Uploading and Linking Documents
Whenever a deliverable has been elaborated, it must be documented and sent on to all receivers (clients) that need it for their own work.
Communigram makes it easy to manage documents. Through an integrated document server, various versions of your documents can be uploaded, so that all participants of a deliverable automatically have access to the latest documentation. When the deliverable is finished (and the documents have thus reached their final version), Communigram sends the finished deliverable to all clients.
You may add as many documents as you like to each activity you are responsible for. In order to add a link to a document, simply click in the Finished Deliverables column (Attachment Icon) and a dialog box opens in which the currently available documents are listed:
- Clicking in the column ?Finished Deliverables? opens the list of documents (next illustration)
- ?Finished Documents? window showing all currently available finished documents and the button to add a new document to the document server
Link to Document Server
If you want to use the integrated Document Server to give other users access to the documents you have produced, simply click on the first button "Link to Document Server" (see above). This will bring you to the window shown below.
- The Document Server Window: From here, you can add new documents to the server
What you see in this window are the documents (organized in folders) that are already on the Communigram document management server. This server manages the versions of the documents if you or somebody else changes a document so that all users always get the latest version of each document. If a document already exists on the server, you can also simply create a new link to it by selecting it and clicking on "Relate". The corresponding link is automatically generated and the thus attached document appears in the document list.
To add a new document to the server, click on the first button "Add new document to the server" to select the document on your local hard drive or network and upload it to the document management server. You will be asked to give the document a name as it will appear for other users (the name as stored on your local hard drive or network is suggested by default).
- After selecting the document you would like to upload, the server suggests a name for this document (it is recommended to use names that are easily understandable to all possible users)
If you want to make changes to a document, simply click on ?Check Out?. This loads the document from the document server and opens it in the appropriate application (e.g. if the document has the ending ?.doc?, it will be opened in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice, depending on your computer?s default settings). To avoid anybody else making modifications to the same document while you are working on it, the system automatically blocks all other users from checking out the same document until you check your version back in. You can now simply make any changes within the application. After you have finished working on your document, save it and close the application. Then, in Communigram, click on the "Check In" button to upload your new version to the server. In doing so, your new version is added to the server into the same "slot" as the former document, so that any references to the document are still valid. From now on, all users will access the new document by default.
Note: if you make a mistake and accidentally check out a document that you did not want to, you can click on "Uncheck Out" to remove the block on checkout. This means that other users can now check out the document to make modifications.
Link to Local Document
If instead of using the integrated document server, you wish to link directly to a document, you can do so with the button ?Link to Local Document?. This can be useful if you wish to link to a document that is on a ?network drive?, i.e. a network location that is available to all people in the company via a specific drive letter such as ?S:\? or ?Z:\?.
Note: Avoid creating links to local locations such as "C:\" or "D:\", because other users will not be able to access the document you are linking to.
If you link to a document on a network drive, this means of course that only people that have access to that network location will be able to open the document. Also, if anybody changes the document by accessing it directly on the network drive, it will of course be changed for all users of Communigram.