Does It Compute?

Downloading Web Pages to Worldox - Don't!

Occasionally a client calls complaining that there are a whole bunch of funky files showing up on their Worldox screen. Most often, this is because a user has tried to download an entire web page (as opposed, say, to a PDF page on the web) to Worldox.

Web pages are actually made up of many individual files: each graphic is a separate file (*.jpg or *.png); the page is held together by a java script (*.js) or other mechanism, etc. Worldox downloads each of these little individual files, which then show up as assorted garbage.

The files themselves are stored in subdirectories under the Worldox matter (typically 123456 files) and have to be deleted manually from Windows Explorer.

The moral of the story: Don’t try to download web pages to Worldox!

Worldox Cleanup

With NetDocuments' acquisition of Worldox, firms are considering their next steps. Obviously firms should be performing a due diligence review as to their options: what their needs are and whether to switch to NetDocuments or some other product.

Whatever the result, this would be a good time to do some cleanup. Many firms don’t maintain their data very well and systems are cluttered with closed matters, excess doc types, etc. Here are some basic things to do.

Archive Closed Matters. Firms should periodically archive closed matters and mark them as “inactive” in Worldox. This reduces the number of matters that appear on your screen (“inactive” matters don’t show up) and makes searches and routine operations more efficient. You can archive either to the main Worldox repository or to a separate hard drive. Archived matters are still available and searchable if desired. It does take one extra step, but since this will be very infrequent the time savings are considerable.

Review and possibly consolidate DocTypes and Cabinets. If the firm has a large number of doc types, this is a good time to review them. For example, I did a survey for a 50-user firm of the last 3 years (about 500,000 documents). They had almost 20 doc types with fewer than 20 documents (one-one hundredth of one percent) assigned to them. This is counter productive. Some firms have also multiplied cabinets. It may be desirable to consolidate them prior to trying to convert from Worldox to NetDocs or some other program.