Astris Teamware Suite (ATWS)
1. Astris TeamWare - A new boost for MS-Outlook
Groupware functionality for Microsoft's Outlook / Exchange ecosystem
In today’s office environment the handling of documents in electronic form is daily routine.
The bulk of these documents end their life in the form of an email sent to several recipients.
There is a number of email systems around, but we can safely state that with over 400m users Microsoft’s Outlook/Exchange ecosystem has the largest market share of the enterprise market.
However, despite its success there is a number of fundamental limitations in its use:
- Outlook is designed as a Personal tool when most of today’s enterprises would be better served by a tool targeting groups, teams or departments.
- Outlook, as the main handler of email, ends up being used as a Mail storage facility, something it was not designed for and cannot cope with.
- Users are forced to maintain a large number of Cc’d documents within Outlook just in case they need them one day, further increasing its load.
- Users can find ONLY mails they have themselves received in the past and not every mail they should have access to.
- Finally, the lack of “Groupware” functionality generates a storm of Cc’d mails within the enterprise in order to keep everyone updated.
MetaDocs Ltd, having encountered these serious limitations while working with its Corporate Customers, has developed a major enhancement for both MS-Outlook and MS-Exchange, which provides all the functionality that these two platforms are lacking.
This is Astris TeamWare.
- Outlook users can now receive all departmental and group emails to be kept aware of all new mails and subsequent responses while also retaining their normal, personal inbox use.
- Their own Outlook serves only as transient storage for a short period of time while all mails, fresh and old, along with all other company documents can be found on demand in a Central Corporate storage facility.
- The Company/Organization can now rely on a new Corporate Central Storage for all its documents, providing all the additional security necessary for such valuable content.
- The Astris TeamWare Solution does not replace but enhances MS-Outlook and MS-Exchange so the Organization benefits from Microsoft’s long term development strategy and reliability instead of having to rely on various 3rd party solutions with an uncertain future.
2. Astris ECM - Enterprise Content Management
Astris TeamWare provides a secure and robust “database” for the entire email traffic. However, all organizations have a large volume of important documents beyond emails which are generated, processed, circulated and in need to be easily retrieved.
Invoices, pricelists, photographs, presentations, drawings, contracts and other legal documents are an additional valuable content to be securely stored along with the total email traffic should be readily accessible by all concerned depending on their security clearance level.
A system that can satisfy all these requirements could be nothing less than a proper Enterprise Content Management System.
This is Astris ECM.
It is a full-fledged ECM System operating as a web application and is embedded into MS-Outlook, offering full ECM functionality such as straightforward document management, version control, workflows, task assignments, project collaboration and more. With the addition of Astris ECM the whole application becomes the ASTRIS TEAMWARE SUITE (ATWS). A complete eMail/ECM Application addressing the needs of all types of organizations.
However, in order to comprehensively address the needs of numerous customers, ATWS was enriched with a number of important sub-systems.
The most important are the following:
Astris Automated Load Processor (ALP). To automatically migrate thousands of e-mails and other documents into ATWS the ALP modules help to easily upload thousands of e-mails from PSTs, Exchange Mailboxes and Public Folders as well as from EML files. ALP can also handle PDFs, TIFFs or any other file format stored as files which may also be accompanied by metadata and security information in various forms such as XML files or in databases.
Astris Integration Client. The Integration Client is a windows application that provides code-less integration of Astris ECM with any other windows application for document registration using barcode and for quick retrieval of relevant documents. This is mainly used for integration with ERP, CRM and other COTS or bespoke line-of-business applications.
Astris Document Registration and Routing with Barcode (DRR). DRR provides quick registration of paper and electronic documents with barcode printing capabilities and provides suitable screens for efficient indexing, storing and routing such documents as received by the system. DRR is scalable and can be used to cover requirements as low as a receptionist’s office to as high as tens of customer service agents receiving and processing thousands of documents per day.
For more information, please send us an email at: info@metadocs.eu