Maximizing Efficiency: An In-Depth Look at DocuWare’s Workflow Automation Capabilities
6 min read
Did you know 83% of IT professionals believe workflow automation is critical to the business, while only 48% of businesses use workflow automation software? On top of that, 68% of employees feel like they have too many manual tasks on their plate.
Many businesses are turning towards workflow automation capabilities in a fast-paced environment to streamline their business. Gone are the days of losing loose-leaf papers with important scribbles or thumbing through various three-hole binders to find that one invoice you need for reference.
Workflow automation is computerizing manual business processes such as approving time-off requests, managing customer service inquiries, making product guides accessible anywhere in the company, completing employee reviews, finding specific files, and more.
Businesses can grow exponentially faster using workflow automation versus manual processes to drive their bottom line. DocuWare is a preferred Microsoft software solution for creating workflow automation around documents.
While DocuWare has many advantages, one of its most significant advantages is its ability to streamline document storage and accessibility. It is a powerful Microsoft product that seamlessly works with all other Microsoft offerings and a valuable workflow automation tool that will save your office time, money, and lots of frustration.
Why DocuWare?
DocuWare is a preferred workflow automation tool because it can be customized. Powered by a visual workflow designer, DocuWare allows you to decide your documents’ workflow. Customization ensures you create workflows for your specific needs rather than investing in a tool that will make you work towards its needs. If you need five or 500 steps, DocuWare is an ideal tool for building the workflow directly in the tool.
The benefits of utilizing DocuWare’s workflow automation include encouraging employee teamwork, as they can efficiently work on the same documents via file sharing. Cutting costs is another benefit. With most work automated, less employee time is needed to complete tasks.
Automation can also lead to less human error, producing higher-quality documents and workflows. Consistency is another issue many businesses need help with that DocuWare’s workflow automation can ensure is being kept up.
Repetitive tasks are eliminated via DocuWare’s workflow automation software, allowing team members to save time on busy work and manual tasks.
Security and compliance must be addressed regarding DocuWare’s benefits. DocuWare’s ability to keep documents secure and within your industry’s compliance makes it one of the top choices for businesses of all sizes.
How To Begin With Workflow Automation
All workflows within DocuWare begin with a trigger. There are five primary DocuWare triggers, which include:
- Form: Form-based triggers include any option on a form starting the automation process. For example, a checkbox can route each form to a particular place in the workflow process.
- Time: Time-based triggers include assigning a team member a document at a particular time or moving a document from one folder to another at a specific time.
- Event: Event-based triggers mean something will automatically happen with the document once an event occurs. For example, a document will be deleted when it expires, or a workflow will continue to the following rule once a document is started.
- Database: Database triggers include when something triggers an event in the database. For example, meta-data will be added whenever a particular document is edited.
- Folder: Folder triggers are great for notifications when documents are added, deleted, or edited within one folder.
Once a trigger is set off, the workflow’s next step will occur. Various rules can be triggered, including a sent email, saved document in a particular folder, created folder, a notification is sent to your team or yourself, and setting off the next trigger in the series.
How To Use Rules Within DocuWare
Many rule options exist within DocuWare, but some of the most useful within workflow automation include the following:
- Permissions: Identifying who can access what documents and folders are stored within DocuWare.
- Tracking: Just like within a Word document, track changes each teammate makes within a document.
- Reporting: Set a rule to produce a report based on a trigger automatically.
- Location: Determine which folder documents will automatically be stored in.
- Security: One of the essential rules, keep highly confidential documents protected.
- Full-text extracting: Pull all text from a document to activate a full-text search.
- Detention: Determine how long a document should be kept within DocuWare.
Depending on your version of DocuWare, you also can customize rules specific to your workflow.
Inspiring Real-world Examples
An example of a trigger enforcing a rule is a customer checking your parts department in an online form, which acts as a form-trigger for the rule, which is routing the form to a member of the parts department. This trigger acts as a double trigger! Not only will your parts department receive the customer’s form, but the customer will receive a confirmation email letting them know that a parts team member will be with them shortly.
The example above could also have a third trigger, storing the form in a folder under the parts department.
You can see how one trigger can set off a series of events that usually would take one or two people and more time to handle. With DocuWare, one trigger starts the workflow, leading that specific touchpoint through other rules and triggers.
Let’s say your client’s service contract expires soon, and a time-trigger has been set to go off two months beforehand. That time-trigger will initiate the rule to send you a notification to start conversing with that client regarding renewing their current contract. Once you acknowledge that you had initial discussions with your client, a second time-trigger will remind you to follow up with them, and so on, until you renew the contract. The time-triggers will be directly linked to the contract document saved on DocuWare.
Securely Share Documents
Offering a secure way to share documents, the time and event-based triggers are perfect for teams who need to go through an approval process or to hand off a document to the next teammate. Both triggers can assign documents, notifying (which would be the rule) teammates that documents are ready for them.
An example is an account manager who opens an invoice for a client but needs his team to add the hours they worked for the client that month. Once the account manager starts the document (trigger), DocuWare can automatically notify the team working with that client (rule). Then, once the team finishes adding their work, they can add the document to the finalized invoices folder (trigger), which notifies (trigger) the account manager to complete the invoice (rule) and save it to the client’s invoices (trigger) which then sends an email to the client with the invoice attached (rule).
The above example also works well with presentations that need to be finalized by teams and sent to a boss or client and with teams who need a variety of others to check off on their work before sending it out.
Text-Searchable Conversion
Full-text extracting is one of the most valuable rules clients use within DocuWare’s workflow automation. An event-trigger can trigger all new document’s text to be fully extracted. This means DocuWare will convert all of the text from new documents into computerized text, making it searchable. Imagine being able to type into a search bar to find every mention of a word or phrase. Say goodbye to hours spent searching for notes and hard copies for that one section your client recently referenced.
The examples above barely touch on DocuWare’s customizable workflow automation capabilities. One of the many benefits of DocuWare is its user-friendly interface that requires no code, allowing you to create various workflows quickly and effectively. Your workflow can be as simple or complex as you need for maximum efficiency.
Novatech is Your Resource for Business Automation
Novatech understands workflow automation is valuable to all businesses of all sizes, and DocuWare is a user-friendly solution, especially for highly secure industries dealing with multiple documents and employees. Maximizing efficiency, cutting costs, saving time, increasing consistency, securing documents, and encouraging teamwork are all reasons to invest in a workflow automation process.
Novatech will help your team map and plan a document workflow platform that is sensible and leverages all of the capabilities of programs like DocuWare. DocuWare is the number one document storage solution to provide you with the benefits of workflow automation. DocuWare is a robust document management software that will only help your business.
If you are ready to see for yourself how partnering with Novatech would substantially help your business, contact us today.
