Winter 2011: iPads, ITEX and the Sharp National Dealers Conference

Hot on the heels of the SmartSearch 3.1 release, Square 9® Softworks looks to shake up office automation again with the release of its new SmartSearch Global Search App for the Apple iPad. The Global Search App is not just a web page being viewed through the iPad, it is a native iOS app which allows you to run remote searches for documents, filter the archives to be searched, Print and Email records and even perform user initiated workflow actions like document approvals.

The key to this app is the new Global Search capability which allows users to run "Google like" searches for documents. Users can search across the entire database for records or only on select Archives to limit results. Regardless of what is selected, the Global Search can look across the entire SmartSearch database at lightning speed. Square 9® Softworks will be introducing the new Global Search feature into its core product offering later in 2011.

Imagine being a department head who is receiving employee time off requests or vendor invoices for approval. Regardless of where you are located, you can now access and approve these requests in seconds. Email notifications sent from Work XChange will link you directly to your documents allowing immediate action even if you're sitting on a beach, riding on the train or working from home.

The SmartSearch Global Search App will be previewed at the Sharp National Dealer Conference in Las Vegas, NV March 14th-17th and at the ITEX National Expo and Conference in Washington, DC March 22nd - 23rd (Booth #638). We hope you can make at least one of these events to see the latest technology Square 9® Softworks has to offer.

Best regards,

Scott Worroll
Marketing Manager

SmartSearch subtracts paper documents, multiplies efficiency and adds to profitability

Do you know of an accounting firm that could benefit from a reduction in paper?
You might want to share the following Case Study with them brought to you by premier Square 9® reseller MT Business Technologies.

Custom Professional Accounting had run out of storage space for its clients' paper records and turned to an electronic content management solution. The first solution the company tried, however, had some highly disconcerting “glitches.” In contrast, the SmartSearch Content Management Suite from Square 9® Softworks proved to be affordable, easy to use and extremely reliable–increasing the efficiency of the firm's seasoned accounting pros by 35 to 45 percent, while literally shredding its document storage requirements by about 90 percent.

Solution Profile:
Business: Accounting firm
Company: Custom Professional Accounting
Objective: Eliminate document storage bottlenecks and increase productivity

“From the beginning we found SmartSearch to be an affordable, easy to use and extremely reliable solution. It completely eliminated the problems we had been encountering. We were pleased that the transition to SmartSearch went so smoothly and delighted to find that SmartSearch is easy to learn, too. Even the few 'computer-challenged' employees we have here got the hang of it very quickly.”
- Sue DeVaughn, Office Manager, Custom Professional Accounting

Click here for the full story.

Understanding Published vs. Un-Published Documents

With the new Revision Control Module, the concept of "Publishing" documents was introduced to the SmartSearch user community. Many people have called into the Help Desk looking to get a better understanding of where published documents apply in their business so we thought an explanation might be in order:

Revision Controlled documents may be stored in one of two states within SmartSearch; Published or Unpublished. This concept allows the user to easily designate which version will be accessed by the user community. The published document approach is a cleaner and a more intuitive design than the "major vs. minor" revisions employed by other content management systems.

An unpublished document is a work in progress that is actively being accessed by users collaborating on a document's creation. This could be a Word, Excel or PowerPoint presentation for example that is being worked on by one person or by a team of people.

The unpublished document that shows in an Archive or Results Grid will be the last checked in version of the file and is therefore only viewable by users with access to view document revisions. This allows users to work together on a document without making it available to the entire user community until they feel it is ready for public consumption.

A document version can be published or unpublished by any user in a group with Add permissions as well as access to document versions and publish/ un-publish rights. A user may only publish the most recent version from the Results Grid but may publish previous versions from the Revisions tab. Only one version of a document may be published at one time.

A published document is a "finished" document where users have completed their collaboration process and now wish to share the content with the rest of the community. Published documents are visible to any user with permissions to that Archive. We have introduced Archive level feature permissions in SmartSearch version 3.1 to enable access to document revisions for a particular security group.

It is important to note that documents in a published state will be viewable with standard "View" permissions. In addition, published documents may not be edited. The "published" property will override an Archive's Modify permission for all users.

A good example of the use of document publishing would be a Product Manual. In this case a manual might already be in use but requires updating. Users could access the existing manual while the product team checks out a new version and begins the update process. Once completed, the document would be checked in and published thereby replacing the previous manual as the most current release.

We hope this provides a better understanding of how published documents work and can be applied in your business. For more information on publishing documents please visit the SmartSearch Support & Developer Forums.