One of the things I'm trying to push through is allowing members of the firm the ability to access firm data anytime, anywhere from just about any computer.
Well, today I got a step further in that quest. It's not fully deployed yet, but I have set up and tested WORLDOX/Web. Which is the web serviced component to our Document Management System. Pretty cool stuff too!
So now attorneys can check out documents, work on them and check them back in, from anywhere on the web, as long as they have access to the proper application (Word, Excel, WordPerfect, etc.) that the document was originally saved in. Generates the proper document numbers for new documents and is pretty easy to use.
One proviso that I would add, if you do purchase the software from World Software, follow the instructions as best as you can and when the installation doesn't work (it won't work because the documentation isn't all that great), call tech support.
BTW, if you are wondering how I could just have all of our documents hanging out on our web for everyone to grab, they aren't. There's security built into the WORLDOX/Web application and I have the web site itself protected by SSL encryption.
Not as good as VPN security, no, but I'm enforcing strong password protection and perhaps one day we will budget for some sort of smart card authentication system.
If anyone knows anything about that, I'd be glad to hear it.