A Quick Intro to Knowledge Tree SaaS Document Management

By David Roe (@druadh20) Dec 17, 2009

Over the course of its release history document management software developer KnowledgeTree (news, site) has had a habit of mirroring upgrades in the on premise version of its products with corresponding upgrades to its SaaS version.

The SaaS version is full versioned document management systems for users who want an alternative to on premise software, providing a secure service with hosting on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and data stored on Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

KnowledgeTree Document Management

Like other SaaS products it requires no installation, upgrades or server infrastructure and offers users a production-ready, web-based, document management system.

It comes with dozens of 'commercial-only' features, such as the KnowledgeTree client tools, and additional document management functionality. Current features include:

Simple and intuitive web-interface
Thumbnail and Instant View document preview functionality that allows you to see what’s in a document before downloading it from the repository
Customizable dashboard (displaying subscriptions, pending documents, checked-out documents)
Unlimited documents, folders, workflows, document properties, document types, roles, groups and users provide space for ample storage and collaboration
Create users, groups and roles that map to your organization’s structure & processes

It also comes with Zoho integration — allowing users create, view and edit documents online, and on the fly.

Microsoft Office Add-In

One of the features that makes it accessible to novice users is the Microsoft Office Add-In, which was introduced earlier this year and upgraded recently to v1.1.

KnowledgeTree Office Add-in 1.1 provides an alternative, client-side interface to KnowledgeTree from within Microsoft Office 2007 applications.

This client tool displays as a side panel within the Microsoft Office 2007 interface, providing a view of an organization's Microsoft Office 2007 content stored and managed through KnowledgeTree's web-based document management system.

The result is that users can access Office 2007 documents stored in the KnowledgeTree repository through an integrated panel that is built into the KnowledgeTree server stack.

Features that come with Microsoft Office Add-in include:

An interface that enables users to navigate KnowledgeTree’s repository from Word, Excel and PowerPoint
Check-in and check-out of documents from within Add-in
Entire repository search for documents
Copy and reuse of templates already being used
Audit history and version control of all documents
Email documents to internal or external recipients
Multilingual Interfaces available in French, Italian and German as well as English

In addition, the ability to integrate with Zoho Writer makes it possible for users to access and edit documents remotely without high-cost desktop software.

Compliance Requirement Features

There are a number of other features that come with the SaaS version, but two further features that will probably be of interest to companies with compliance issues are:

Document Type Alerts which alert users to groups of documents based on their type
Electronic signatures that require a user to enter their username and password for all write actions on documents and folders