File Sharing & Document Management

Make sure all stakeholders have the information they need with the file sharing and document management tools in Projectplace.

Timely access to the right version of documents is critical to making plans a reality. Projectplace makes this easy; a highly secure document repository, collaboration features, and a powerful document sharing tool come together to streamline:

• The ability to share with your project members and people outside the team – even if they don’t use Projectplace
• Strong document versioning control with rollback
• Deep review functions for gathering feedback
• Document history and change tracking features
• Granular access rights and restrictions that are easy to administer
• A high level of security to keep documents safe
• The ability to link documents to cards and activities, to keep execution on track

Projectplace offers many ways to collaborate using documents: shared docs are one of the best ways to communicate across teams and geographies during project setup, while the work is in flight, as a way to communicate to management, and during project post-mortems.

Share documents with team members and with others in the company who have relevant information to contribute during review cycles. You can even invite external people who don’t use Projectplace to collaborate with you. Projectplace streamlines sharing by enabling it at nearly every turn:

• File picker: Quickly attach documents to a project directly from your computer, or from Drive, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, or SharePoint. You can place documents or links to them directly into the Projectplace document repository, or associate them with a project kanban card or Gantt chart activity.
• Share a link: Because documents in Projectplace are saved to its highly secure central document repository, they each are assigned their own unique link. Send this link to project members via emails, documents, or any other digital communication. You can even reference this link in the live conversations feed that is viewable in the Documents workspace.
• Notify in comment: The “@ref” functionality, accessible in documents and kanban cards, allows team members to notify each other about a document recently posted or changed.
• Email documents: From the Documents workspace, it’s easy to email one or many documents to any person who’s integral to the project.
• Review: A special kind of sharing, this is a request that can be sent to any stakeholder for streamlined document review and feedback.
• Project site: This publishes documents for public access on an external project site for wider access by all stakeholders.

This online file sharing contextualizes documents for execution by keeping them linked to the activity that team members are performing, while speeding the communication of vital information across organizational and geographic boundaries.

The central document repository provides a secure place from which to share documents. It also makes it easy to set up folders in a way that makes sense for your team and projects. Using an intuitive folder hierarchy, you can get as granular as needed. Set up complex nested folders to house the documents that will help drive decisions for your projects.

Upload any documents that are important to your project:

• Microsoft Office documents
• Video files
• Images
• Adobe PDFs
• CAD drawings
• Virtually any files that are necessary to your project can be uploaded to the Projectplace central document repository

Filter the file structure view to see what documents are in review or have been recently changed, or click on a file to see all the documents it houses, and see at a glance important metadata about each document:

• The latest version available
• If a document has been finalized
• If it is locked down for edits or uploads
• If it is in review
• How many comments have been made on it

You can use a current document repository as a template for new repositories –– including everything from structures to actual documents – to save you time in the future, or export the file structure view into Microsoft Excel for review and discussion.

Document access rights are important to keeping your projects running smoothly. Allowing all stakeholders to access and edit all documents can slow down execution, and some information is eyes-only. And some members need full Read/Write access, whereas others only need Read access. It can feel complicated without the right tools.

The document sharing tools in Projectplace simplify access rights controls. They are located in the central document repository: set them for the entire repository, or get as complex as you want, folder by folder, with just the click of a mouse.

Confidently proceed with your project and allow document sharing, knowing that you have specified who can see and edit which documents. This adds another layer of security to your projects and helps speed your plans along.

Versioning is a vital part of file sharing and document management. Locating the most recent version of a document is key to project execution. The more collaborative your environment, the more challenging this task often is. Projectplace offers tools to simplify version control, which are activated by default for all documents within the central document repository. These tools enable features including the following:

• Version generation: Every time an update is made to a document, a new version of that document is generated, and the filename shows an increase in the version number for easy identification. This is all done automatically and requires no action – or forgetting – on a team member’s part.
• Automatic check-out/check-in: When a team member is editing a document, the repository shows it as being checked out so that it can’t be edited by another user until it is checked in again. Team members are prompted to comment upon check-in, to let others know about their changes and reasons.
• History: The versioning controls enable a listed view of all versions of a document to give you the history of a document with all the versions, to understand when a change happened and who made it.
• Rollbacks: You can also roll back to older versions of a document in case messaging changes, you realize that editing has taken a wrong turn, or other issues arise.

Document reviews are one of the most important uses for document collaboration in project execution. The Projectplace online file sharing application streamlines this capability for you.

You can invite anyone to a review, and Projectplace will gather the feedback in a structured and usable way. Comments from all reviewers are collected in one place, and you can keep track of who has already answered and who needs a reminder. You can choose if you want reviewers to edit the document, or if you just need general comments and the document should be locked.

During the review, the document cannot be changed by anyone who is not participating in the review. In the central document repository, all documents currently in a review are marked with a review icon; you can also filter to see all ongoing reviews in the project.

For your review, just:

• Open the document
• Click on Send for review and send it to your team or others
• Set due dates and let people know what’s needed: comments, edits, their approval, etc.
• Track progress and send reminders as needed
• Once reviewers are finished, see the collected feedback in the Reviews section
• Implement the feedback as appropriate
• Save the document – it will autosave as a new version. Make comments on the version for later recall
• You’re done!

This approach fast-tracks the review process, helps you ensure no one’s voice is accidentally left out, and eliminates the time-consuming activity of consolidating edits.