needing directly programmed instruction on what those forms are.

But direct programmed instructions are also part of its powerful suite of customization. Admins can program search and retention functions directly into the system so that it will automatically scan and receive data from documents. It can even do the reverse and output data received from documents into structured forms that can then be sent out to other users.

It takes some extra education to learn all of Ademero’s more complicated tools, but using them can put a business far ahead of its competition in terms of data retrieval.

Adobe Document Cloud

Part of the ever popular Adobe software suite, Adobe Cloud offers all the support and integration with its basic PDF format for teams on desktop and mobile. As it is focused on Adobe, it lacks compatibility with most file types and strictly focuses on PDF files. It’s more of a sharing and tracking application that can come standard with the rest of Adobe’s products.

The main benefit of Adobe Document Cloud is if you’re already signed up for Adobe’s other services which includes its other applications and programs, you can add this to it easily on your existing account. Its main features are sharing and Adobe Sign, which allows PDF forms to be filled out with signatures collected either as digital signatures or as image files from writing pads.

It utilizes OCR to scan documents and provide enhanced search ability within its own database. While it is an Adobe-first product, it can still export documents in Microsoft Office compatible formats as well. It can also store those files, but they must be converted into PDFs to be edited, which can be limiting.

If your business works primarily with PDFs or uses mostly Adobe related programs, you may as well add this to the working suite.

Fluix

Fluix is a document management system made specifically for the Apple computer systems, and is geared for use with the iPad and its touch screen functionality. This means that it has a direct focus on working with Apple document types that other programs struggle to manage. It’s also highly mobile, allowing for data sharing to be managed from anywhere an iPad can connect.

While it is made for the iPad, it still integrates the more common PC file types and integrates other common sharing networks such as Google Drive and Dropbox. Files can be restricted and users can have certain features restricted as well to prevent unwanted editing or alteration of content on the system.

These feature controls extend to the iOS application behavior as well. Password and two-factor authentication can be managed to provide heightened levels of security that fit for the mobile factor that the application is made to handle.

The main goal of Fluix is to provide fluidity of data so that a business can trade all of their paper formats for digital and carry it easily in an iPad. It is limited by its preferred hardware in terms of what is frequently made using iPads, but its integration across other networks makes up for that.

PaperTracer

PaperTracer is a business-first document management solution with high amounts of customization but a relatively low field of use. It’s only suited for PCs on Microsoft’s IE 11 browsers with the Silverlight 5 plug-in, as it was programmed specifically for that browser-based environment.

Despite that, it offers a large degree of customization with granular control for users. Administrators will find a wide range of permission variability for all users, allowing data to be handled with precision and care across the board.

It also has customizable metadata fields, allowing users to differentiate documents at multiple levels for easier search and retrieval.

PaperTracer specializes in Contract Management for legal fields, and allows for contracts to be authored with special permissions by an administrator. This means only the legally distinct and correct users will be able to interact with the contracts they have authored and the client signatures will be verified and secured by the system.

With many workflow templates and excellent data handling, PaperTracer brings high end performance to smaller businesses that have a legal focus which many other platforms can’t quite deliver.

Choosing the right document management system

Document management software should not be ignored, even for the smallest business. More and more information is produced digitally and that information will become a hassle to handle by regular means. A good document management system that fits with your company is essential. Any office that handles data and digital information needs a complimentary document management system so the data is put in the most important position it can be. Don’t think that a simple email and desktop folder system is enough. Consider the security implications, the utility of file sharing, the benefits of automatic sorting, live editing and cloud hosting. If you understand data sharing, you should understand the importance of document management systems.

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Docker is the most popular software solution for containerization and container management for developing applications. It’s used by a wide range of businesses from major corporations to start-ups and mobile centric platforms. It’s popularity is due to its broad accessibility and wide array of features. It’s very easy to get in and use it, which makes it tempting for developers to rely on it for their containerization needs.

However, not all businesses are built the same, just like how their usage of containers isn’t always the exact same. Different applications have different needs and uses for containerization software, and Docker may not be the best choice. Here is a list of 10 alternative containers you can use besides Docker:

1. ZeroVM

ZeroVM is open-source, lightweight and based on Google’s Chromium Native Client. The VM stands for Virtual Machine, but unlike regular VMs it doesn’t simulate an entire environment, it only virtualizes the space needed to run the application, which allows for much faster deployment and isolation. It’s extremely quick and secure, offering security even for unverified code to run without fear of attack or interception. Skipping the whole OS to only run an application saves a lot of processing power across multiple environments as well.

2. Podman

Podman is also an open source alternative, but it has a unique advantage among Linux systems. It runs containers in the background without root privileges. It achieves this by integrating directly with the systemD instead of having to access it with privileges like Docker does. Since it can only be accessed through the local system this way, it provides a unique extra layer of security. It also has a larger integration toolset than Docker. Podman is even supportive of files made for Docker.

