Electronic document workflow. 1st part
Now we’ve started a new system of electronic document workflow. Some time was taken to plan, realize, taste as well as other pleasant and not so-pleasant things inaccessible to eyes of usual user. However it’s not important. The main thing is that at last we have approached the moment which always causes some strange feelings (especially for a developer) – pleasures, anxieties and satisfactions. The moment when the system is starting to be tested by user.
However it would be desirable to devote this first post to some other moment. Eventually we will still repeatedly speak about the system as well as about its functions, possibilities, etc. Today we will tell some words about electronic document workflow.
Electronic document workflow figuratively speaking is a set of flows of documents in electronic “cover”. Differently, the documents are digitized, visible on monitor screens, it is possible to make any operations with them accessible in PC mode. Certainly, the definition is figurative enough but it allows to understand an essence.
Why to make document workflow be electronic and digital? Obviously why to make many other things be digital. For convenience (try place thousands of folders with documents in one room). For compactness (would you like to place thousands of the folders in the computer? Not a problem!). For cheapness (compare the cost of thousands of folders including the cost of paper as well as files with these folders in the computer!). And they are the only first things that come to my mind. Actually, there are much more possibilities to use electronic document workflow. Eventually the document workflow is not a simple system of the big number of documents. It’s a difficult system of streams, management of these streams, set of attributes accompanying each document, as well as many other things.
It’s possible to organize such management offline. However the document workflow worked in such a way in a pre-computerized epoch. Inconveniently, inefficiently, expensively. Here are three words with which help it’s possible to describe paper document workflow. To move the next document from one office to another. To get big bookcases for keeping of documents. Constantly to control infinite pieces of paper which were lost somewhere. Obviously, it is inconvenient… It was inconvenient until electronic document workflow has come.