Tag type system

[kujeremy]

I am putting together a basic document management database which the main purpose will be to locate where documents are at - the actual documents will be stored on a network drive, to which there will be a hyperlink in Access to the document.

The problem that I am having with this is coming up with a good way to filter down and find documents. My initial thought was to have a category table. Each document could then have up to 5 different categories assigned to it. I wanted to make a form with drop down boxes of the categories that they could select different categories to narrow the results down in the event they don't know the specific document name.

So for example I have stored: Document 1: Category A, Category C

User would select they want all documents that have Category A and run the query, Document 1 would be one of the results because it has Category A assigned to it.

I do not know that this is the best way to accomplish what I am looking for. Is there a more effective way to do this? I was thinking if there was basically an entry box that the user could tag each document with whatever keyword they wanted, and then set up a query that they could enter in a string of tags to get the results would be good, but I don't know if this is beyond Access' ability as I've never seen anything like that.

Any suggestions or ideas on a direction to go with this - as a little more info: right now my deptartments documentation on procedures is all paper in a notebook but it has been "recommended" to us to put all of these online. There are going to be hundreds of word documents typed up and I really do not want to throw them all in folders and just leave them there because many of the documents will fit into more than one type of scenario, which is why I'm trying to think of a way to come up with a DB to assist with locating these documents.

Thanks as allways for any suggestions/help!

 

[Steve R.]

As a quick suggestion, what about using (adapting) the Library of Congress Catalog System. If your categories are too specialized for adapting the Library of Congress classification system and your are in a specialized industry look to see if there are "codes" that can be used. The medical profession, for example, has each procedure coded.

 

[kujeremy]

Thanks Steve,

But I am not really having a problem coming up with my categories/criteria I want to assign to the documents. My main issue is coming up with the most efficient way to do so that will easily allow for searching the forms for that criteria. I have thought about just having one table and about 20 y/n boxes that could be checked to assign attributes to the form, but I ran into trouble when trying to query against that. I think that the route I need to go is 3 tables as such:

Role Table: we have 4 unique roles that every process we document will fall into. The document can be applicable to anywhere from 1 to all 4 roles.

Type Table: This attribute would be the type of document it is or what business area it deals with. These would be things like: Sales, Customer Service, report, surveys, operating hours, Marketing, etc. (In case you are wondering, yes, the Roles are completely separate from the internal business areas. Every document will have one of the 4 roles, but then will also be broken down by the type of document. Although I could probably break this Type table in half if I wanted to, one table for Business Area and one for Process Type but I don't think that is really necessary).

Document Table: Will have Doc Name, Doc Location (hyperlink), Notes, and then can have multiple Roles and multiple Types assigned to it.


What I want then is to set up a form that has say 8 combo boxes or so that the user can select the different Types/Roles they want to search for to help narrow down the available documents. In my rough drafts this is where I'm running into the problem - setting up the query. I can't get it quite right to bring back either: Documents with any of the selections, or a second query which will only bring back documents that have all of the selections.

Hope that makes sense what I'm trying to do and would appreciate any feedback on if this is a good route to take or if I'm coming at this from a completely wrong direction.

 

[spikepl]

Do you have some QA-function and/or some QA-requirement for these docs to be categorized, and someone to actually do the categorization?

If not, then you will likely spend effort on developing a nice tool, everyone will go AAAH, and then the docs will wind up in one big messy pile anyway. Unless forced to, people tend to take the path of least effort.

1. Document management systemes exists - buy one - do not develop yourself. Developing costs more that people imagine.
2. If you are going to have a document mess, use the tools available: Google Desktop or Windows Search 4 (for XP) , or the built in Windows search in Vista// (not sure how that works on a server) or things like http://www.tag2find.com/ ...
These tools can index the documents, and you can search for whatever you want. And the tools are free.

For business tools covering the normal operational requirement of a business, search for what exists as freeware, shareware, SASS or whatever, and develop only as last resort. No point in reinventing the wheel, really.

 

[kujeremy]

Spikepl -

Couple of things:

Pretty much all of our process documents now currently reside in a couple of different notebooks, I have been tasked with figuring out the best way to get these digitized. I can tell you that if I don't come up with something they will just be put out into a folder on a network drive and they will be very difficult to locate what you want eventually.

Your suggestions would be great except for a couple of things: The tools I have to work with are: Microsoft Office and....Microsoft Office. Corporately we have big elaborate content management/imaging systems etc - however, one thing I do not want to do is involve anyone from our IT department. Once they are involved it becomes impossible to get anything done without submitting half a dozen different requests and filing at minimum 3 different requirement documents. This would also be considered minimal priority so it may begin to be worked around 2018. Google docs etc - no dice...our IT deparment has things locked down (for instance I can't get to the tag4free.com link you listed because it is an "untrusted source" according to our admins). I have fought too many battles trying to get IT to give us tools, free or otherwise, only to be told either NO or that we have to use existing tools even if they do not meet our needs. When have gotten specialized software we are not allowed to update it and about 3-4 times a year it will magically disappear overnight when someone forgets we were allowed to have it on our machine....which then leads to about another week of requests to get said item re-installed. (Sorry, a little frustrated with some of our processes if you can't tell).:banghead:

With that said, compared to some of salaries I know our IT people make & what it would cost in $ and time for one of them to "research" purchasing or allowing the use of an outside tool - I already have something working at about 80% of what I want it to do I'm just ironing out some queries and wondering if there may be a better way than the direction I initially went.

Anyhow, thanks for your suggestions and I know that in a perfect world any of those would be a good direction to look towards, but as I mentioned I don't live in a perfect world and there are some things that just need to be handle yourself.

 

[spikepl]

That was a lot of verbiage to describe the oft-appearing phenomenon, that you have a department, where you instead of IT habitually get a NO !

If you are stuck with Access/Excel, the first thing to do is nevertheless a quick web search of templates.

As to multi-criteria search check Allen Browne's temple of gold (or doom?) : http://allenbrowne.com/ser-62.html

 

[kujeremy]

Thanks for the link, I'll have to check out that DB over the weekend at home (because heaven forbid if a "non-technical" person download anything without someone from security looking over their shoulder!).

My favorite IT NO recently was my request for a (free) dedicated VNC (realvnc, tightvnc, etc - free). I requested this because the browser based Java one I had been using to do remote desktop testing didn't function very well. There was a meeting with myself & my manager and 5 different IT people. Their solution was we had just purchased WebEx and that was the corporate solution. Keep in mind that they had WebEx locked down to only do video conferencing and absolutely under no circumstance could you use it to manipulate a remote machine. I really didn't quite understand how that helped with my problem which dealt completely with the ability to manipulate a remote machine. SMH.

In all fairness to my IT folk - they do have to be extra dilligent due to the sensitive type of information we deal with as well as state and federal laws we are required to meet - it just gets frustrating at times when you actually want to accomplish anything.

Thanks again!