3. Vagrant

Vagrant specializes in running multiple conditioned virtual environments together using multiple virtual machines and operating systems. It can make a whole self-contained and secured virtual network of virtual machines. These virtual machines can then be imaged and shared across different platforms to other team members who can work on the development simultaneously without sharing a single environment or system. Docker locks isolation to the user level, but Vagrant opens it up and gives higher customization to accessibility.

4. OpenVZ

OpenVZ is very much like Docker in terms of their features, but OpenVZ comes with a different set of tools. An OpenVZ user can create multiple isolated Linux containers on a single server. These containers act as their own virtual servers with unique IP addresses, system libraries, applications and files. This allows for independent access and activation of developing applications across a wide network. OpenVZ uses its own Network File System to allow users to access its virtual servers freely, which can all be controlled by a systems administrator. It’s focus is more on hosting virtual servers, but can still handle application development on them like Docker can.

5. Rancher

For much larger scale developments across multiple teams, container clusters are often useful. Docker has its own variant, Docker Swarm, to deal with those. Rancher is built specifically for wide scale development across a large network of developers. It automates the management of clusters based on the settings and configurations of the administrator. Once all the clusters are organized by department, permissions and privileges can be given without further input, ensuring that everyone gets to their designated environment with minimal issue.

6. Buildah

Buildah is actually complementary to Podman more directly than it is with Docker. Both use some of the same functionality in their build processes. It’s an OCI image-builder that can be built from either a Dockerfile or more generic Containerfile to remain OCI compliant. What it excels at is the layer control over the images it generates, which allows for multiple changes to commit to a single layer at once. It can also create images with nothing at all, so the isolated environments can be customized starting from zero with only the applications that are necessary. Each user has a view of their own images only, which maximizes security within teams but complicates sharing work with others.

7. Containerd

Containerd is all about simplicity and ease of use. It was formerly part of Docker’s toolkit, but has since become an independent, standalone container runtime application. It is installed alongside Docker, but can also be installed without Docker. It’s great as a more entry-level tool since it lacks most of Docker’s larger network of features and focuses exclusively on acting as a low-level container. Its work can then be easily accessed through Docker and updated, making it both an alternative for lower level development and a step in the natural path of developing with Docker.

8. VirtualBox

VirtualBox allows users to run multiple virtual machines that also use different operating systems, a feature that Docker can’t do. It can also switch data from one OS to another via the use of cloud-based storage without compromising the user’s security since the virtual machines don’t use the same OS kernel as the host machine. It’s not lighter by comparison, but the ability to transfer files and applications between different virtual operating systems gives access to entire industries worth of products that Docker development ends up ignoring.

9. RunC

RunC is another former Docker component that has become its own standalone modular tool. It was released this way to improve container portability. It’s universal between operating systems and is capable of running its containers at runtime, allowing for faster development and testing in isolated environments. Its portability allows development to segue between hardware upgrades with ease. And it can work with or without Docker. If a project has to last between a major relocation effort, runC can keep things stable until hard wired access is regained.

10.LXC (Linux Containers)

LXC is, quite simply, the built in Linux Containers ability that is part of the open-source system. It’s not based on Linux, but uses Linux directly to run multiple isolated environments off of a single machine. Docker used to be better than it in every way, but LXC has been updated to the point where it can now contend in the way of disk performance, volume management and sharing IP address and system files on the host machine. It runs much lighter but still does all of the important functions, and hypervises the environments it creates.

Competition Breeds Innovation

It’s never healthy to stay attached to only one solution in app development. It is beneficial to branch out, test new potential solutions, and figure out if there is an easier solution to be found in a less popular platform.

The post Choosing the Right Containerization: 10 Alternatives to Docker appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

There are two major types of data in reporting: Qualitative and Quantitative. These two types represent the overall presentation and attainability of the data in relation to its connection with the report being made. Before starting a report, any business needs to know what kind of data it’s dealing with.

What is qualitative data?

Qualitative Data, generally, is data that cannot be represented easily in numbers. It can’t be counted. This data primarily references the qualities of something, its various individual parts and other qualifiers that can differentiate objects from one another. This means it measures appearance, usually by using relevant keywords such as color, pattern, depth, or hue. It can also describe sensations, emotions and worded ideas or written work in the form of documents. Gathering qualitative data can be done in the form of observational reporting or surveys where answers are transcribed to text and placed in a data set as abstracts.

What is quantitative data?

Quantitative Data is anything that can be counted or should be counted. It’s numbers and statistics in basic form and function that provides an immediate understanding of how much of something there is. This also accounts for properties that are specifically numbered, such as the number of assets that a single object has of a certain category. It could be the number of nails in a door, or the number of people who gave an opinion in a survey. Quantitative data exists normally as pure numbers, which makes it very easy to work with for comparisons and statistical pattern recognition.

