
Document Control Software for Education
Educational institutions such as colleges, school districts and private institutions are searching for ways to operate more efficiently and reduce reliance on paper based information. Educational institutions have student and employee records, communication needs, research, accounting and other intellectual property that needs to be preserved and managed. These needs are met by feature rich but affordable document management, records management, and imaging solutions that scales to the volume of documents and needs of the users.
E-forms can automate the process of collecting student information and eliminating data entry. Everything from the initial student application form to something as simple as a travel or an expense report can be converted to electronic form, stored as an image in the document management software and have all the form fields automatically captured as metadata or tags.
Document management and records management software has been successfully deployed in a variety of education settings. In some cases just as a point solution to take care of the HR department but in other cases throughout an entire school district to provide a central repository of education materials. Read a case study on how FileHold document management software was implemented at an Education and Employment Centre. These are some of our current educational institutions using document management software:
How document management software helps education institutions
- Student admissions - Many institutions use e-forms to collect student application information. The software supports e-forms by saving them as PDFs in the software and automatically extracting the student information from the form and save it as metadata. Following capture of the form it can be put into an automated workflow for Review and Approval by the admissions team.
- Curriculum development – FileHold is a powerful tool for creating and managing information. The software provides a whole section of the application called 'My FileHold' that helps educators when creating curriculum material, to store and share information. The software has the ability to link parent and child documents which is a great tool in assembling research or education content. Version control means that only the most current example of a document is being used.
- Research and records management – FileHold is a repository for the long term storage and archiving of Intellectual Property. Many customers store all of their historical records in FileHold and uses our powerful search tools to find student data. Disposition policies can be set (only by those with permission) to delete document such as financial records when time frames permit.
- Human Resources – The software E-forms capability also supports employment applications, performance reviews and the many other forms that HR departments use. We also provide a paperless way to store and retrieve HR content that is secure but at the same time can be accessed from anywhere HR workers have access to the web. The Ontario Truck Driver Training School uses FileHold software to store student achievement records and certifications so they can be shared between facilities.
- Board meetings documentation – The document management software may be able to help an advisory board 'Go paperless'. Meeting minutes can be created, archived and distributed electronically. A English Catholic Teachers Association purchased FileHold for that purpose and ultimately to save courier and postage costs of information distribution.
- Student portal – The document management software can be configured to give large numbers of users 'read only' access to common documents. For example if there were safety policies or other regulatory information that you wanted your student body (or faculty) to have access to they could be structured in FileHold to be viewed through a portal on your web site.
General benefits of document control software for Educational customers
- FileHold can make organizations 'greener' by going paperless. Thinking green is on everyone's mind these days.
- Not only does the document management software store any form of electronic document included scanning software helps in the conversion of paper records.
- The creation, distribution and storage of paper documents cost money the tracking and eventual disposition of them can be very expensive.
- Paper documents and standard 'file shares' are not secure because there is usually very limited user rights control.
- Viewers allow reading a document.
- Document alerts, reminders and workflows are presented in a unified calendar to make document control efficient and accountable.
- Centralizing information into an organized, secure, version controlled library just makes sense when compared to distributed information at risk on desktops.
IT considerations
The easiest way to deploy a document management solution is through a powerful central server environment that is supported by the IT department. Users can access the system remotely through the services of a Wide Area Network (WAN) or from anywhere they have access to the Internet. The FileHold solution is based entirely on Microsoft components that most educational institutions already have in place (SQL Server and Windows Server). The solution integrates tightly with Microsoft Office to provide easy storage of e-mail and Microsoft created documents. The system has the capability to store any document created by any other software solution making it very flexible for users who have a variety of document types.
Scalability in FileHold software
The volume of document and the number of potential users are an important consideration in an educational environment. There could well be several millions of documents to store in the system. The document management software supports near limitless volume of stored documents without any incremental costs to the system. The number of potential users are also a factor in system cost and performance. Is there simply a need to allow a department to have access, will the entire faculty have access or is it possible that there needs to be provision for the entire student body to see certain documents.
Attend a complimentary document control software webinar to learn more about becoming a Paperless Office!