This frequently gives rise to requests for additional forms of organization, perhaps the most common request being “can I link one document to multiple clients?” While Worldox cannot do this (you would have to create multiple copies of the file, which would be a recipe for disaster), there are a number of supra-organizational options that provide additional flexibility.
The 8th Field
Worldox profiles offer seven fields. There is a little-known additional “hidden” field in the form of a table that can be created in the comments field. This can be useful, for example for litigation firms to assign values to a document (critical, helps other side, worthless, etc.). The limitation is that there is only a single table that can be created across all the firm’s profile groups, you cannot have a separate table for each profile group.
Relationships
It is also possible to create a “Parent-Child” relationship between documents by the simple expediency of clicking on the Child-to-be document with the mouse and dragging it on top of the Parent-to-be. You will be asked if you wish to create a relationship. If you do, in the “R?” column the parent will be listed as “P1” indicating it is a Parent with one Child. You can create multiple relationships and also multi-level relationships (“grandchildren”). So if you have a table of contents, list of exhibits, etc. you can have the contents related to the contents/list document and see them all at a glance. Similarly, some blacklining programs (such as Workshare) cannot create versions of the documents they are blacklining. However, you can save the blackline as a separate document and then relate it to one or both of the versions in question. DocsCorp’s CompareDocs does integrate fully into Worldox and redlines created with CompareDocs can be saved as versions.
Projects
Projects are similar to relationships in that they group together a variety of related documents. They are limited, however, in that they are directory based, which is why Worldox recommends using a separate “Projects” profile group to manage them. In Worldox GX3, Projects can be shared among various people and can provide a convenient supra-organizational tools. For example, I have a separate “project” for proposals I have made to prospective clients for different types of software. Since each proposal is a document type “proposal” I could not otherwise achieve this level of detail.
Categories (formerly Libraries)
What was formerly called Libraries has just been recast as “Categories.” (If you don’t have the Nov. 9 build of GX3, you won’t have this feature.) Libraries was in my view a pretty worthless function (although some people are very attached to it) and I never even offered to install it for clients. It imposes a “second profile” so you had to deal with two successive screens when saving a document. In addition it was static (unlike dynamic searches) and you had to manually assign documents to it. Lastly, it was directory-based, so you could only group files that were in the same physical directory.
Categories, however, has been significantly augmented. You do not need a second “save” screen (although you can if you want) and you can assign categories directly from the display list. In addition, you can have firm-wide categories, personal categories or directory-based categories. There are still some limitations (primarily that categories are not searchable) and as a practical matter you cannot assign more than about 10 categories to a given file.
However, it does offer a way of assigning a single file to multiple clients and various other supra-organizational functions. Let’s hope Worldox continues to develop it.