How qualitative and quantitative data are used in reporting and research

Qualitative and quantitative data can be used together to break down complex data sets with many entries. The qualitative data can draw comparisons between different objects based on the qualitative properties each object has. Qualitative data is saying “there is a green door”, quantitative data is saying how many green doors there are. That information requires both sets of data to overlap and work together to find an answer.

When making reports, the content of the report should match the data being used. If a report requires compiling different ideas into a related dataset, qualitative data can be used to see how many different results there are, regardless of the number, when taken from a larger data set. The frequency or total of each individual idea can be left out if the purpose of the reporting is simply to log the number of unique new data points that were cataloged or need to be reviewed. Reports on abstract data, such as written work or primarily visual designs also fall under qualitative data.

If a report needs to show hard numbers, then it needs quantitative data. This is useful for showing amounts, frequency patterns, and percentages based on increases or decreases over time. Applications for quantitative data are easier in basic computing as they can be added and subtracted or run through any other set of calculations to achieve a different result. Qualitative data often has less numerical value tied to it. It’s not about numbers, but ideas that aren’t always equal or capable of being calculated or expressed mathematically.

The more abstract the data, the more difficult it can be to report on. Who decides whether an opinion is good or bad? Or whether it’s worth taking into consideration? Researchers who only look at statistics may struggle to comprehend how to order and organize qualitative data because it is not as easily defined. The company should create agreeable guidelines on what traits should be desirable from qualitative data. Qualitative data needs a reference for acceptability the same way quantitative data does. If a report or research is trying to achieve high numbers in quantitative data, the same standards need to apply for reports on qualitative data.

What companies do with qualitative data

Companies will use qualitative data to take in opinions on their progress as a business in order to gather a reliable sample size among their consumers, customers or clients. Future plans can be adjusted along the lines of those reports as they come in. The reviews can be cataloged based on overall positivity and scaled down with more negative reviews at another end of the data set.

Even though qualitative data doesn’t always have numerical value, it can still be ranked and sorted along the ideas that the data represents. Red products can be categorized differently from blue or green products in an inventory system. This type of sorting can also lead to more expansive cataloging efforts where products or services are arranged based on similar features and traits instead of by the number of units or cost or weight. These features are often more relevant to the consumers who want them and can take the form of keywords which can be implemented into search engine optimization.

The problem with qualitative data is that it’s unstructured, which means all listing and ordering has to be done by the researchers or reporters working with it. They need to determine what values and traits within the data are desirable for the goals of the company. Once those standards are set, the data can become more structured, at least semi-structured, where all the data has a contextual relation that will make sense on review.

AI’s impact on qualitative data

More businesses are relying on AI (artificial intelligence) to handle reporting. With quantitative data, this process is easy. Computers are built to handle numbers and complex processes and calculations to total them and work with them in various ways. Making numerical reports or statistical reports is easy for a computer. The data that gets generated can then be adopted by the users or made into more abstract, graphical representations of what the data was.

However, AI can’t do the same with qualitative data as easily. Numbers don’t have changing definitions or context-based meanings like words and language do. Unless an AI is programmed to handle all the qualifiers and traits that comes with qualitative data, its ability to sort or make sense of a dataset would be limited. At best it could automatically sort the items in the data set based on similar traits. AI programs are being taught to detect colors and color patterns. This is what allows algorithms to determine popular trends on social media sites. They use the numerical ratings of views or likes as well as the quality of the content itself which it will want to match up with past content to form a reliable pattern.

The issue with qualitative data is that it is not always reliably similar enough to match past records or datasets. For example, if a YouTube video does extremely well, it will inevitably be imitated. An AI program can determine which videos those are and automatically compile them, then replicate them based on the images associated with the video. The AI will create a video very similar to the ones it compiled, but it won’t have a point or the same feeling to it. The same thing is being experimented on with AIs writing scripts after being fed data from hundreds of hours of a TV show to find patterns. AIs are only good at work that is provably correct, but qualitative data can conform to taste and preference. It can bend by design and be interpreted differently between two pairs of eyes.

Because qualitative data is not absolute, AI can’t calculate with it as easily as with quantitative data. Steps are being taken to teach certain AIs how, though. By combining qualitative and quantitative data, an AI can detect patterns based on the number of occurrences and then calculate the likelihood of patterns based on which factors have the highest number of repeated values. An AI should be able to read hundreds of reviews, see how many use “positive” language, and then determine an overall ranking based on averages. This is how AI can work with qualitative data.

The difference determines the use case

If you count how many times the phrase “quantitative data” was said in this article, that itself would count as “quantitative data.” But, your opinion on the aspects of qualitative data would count as a piece of qualitative data. One can be counted and the other can be judged. These two types of data sets are invaluable for any business. All businesses deal with numbers, even in small amounts, and deal with ideas, whether they’re grand or simplistic. Knowing how to properly research and report on them is key.

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