Cloud content management/document room

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am trying to research setting up a document room for my company, but I have several questions and am not sure I’m understanding the concept nor which service to use. (It’s times like these that I wish we had an IT department, but sadly we do not.) Relative to others in my organization, I’m a fairly advanced computer user, but for purposes of this thread consider me an advanced beginner.

Essentially, I need to post or upload our documents (like contracts) to one central location where our staff can access them. I need to be able to set up groups with specific permissions/passwords that I would administer/manage.

We do have an ftp, but to be honest it’s huge pain in the ass because of the accessibility/permissions issue, our staffs’ limited technological ability, and the fact that our ftp adminstrator is a jerk who I don’t want to deal with. :wink:

I’ve heard these kind of sites called document rooms before, so that’s the verbage I use, but I don’t know if that’s the right word. In researching on the web, it looks like maybe a cloud content managment system (like box.net?) is what I should be looking for? I don’t really know.

Extras I’d love to have: the ability to annotate a file or a link and the ability for the end product to look like a website where my users could just click on a link or an icon to see their doc. I think many of my people would be confused by a Windows Explorer-looking tool.

We’d have <20 users and not use a ton of space (at least initially).

In addition, if we could use this tool next year during budget season that’d be awesome. If our staff could access their templates and make changes to them and have the system track the versions… that would be spectacular. We end up emailing versions back and forth and that sucks.

So, am I on the right path? Are their services you’d recommend? I’ve looked briefly at dropbox and box.net, but I don’t really know enough to recommend any one service over the other, or how to evaluate them at all, really.

Are their review sites you would recommend?

2

How about google docs along with google sites.

3

I read that Google docs isn’t good with document storage/group permissions. That could be out-dated info, but I understood there are work-arounds that achieve de facto document storage, but I don’t want to have to deal with that if I don’t have to.

4

I think you want Microsoft Sharepoint or something similar although your user base is small compared to its target market. That is what it does but it does require organization and management from an administrator. That is what the Megacorps use and it handles all of that stuff quite well and integrates into other apps like Outlook and Communicator. If you already use those, it is a big bonus.

5

Interestingly, last year when I was exploring options for solving our emailing-versions-of-budgets-back-and-forth dilemma, I’d started a thread asking about Sharepoint. At the time, the consensus seemed to be that Sharepoint was a) more appropriate on an enterprise level, b) requiring of an IT staff to really implement and manage it, and c) a pain in the ass. :slight_smile:

I don’t think it’s really appropriate for us since none of us share servers or anything like that. Each location is an island, so that’s why I was thinking something web based might be better?

Honestly, if it was up to me, we’d do this as an add-on to our already existing intranet, but that was quoted at three grand to implement. Although box.net’s pricing puts us at around $2340 per year every year.

6

First off, as someone who works with email systems, let me applaud you for looking to get away from the use of a such a system as a document repository. It’s just not made for that, so good on you!

You could consider Basecamp for a more complete collaboration solution. If it’s just document storage and versioning, how about Dropbox? There’s a 100 GB limit, not sure if that’s adequate.

7

I’ll look at Basecamp. I’ve looked briefly at Dropbox and it’s all good except they won’t be providing group permissions options until October? Although certainly we could work around that until that time. And, man, if 100 GB isn’t adequate, then we’ve grown way too big and we need to get an IT department, dammit! I’m just a secretary! :slight_smile:

8

Possibly digital repository software? The problem is that they can be clunky to set up and not the most intuitive to put docs into. But most can have separate groups. I’m thinking along the lines of DSpace, which I am aware of because several academic libraries I’ve worked in have used it, but there are other open source options out there.

I’m thinking this might not fit your “not a pain in the ass” requirement though. :slight_smile: