File/Document management is an optional component that ships when you purchase the Messaging option.

Terms used in this description

Entity - any Contact/Client or Stock/Goods/Services record in your data files.

Document – any type of disk file

Association – a link between an entity and a document

BookMine provides an intuitive way to manage all your files by enabling you to set up links between them and entities within Bookmine (either contacts/Suppliers or Goods/Services records).   After that the documents are managed, stored and accessed within Bookmine - and even better, when you backup Boomine you are backing up all these documents as well.

No more setting up hierarchies of disk folders to store files such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, images or any other document that relate in any way to the entities represented in your records. Use BookMine to link and manage the storage for you, giving everyone access from any workstation. When you get a document that relates to an entity in Bookmine use the Assoc button on the Contact or Stock forms to link it with that record. In time you will build up an invaluable resource that everyone in your organisation can easily refer to. Just think of the number of times you have mislaid files on your computer or on a computer over the netwrok. The time wasted while staff attempt to find those files. Worse still, all that time spent rewriting the document.

Document links can be annotated using description and notes fields to aid searching and retrieval. The description holds about 255 chars but the Notes field is unlimited.

Document links can also be set up that do not have a file linked to them. The information you wish to track is then stored in the Notes field of the association record itself. For text this is a better way to store the information as the text can be subsequently found using wildcard searches on the notes field.

Never lose a document again. When you associate documents with entities in InfoMine you can retrieve them using numerous intuitive search methods. The primary method is by searching for the primary Contact or Stock record using the powerful standard search engine in InfoMine. When found click on the Associations button. All documents associated with that entity are displayed along with your description (up to 255 chars) and notes (unlimited). Just double click to open the document in the application that created it.

If that does not find it you can search for it by entering any word or phrase in the description or Notes fields or even by entering a partial file name.

If you have 50,000 Contact records and 50,000 Item records you effectively have 100,000 folders for storing all supporting documentation. Not only that. You can find them again in the blink of an eye.

Txt saved in the notes field is searchable so if possible save text from files in this field. Subsequently you can search for words that you suspect are in the document to return all associations that contain that word or phrase.

See below for commands for manipulating associations.

Associations that have files linked to them can be used as email attachments.

Examples of uses for Associations.

Office Procedures Manual - set up a record in contacts or stock. In the title field enter Office Procedures Manual – General staff. From now on every time you want to write a document relating to the Office Procedures Manual go to this record, call up associations and press the Word command. You will be prompted for a document template and a new document will be created. Compose or edit existing documents. You can also associate images and spreadsheets to the record. In fact you can store any type of file along with a record. The Office procedures manual is accessible to all staff. It is easy to find and update when required.

Supporting documents for an inventory item – at times you do not wish to enter long tracts of text in the summary or description for an item as it may make your catalogues or lists too bulky to print. However you may still want to maintain links to documents that are supporting evidence for observations you make about the item. Store the documents as associations which can be retrieved using the intuitive search facilities available.

Bibliography - Use the Stock records to set up bibliographic records that can be searched for using all the facilities in InfoMine including keyword searches or just wildcard searches for words or phrases. Scan in the articles and store them as associations. Never have to search through a mound of articles again to find a reference.

Commands

New Assoc with file - Add or link to an existing file on local or networked drives. To conserve space and prevent confusion due to multiple copies, the file should be moved (recommended – original will be deleted) but can be copied if desired. Note – adding a hypertext document as an association causes a link to be set up between the document and the database. Hypertext documents can be URIs (eg http://www.someplace.com) which are not persistent. If you move a file or the database to another location such links are still available but require an Internet connection. The .htm links will not be available unless you copy the files to the same absolute location on the target machine, ie if they were under c:\My Documents on the original computer they must be copied to this location on the target machine. This is by design because of the non persistence of URIs.

Add file to Current- Prompt the user to select a file to link to the current association. This replaces any existing file.

New Assoc(No file) - Create a new association. No file is linked. The Notes field is used to store information in this type of association.

View/find - Find an association by searching for the entity it is linked to and/or the description or notes you entered when the association was set up. Note- you can also find the document by searching for the entity it is associated with using the main form View/Find command. When displaying the result of a search for an associated document many of the commands are unavailable as the results will include documents associated with more than one entity. Allowing new associations to be added would result in such link being ambiguous. You can use wildcards to find text in the description or notes field. For this reason it is often better to store the contents of a text or Word doc in the notes field instead of linking to a file containing the text.

Remove – Remove an existing association. If it is the last association to this document you will be prompted to save to a disk folder before continuing.

Create Word Doc – Create a new word document and optionally associate it with the currently selected entity. You are prompted for a Word template to use. Set up templates for specific tasks. Hint: to maintain consistency in multi user operation you should specify the template folder for all copies of Word on your LAN to be the template folder on the Server (typically under “x:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates.)

Create Text doc - Create a new text document and optionally associate it with the currently selected entity.

Create Excel spreadsheet - Create a new Excel spreadsheet and optionally associate it with the currently selected entity.

Add a Cross link – Cross link an existing association with one or more other entities. A single document can be accessed from several main records in this way. Set up complex interconnections between people and documents or items and documents.

View Cross links – View all entities Cross linked to an existing associated document.