Document Management Features Needed for Engineering
It’s well known many engineers tend to work alone and for good reason. Historically, the highly dispersed nature of new product development has made it difficult for teams to collaborate, especially given the large volume and complexity of engineering documents pertinent to completing their tasks.
While many engineers struggle to collaborate effectively, there are tools with features that can help increase productivity and improve collaboration.
Here are some essential document management features included in ImageSite’s engineering workflow and document management software:
Since engineering drawings are created using CAD tools, engineering companies must use a document management system that can support the correct file types. It may seem as if document management systems are the same, however, only advanced engineering document management systems (DMS) support the top CAD software used by most engineers.
Top CAD software includes:
While many DMS providers offer a wide range of functionality, they are seldom purpose-built for the needs of engineers, more frequently designed for the needs of other divisions such as financial or legal departments.
Workflows
Managing workflows can often become difficult for engineers, given the complex nature of their work. Companies like ours’ understand the challenges engineers face when it comes to managing these workflows, which is why ImageSite is abundant with intuitive workflow management features.
ImageSite and Engine-Box (eQuorum’s Cloud version of ImageSite) allow users to automate their most important and complex engineering processes and define their work as a series of interrelated workflow steps with assigned deadlines and detailed instructions, associated with all the technical and legal files needed to complete the steps.
Not only does it allow users to automate work processes in small teams, but it can also be used across their organization. To make things even easier, users can delegate the assignment of responsibility to other users, ensuring each team member is aware of project objectives and where they fit into the engineering design process. For tasks requiring higher-level approvals, the workflow system provides approval settings including a majority voting capability for decisions requiring multiple approvals.
Version control ensures engineers are viewing and editing the most recent version of a given document by automatically recognizing the newest versions as they are entered into the system. This feature is particularly suitable for medium to large engineering teams, where documents are frequently passed between members of an engineering department or back and forth with vendors, contractors, and customers.
Since it’s essential to track older versions of your engineering documents, ImageSite’s version control also maintains historical metadata so users can view the complete history of a given document. Back revisions can be archived, deleted, or restricted for viewing to ensure the security of previous versions.
Often companies like to focus their security efforts towards external threats such as cyber-attacks or corporate espionage. What many of them don’t realize, is that most threats actually are internally by employees. This is where access control comes in.
Access control is a key component of ImageSite enabling administrators to restrict file access to only those who need it, giving managers complete control over confidential files and documents. Access is fully configurable and can be used to control functionality, including viewing, downloading, deleting, marking up, and revision capabilities of users, groups of users, and files.
Access can also be different for users across projects, letting users play different roles in different projects. A user could be a project manager with full rights for a given project while only having reviewer rights in another project.
Summary
ImageSite is an advanced engineering workflow and document management software, designed by engineers for engineers. Our solutions can help engineers overcome some of their most difficult challenges while improving security and efficiency in the process.
For a limited time, eQuorum is offering a free 60-day trial of Engine-Box, a Cloud engineering document and workflow management system. Go to www.eQuorum.com\contact-us and fill out the contact form for more information.
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