Does It Compute?

Worldox Connect - Initial Observations

The first installations of Worldox Connect are just being rolled out. Initial installations have been bumpy (especially if the firm already has any versions of Workshare installed), but this will get better.

Naturally, the first thing clients want to do is to push the envelope. This is a 1.0 release and is still somewhat limited. The Worldox integration piece essentially sits on top of Workshare and provides two-way integration between your Worldox document store and Workshare features. If you try to go “outside the box” the integration does not apply. Thus if you manually drag and drop a non-Worldox file into Workshare, you cannot manage that from within Worldox.

Some people have asked me about the difference between the forthcoming Office 365/One Cloud integration and Worldox Connect. One crucial difference is that when you upload a document to One Cloud using Office 365, the document is checked out from Worldox, so that no one else can work on it.  In Worldox Connect, all revisions to the shared document are audited and ported back to Worldox. So for effective document collaboration, Worldox Connect is vastly superior.

The other question that pops up all the time is: “How do I manage and oversee what I have shared?”  Right now, there is no management console, although Worldox is working on it.  There is, however, a partial workaround. Worldox Connect functions are monitored by the audit trail. Thus if you do an Audit Trail search for all documents marked “Connect: Start Sync”, “Connect: Stop Sync” or “Connect: Commented on a file” for, say, the last 7 days, you will see a list of the relevant documents.  Different people may want to configure this differently. Depending on how specific users are taking advantage of the Worldox connect features, one person might want to restrict the search to documents for a given matter and another for documents they personally have shared.  

When the list comes up, if you click on Project | Create at the top menu, Worldox generates a list within Worldox. However, the project generated by the audit trail is not otherwise saved, it is just a one-time event To save this list, you might want to create a series of Workshare projects and add the results as a new project. This would give you a series of projects that together let you review what has been workshared. Not a full management console, but a start.

Microsoft Strikes Again!

I’ve been replacing all my computers, which are 5 years old and nearly out of warranty (and Dell won’t give warranties longer than 5 years, which makes sense).

So I decided to bit the bullet and get Windows 10 on the new computer. Designed for home use and gamers but certainly not for businesses (but that’s another story). I thought I’d make my life easier and get Office 2016 Business pre-installed from Dell instead of ordering from Amazon and doing it myself. WRONG!

It turns out that Microsoft dictates that for Office 2016 Home and Business orders, Dell pre-install the French version, the Spanish version and the Home and Student version, but NOT the Business edition. To add insult to injury, you have to uninstall each of the above before you can download and install the Business version. So instead of saving time I wasted several hours and phone calls to Dell support to figure this out. However, the air around me did turn a very deep shade of blue.

This is obviously costing Dell money in support time and they say they are “working” to fix it.

Way to go Microsoft!

Office 365 and Worldox

Worldox is releasing an add-on that will allow full integration between Office 365 online (Enterprise or Business), OneDrive and Worldox. Although there is no cost for the add-on itself, there are some limitations and expenses involved.

From within Worldox, you can send a document to OneDrive. This sends it to your OneDrive synch folder, where it synchs up to the Cloud and any other devices you may be using. However, this checks the document out from Worldox, which means that nobody else in the office can edit the document while you have it in OneDrive. In practice, this severely restricts what you can send up to OneDrive. In particular, you can only use it for very temporary storage if anybody else in the office is likely to work on that file.

If you are away from the office and working in Word Online, you can retrieve documents directly from your Worldox system and check them back in to Worldox. This link goes through Worldox Web Mobile, which is now available only as part of the Worldox Connect product. This is available on a per-user basis for $20/user/month if you pay quarterly, or $17/user/month if you pay yearly. And you will get the additional Worldox Connect features on top of the OneDrive integration.

In short, for firms that want to move to Office 365 on line, Worldox will offer substantial integration, although with serious restrictions and at additional cost.