Flickr Photo: Peat BakkeSharing and lessons learned is what the NTEN Affinity Group Discuss list is all about.

This is exactly what Beau Elston, Riverfront, Inc. used the group for last week, asking about his project to evaluate and implement an organization-wide document management system. Some excellent resources emerged from this discussion, so I thought I'd share highlights here and invite you to join the conversation on the NTEN Discuss list. (If you haven't already, you'll have to create an NTEN Affinity Group Profile. We know, another log-in! We promise it's worth it.)

Peter Campbell, TechCafeteria, chimed up first to share his experience starting a Document Management System with KnowledgeTree:

There is a challenge for staff to get used to them -- it can seem, going in, like something that will limit and control their behavior.  What I saw, introducing it to two law firms, was that the resistance faded quickly once the system was in place, and users had such better tools to find and work with their documents. Key is having a good understanding of the document types you need, so that you don't have too many of them but you're differentiating properly; making solid choices about directory structure (which, with KnowledgeTree, controls security) and metadata; and, as with any database, getting all of this right before you get too far into the use.

KnowledgeTree excites me because it's an open, LAMP system that I'll be able to easily integrate with custom development here, such as our case information system and a recruiting frontend that we're developing for the web site.  The closest competitor is Alfresco; my read was that, while Alfresco looks like a good product, KnowledgeTree is more committed to the open source community and ideals, has better documentation; active development and they're easy to reach.  We also considered Sharepoint, which we use here, but ruled it out for a number of reasons, mostly because we don't want to store our documents in a database.

Peter also shared an Idealware article on DMS systems and a post on why SharePoint scares him. 

Gavin Clabaugh, Digital Diner, added quite a few thoughts on the side of SharePoint:

And, to reiterate your point, Document Management is about documents; secondly it’s about humans.  Humans are trouble.  All of the problems with any sort of document management solution (or knowledge management solution) are human, not technological (or even eschatological). For the most part, getting people to use them is the problem; getting them to use them correctly is a problem, and getting value out of all the work you put into them is a problem. (I should note that discussions involving document types, metadata, and the dreaded t-word (taxonomy) are a bit like a drive through the 1st circle of hell in a convertible – Abandon all hope and wear a nice hat.  My advice is always smaller/fewer is better. There seems to be a unique human desire to drive to the absurd when it comes to cataloging. This is also known as the “Accuracy in Mapping” fallacy” – wherein, to be accurate a map of China must be the size of China – while it might be accurate, it’s not very useful as it won’t fit in your pocket.)

As with most things, I look for the easy solution – the path of least resistance with most payoff.  That brought me to SharePoint.  It gave me document management with minimal pain in the tuchas. Once I got further into it, I was surprised at just how much I got for next to nothing in costs.  Compared to the other options — FOSS included — it was cheap — especially given my options and existing expertise, equipment, and the like. That said, I think you’re selling SharePoint short (perhaps my I’m letting my SharePoint passion show).

What it has going for it is its “Swiss army knife” approach.  Unfortunately, most people find that very approach to be confusing, or daunting.  Truthfully, it is confusing.  Moreover, the available documentation is lousy — either it’s too “dummies” or to “C#”, with not much in-between.

Like that Swiss army knife, SharePoint does a little bit of everything and doesn’t fit nicely in your pocket — especially if you get the really big one with the fork and spoon.  And, it has some parts — like the leather punch — that seem, well.. to be honest, sort of useless.  But the rest is grand, simply grand; to me the document management in SharePoint is like the corkscrew; very handy, simple and easy to use, with a great payoff.

Gavin goes on to share other high points about SharePoint. You should jump over to the NTEN Discuss list to read the rest and add your experiences with Document Management Systems.