On this page
- Software that knows what each file is
- Why the shared drive ends up in a mess
- Five things every DMS does
- Paper needs a way in too
- It works where documents are made
- DMS, ECM and records management
- Cloud or your own servers
- What it costs in practice
- Seven questions to ask before you buy
- The system we implement is M‑Files
- Questions people ask about a DMS
Software that knows what each file is#
A document management system stores documents together with information about them, controls who may see and change them, keeps every version, and moves them through approvals. A shared drive stores files. A DMS stores files and knows what they are.
That second half is the part that earns its keep. Once the system knows a file is a contract, that it belongs to this customer and this project, and that it expires this year, it can find it, guard it and chase it. That is why a DMS settles the things that never stay settled on a shared drive: three versions of the same procedure, a contract nobody can find, an approval that lives in an email thread, and personal data that should have been deleted two years ago.
Why the shared drive ends up in a mess#
On a shared drive, the folder is what causes the mess, however careful people are. A folder can hold a document in exactly one place, so the supplier agreement goes under the supplier or under the project, and someone makes a copy for the other. Search will not rescue you: it works on the file name and on whatever the person who saved it happened to be thinking. Permissions were set per folder, years ago, by someone who has since left. Which version is current, and who approved it, is anyone's guess.
The fair objection is that you already have SharePoint. SharePoint improves on this with libraries, versions and metadata columns, and for many teams that is enough. The difference that remains is where the rules come from: in SharePoint, people set access and other rules on sites, libraries, folders or items, rather than the rules following from the information stored with the document. The M‑Files vs SharePoint guide goes into the differences.
Whatever you end up comparing, the same five things are doing the work underneath.
Five things every DMS does
1. It knows what each document is
Each document carries a few facts as fields: its type, customer, project, owner and expiry date. This is its metadata. Everything else in the system reads those fields, so filling them in has to be quick.
2. You find it by what you remember
Search the full text, or filter on the fields. A view is a saved search, such as active contracts for my customers expiring this year. Different teams look at the same documents through different views, and the documents stay where they are.
3. There is one current version
Every save becomes a version, and the history shows who changed what. Checking a document out stops two people overwriting each other. Where several people need to write at once, the system supports co-authoring.
4. Approvals leave a record
Review, approval, publishing and deletion run as a workflow: a fixed sequence of steps, with a notification and a task for the right person at each one. The approval that lived in an email thread belongs here, and the record of each step is your audit trail.
5. The right people see it
Rules decide who may see, edit or delete a document. Ideally they follow the fields, so a confidential document stays confidential wherever it appears. A log records what happened to each document, for GDPR, ISO audits and your own auditors.
Paper needs a way in too#
Not every document arrives as a file. Signed agreements, delivery notes, certificates and old personnel files turn up on paper, and a DMS needs a way to capture them. A scanner gives you a picture of the page; optical character recognition (OCR) reads the words on it, so a scan can be searched like any other document and filed by what it is. In M‑Files, M‑Files OCR turns scanned pages into searchable PDFs.
It works where documents are made#
Most documents start in Word or in an email, so a DMS that lives in a separate window gets skipped on a busy day. M‑Files works with Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. You file an email from Outlook with its metadata, and M‑Files can pick up the customer or contact from the email. You open, edit and save documents from inside those Office apps, filling in the metadata as you save, and you can search M‑Files from Teams. Several people can write in the same document at once, in M‑Files Cloud with Microsoft 365 or with the CtrlShare add-on on every M‑Files edition. What you already have need not move first: the SharePoint Online connector lets you find and manage SharePoint Online content from M‑Files, and other connectors show network folders and other repositories alongside the vault. Microsoft 365 Copilot can work with M‑Files documents and respects M‑Files permissions, through Microsoft 365 storage or the M‑Files Copilot connector, for people with a Copilot licence. The Microsoft 365 page goes through each of these.
DMS, ECM and records management#
Three labels get used for overlapping things. A document management system manages documents: files with a life of drafts, approvals, versions and, in the end, deletion. Enterprise content management (ECM) is the wider term for all of an organisation's content, documents included, and the processes around it. Records management is the keeping and disposing part: which documents must be retained, for how long, and how they are destroyed when the period is up. Vendors use the three labels loosely, so ask what a product does rather than what it is called.
Cloud or your own servers#
Where a DMS runs is one of the practical matters that separate one system from another, since the core functions are much the same wherever you look. Most are offered both in the cloud and on your own servers. Cloud means the vendor runs the servers, the updates and the backups. On your own servers (on-premises), your IT department does. Some regulated organisations need the latter. For everyone else, cloud usually means less to run yourselves.
What it costs in practice#
The licence price on its own says very little about what a DMS will cost you. A DMS costs in three parts: the licences, the implementation (setting the system up for your document types, moving existing files in, training) and support after go-live. Only the licences come from a price list. Implementation and support depend on your documents and your processes, so be wary of a total price given before anyone has looked at them.
Seven questions to ask before you buy#
A demo shows what a system can do. These questions get at how it does it, which is the part you live with afterwards. The first two matter most.
- Can a document appear under the customer and the project without a copy?
- How is access set: folder by folder, or from the document's own fields?
- Does it work inside Outlook, Teams and Word, or is it a separate program people have to open?
- What does the log record, and can we export it?
- How are retention and deletion handled for personal data?
- What happens to our existing file share: is migration part of the quote?
- Can we try it before we sign?
Put them to every system you look at, ours included.
The system we implement is M‑Files
We are an authorised M‑Files reseller and an Elements.cloud reseller. M‑Files files every document by what it is, with no folder tree underneath, which is how it answers the first two of the seven questions. The Why M‑Files guide shows what that changes, and the free 30-day trial answers the last one.
