Document Assembly and Document Management Systems

Document assembly systems produce Word, WordPerfect, and PDF files, any of which can then be profiled into any document management system. In this regard, document automation and document management systems don’t require integration to work together; however, for a more powerful synergy between the two technologies, two types of integrations make sense.

The more simple of the two integrations involves mapping some of the data from the document assembly interview into the document management system for the purpose of profiling the resulting document. The more complex of the two integrations involves profiling document assembly files themselves.

Take the industry leading HotDocs, for example, which produces three types of files: template files, component files, and answer files. In many large enterprises where HotDocs has been widely deployed, there could be thousands of current versions of templates and component files, and an exponentially larger number of answer files. Beyond that, the organization may want to preserve older versions of each of the three types of files, and here the scope of the problem can be appreciated. Versioning control, a central repository, and retrieval all become important issues.

The obvious solution involvesintegrations between HotDocs and document management systems that allow for the profiling of template files, component files, and answer files. Two notable examples of integrations between HotDocs and document management systems are iManage and OpenText.