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| WORLDOX 8 | Document Management |
| Once the province of larger
firms, sophisticated document management is available to small and midsize law offices
thanks to WORLDOX. Long a well-reviewed product, the latest iteration, WORLDOX 8,
continues World Software Corp.’s well-deserved reputation for innovative and
cost-efficient document management. WORLDOX 8 isn’t a revolutionary change from its predecessor. Much like WordPerfect 2000, it’s a refinement of an existing quality product. Unlike many of its larger competitors, however, WORLDOX 8 doesn’t require a dedicated server for an SQL database. This saves a great deal of complexity, time and money right away. In fact, WORLDOX 8 will run on small local area networks and a variety of platforms. WORLDOX does require a dedicated workstation to serve as an indexer in network installations. Using WORLDOX 8 is fairly straightforward. Before saving any documents, the program must be open and the user identified. For this reason, it’s advisable to put WORLDOX 8 in your startup group. You should also be certain to include the program on your network in order to guarantee that your identification is the same as your network login. By completing this process, the WORLDOX startup becomes nearly transparent. Once running, you can use the Save As command in your applications to call up the WORLDOX Save window. Here, documents are “profiled” with both traditionally required and user-customizable fields. WORLDOX also allows multiple profile groups, each with the ability to contain different fields. For example, “private” documents can be treated differently from those requiring client/matter references. Profiling occurs by default after the document is created, although it can be adapted to require the profile before document creation. WORLDOX 8 allows you to define parameters for archiving documents after a certain period of time. The program also supports PKZIP compression, which allows you to view compressed files. What’s more, WORLDOX 8’s built-in viewer supports more than 150 file formats. This enables users to view documents, even if they lack the applications in which they were originally created. Security and administration are also enhanced by the program. For example, senior management can set certain classifications of documents that will have restricted access. Such types of documents can simply be assigned the appropriate security classification when they are created. WORLDOX also mirrors information kept on the indexer on the users’ local drive. If the network server crashes, clients can still find the latest version of their documents. This also allows users to work from their laptops. In either case, the files are synchronized when clients reconnect to the network. WORLDOX enables users to search for documents via
easy-to-use profiles. It also conducts sophisticated word searches that are aided by the
excellent ISYS search engine. WORLDOX 8 boasts most of the features contained in its high-end competitors, including document checkout, Web access (optional at extra charge) and more. In a time when more and more case-management programs are trying to approximate high-end document-management systems for the small to midsize law office, it’s good to know that WORLDOX provides the real thing. WORLDOX 8 is affordable and has features that leave little, if anything, to be desired. If sophisticated document management is a need for your small or midsize firm, a better and more economical solution than WORLDOX 8 will be hard to find. |
World Software Corp. (800) 962-6360 www.worldox.com Windows 95/98/NT $350 per concurrent user, plus $60 maintenance agreement per desktop Reviewed by Jay Hollander. Mr. Hollander practices computer and Internet law, among other fields, with his own law firm in New York City, Hollander and Company LLC. He serves on the Editorial Board of the online intellectual property site, Gigalaw.com, where he is a frequent contributor and moderates a discussion group on computer law issues. |
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