KnowledgeCenter

KC 1View is the product that allows users to access all the power of Kcenter Document Management and Kcenter Workflow directly from within Microsoft Outlook.

Version 1.1 of KC 1View, released today, introduces new features that make it even more powerful and even easier to use. The highlights of the new release are described below.

The Silent Save option allows a user to completely file an e-mail with just two actions: drag and drop to a specific folder in the DMS and a click to confirm that the right folder has been selected. When combined with the Inheritance feature that automatically populates the index data on a DMS item by virtue of the folder it has been filed in, users can completely index an e-mail or attachment with the minimum possible effort.

The File Only Once option provides the means to ensure that e-mails are not filed multiple times in the DMS. With this option turned on, if a user attempts to file an e-mail that is already in the DMS, a message pops-up to inform the user of that fact. The message can be configured to be either a warning - which the user can override - or a message that tells the user that the e-mail simply may not be filed again. The really clever bit is that this feature operates across users. So, if more than one person in the organisation has been a recipient of a particular e-mail and one of the recipients files it in the DMS, then the message will pop-up if any of the recipients attempt to file it again, stating clearly which user has filed the document.

The Go To E-mail feature is the perfect partner of File Only Once. Using this feature, a user can instantly locate where in the DMS a particular e-mail has been filed, even if they were not the person who filed it. If that e-mail needs to be referenced by more than one set of business data, the user can go directly to the properties of that item in the DMS and use standard Kcenter DMS functionality to create an "Alias", allowing a whole new set of indexing data to be applied to the same e-mail, without needing to store an extra copy of it.

The Initiate Workflow feature allows a user to start a workflow directly from an e-mail in Outlook. There are two ways of doing this. The user can select the item in the Outlook Inbox (or any other folder) and click the Initiate Workflow button on the toolbar. Alternatively the user can drag and drop the e-mail directly to a particular Kcenter workflow name shown in the Outlook folder tree. In both cases, the effect is to create a new workflow instance with the e-mail automatically attached to it.

In addition to these major new capabilities, there have been many other smaller improvements, including:

• A new synchronisation feature which updates the flags that show whether or not each e-mail has been filed in the DMS. This will now flag an e-mail as being filed even if it has been filed by another recipient.
• The major functions of KC 1View are accessible through a menu in Outlook as well as through toolbar buttons.
• The KC 1View toolbars are now temporary. Users can choose to hide them and operate KC 1View features in Outlook entirely through drag and drop and the new menu. This saves screen "real estate" within Outlook.
• A new Enforce Categorisation option allows an enterprise to ensure that all items added to the DMS via KC 1View are Categorised - where previously each user could make this decision separately.
• When multiple e-mails are added to the DMS in a single operation, they can all be filed with a single selection of the filing location.

The overall effect is to make KC 1View an even more effective business efficiency tool as Tim Rawson, Operations Director of KnowledgeCenter, explains:

"Our customers loved KC 1View right from the outset. Through the user group, they have come forward with some great suggestions for how to improve it and we have included many of those suggestions in this new release. So we know that these are features that will make a real difference to the way the product is used in real life solutions".