Document Management Features Offered in BizPortals 365 – a SharePoint based Intranet

Do you ever wonder how many paper-based documents are created in your organization every day? Without a digital document management system, you will have a mountain of files and run out of office space to store these documents. A research conducted by Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) has estimated that there are over 4 trillion documents in the U.S. alone and the numbers are growing at a rate of 22% per year.

Before proceeding with features, let us understand these two key terms.

• Document Management is how an organization captures, stores, organizes, and tracks their documents in either electronic or paper format.
• A Document Management System is an automated system or process for capturing content and documents; manage centralized repositories, output systems, and information access systems. Besides this, they provide for tracking and controlling of the documents.

Why Document Management is Essential for Every Organization?

A document management system on SharePoint provides an automated way of capturing, organizing, tagging, digitizing, storing, accessing, approving, and completing the documents involved in your business. Considering security, a cloud-based document management system enables a secure, central online repository of documents, where the files can be easily searched, retrieved, and shared in a few clicks. These features of a SharePoint DMS (Document Management System) translate to better productivity, efficiency, and reduced costs.

In addition to productivity and efficiency factors, a document management software, is meant to restructure the entire process so that there are no loopholes, no lost or missing documents, no out-of-reach documents, and no unsecured documents. With the integration of the user permission system, authorized personnel can access the information in the event the “owner” of the document is unavailable. A document management system on SharePoint also eliminates the need to send documents back and forth via email for review and approval, which reduces email clutter and confusion. Moreover, with an electronic document management system, you can contribute in moderating risks, and collaboration activities.

Key Features of Document Management System

The market is overloaded with various document management capabilities and each one’s feature-set may differ slightly which makes it difficult for businesses to choose one that is a perfect fit. Most businesses are shifting towards solutions that have a proven track record, like a DMS based on Microsoft SharePoint, as it is a highly secure, user-friendly, hassle-free system and fulfils customized business needs.

The Document Management System on SharePoint simply ensures that the job of employees gets easier resulting in higher productivity, while saving time and money for the company. It is a helpful tool that manages and organizes documents throughout their content lifecycle, from creation to archival. If this content is not managed properly, it can be very difficult to track the work progress and happenings in the organization. The document management system works to achieve specific business goals.

5 Reasons Why SharePoint Document Management System is the Best Platform?

1. Create, Organize and Store Documents easily and quickly

Creating documents in BizPortals 365 is quick and easy. It offers various ways for users to upload and organize documents:

• Users can drag and drop documents and folders from their local storage into specific document libraries on the portal.
• Users can drop documents into a ‘drop box’ on the home page, which is configured to a document library. This is a convenient way to populate a frequently used library.
• Users can synchronize their favorite document libraries to their computer to access documents with a familiar windows interface.
• They can add and edit documents without logging into the portal using Microsoft 365 and Teams for document management version control.
• Users can organize documents in folders, or by tagging them with categories, keywords and other custom created properties using the document organization system

2. Security and Permissions

BizPortals 365 is built on SharePoint and so along with the enterprise-grade security provided by Microsoft, it is equipped with a security hierarchy where site collections, sub sites, document libraries and individual items inherit their permissions from the parent site. Also, being an intranet, which only internal staff can access, it is less exposed to external threats.

Department and team site permissions are controlled through Site Owners who define access to that site and what kind of access individuals have. There are four groups through which permissions are granted:

• Owners – have administrative permissions for the site.
• Granters – have read and write permissions and they can also create lists.
• Members – have read and written permissions. The user can add, edit and change documents; they can also add and delete items from a list, but cannot create new lists.
• Visitors – have read-only permissions for the site. This granular permissions structure ensures that security is maintained at various levels

3. Share documents with internal or external users

BizPortals 365 makes sharing documents easy. Documents are shared via email with either edit or view permissions, and the user who receives the document can only access it through the link in the email. Documents are usually shared with users who do not have access to the document library. For example, a Marketing manager may need an employee from the Development department to review a white paper for technical accuracy. Since the developer doesn’t have access to the Marketing department site, the document can be shared with the necessary permissions.

4. Simplified and automated document approval process

Most organizations require a formal approval process to be followed, before work can begin or is considered complete; and to standardize the procedure, a specific workflow is set in place. This helps to save time and takes the guesswork out of the process. Some companies still use the manual system, which is time consuming, error prone, and does not provide transparency or maintain a log of activities which can be used to back track in case of mistakes. An automated system is the way to go. This system is efficient, error-free, maintains a log of activities, and standardizes the processes.

For a long time, only large corporations who had the financial means could afford experts and developers for custom programming necessary to create customized, automated workflows. But that has changed as innovative solutions are run in the cloud and have user friendly interfaces where workflows can be created with a few quick clicks.  In BizPortals 365, approval workflows can be set at the level of a document library.

• The order of the workflow can be set to be serial; where the document routes to each approver one at a time; or parallel, where all approvers can begin their approval simultaneously.
• Approvals can be set to be initiated automatically or manually. The automatic process begins as soon as a document is created or dropped into the library and the manual process begins when a user explicitly selects a document and sends it for approval.
• Quick and timely completion of approvals can be ensured by creating timelines for people to complete their task. Approvers are sent automatic reminders when the deadlines are approaching.

5. Easy collaboration, with access to documents from anywhere at anytime

With the introduction of remote employees and teams spread across cities, countries and continents; it has become imperative to use a shared online workspace where members of a team can work together on a project plan, website content, proposal, etc. BizPortals 365 provides the capability for multiple people to work on the same document simultaneously, which eliminates the need for users to wait for a document to become available. Users can collaborate on a master document and author it, track its changes, make revisions, and save versions.

Learn how Enterprise Content Management helps your business grow?

Why BizPortals 365 is the best choice for Document Management System?

Now that you know what a document management system is, what its essential features are, and what makes it an irreplaceable tool, you might wonder what the best solution is for your business. Over the past ten years we have helped our customers go paperless with BizPortals 365, a Microsoft 365 powered intranet and document management solution. They are saving money (on paper and storage space) and time (on storing, managing, and searching) and are incredibly pleased with the scalability, flexibility, and mobility BizPortals 365 offers them.

With BizPortals 365 we offer amazing document management system features and benefits as part of our business intranet. This gives us the advantage of integrating easily with numerous other business systems used by manufacturing, financial, retail, healthcare, legal, etc., industries, and SharePoint’s excellent document management features ensure the continuity of smooth business operations while improving the productivity and performance of the organization.

Although BizPortals 365 is an intranet and does much more than just document management, it is equipped with all the essential features of a document management system that a business would need and want. In fact, it has an advantage over free-standing products because it is based on Microsoft SharePoint. Let us see how:

1. SharePoint Architecture

BizPortals 365 is based on the SharePoint architecture, which gives it the advantage of functioning effortlessly with any system or database. SharePoint platform provides a high-quality and consistent operation which distinguishes it from other open-source architectures

2. Seamless Integration

BizPortals 365 can integrate with the most popular third-party services including Microsoft Office 365, Google Docs, email clients, etc. It’s cross-platform nature, modular architecture, and scalable components make it possible to integrate BizPortals 365 with any existing infrastructure. Many businesses that require customized functionality report it being much easier and faster to develop them on SharePoint compared to developing them from scratch.

3. Highly Customizable

The scalable backbone of BizPortals 365 also makes it possible to enhance the existing document management capabilities. For example, the user interface can be adapted to user-specific needs and widgets can be programmed to offer extended capabilities like displaying all documents in the approval process or all forms requiring approval for amounts more than $5,000 on the home page for the approvers. With BizPortals 365, users can add custom properties/metadata for documents which can additionally be used in searches and filters. This way a wide variety of options are designed to meet the most extraordinary needs of a business with BizPortals 365.

4. Reliable Data Protection

Microsoft Office 365 allows for authentication and authorization access levels guaranteeing the security of sensitive data. BizPortals 365 enhances the access levels with its implementation of role-based access to sensitive data including documents, forms, and list data. Secure integration with external systems provides security guarantees for information including documents and transactional data flow between BizPortals 365 and Line of Business applications.

If you would like to see what the Document Management System on BizPortals 365 looks like, schedule a demo with our experts today.