eRoom by Documentum

eRoom has the advantage of being easy to use. It allows permissions to be set by document, by folder, and by “room” within which collections of documents can be stored. Permissions management is simple. It allows the creation of task lists, calendars, and polls, but these functions are less than optimal in their performance. eRoom also suffers from limited support.

Windchill by Parametric Technologies Corporation

Windchill is designed by PTC, the creator of Pro-Engineer drafting software, as a drawing repository. It includes a thumbnail view of each drawing or model. Windchill is superior to eRoom in the size of drawings and documents it can store. However, its search tools are poor, bringing up too many items for even tight search criteria. Data security for early editions of Windchill can be set by product or library. Tighter permissions, though, require security objects to be set up in Windchill, and these become an administrative nightmare to maintain. Windchill can be used to manage documents, such as send documents on approval workflows. Its task management is simple and direct from an administrative “tab”. Windchill has workflows for documents that require review by many stakeholders and those that are released after a brief review. Windchill is rare among data management tools in allowing workflows to be customized. Windchill can also handle large data models that run up to terabytes.

Microsoft Word 2007 Workflows

Microsoft Windows 2007 includes workflows in its latest release. These allow routers to be created with approval workflows for documents. It has the ease of convenience within the Microsoft Word tool. Unfortunately, it requires a Sharepoint database behind it and properly linked into Microsoft to run. The quality of the search tool depends on the Sharepoint database. Document security, if required, is limited to poor. Microsoft Word is not designed to hold drawings or even other Microsoft document types. Microsoft Word workflows benefit from Microsoft’s extensive support network and user forums.

Docushare

Docushare is a document repository software developed by Xerox. Its search functions are somewhat better than eRoom. Its upload speeds are slower than eRoom. It lacks workflows for review or posting and release. Docushare, however, excels in holding a large number of documents and large files. The controls to prevent more than one person from editing a document at the same time must be set carefully.