Document collaboration is often used to describe file sharing to allow many individuals to access and collaborate on the same document.  Individuals and teams inside and outside of an organization's secure firewall face the daily challenge of trying to efficiently collaborate on documents in a continuing effort to leverage intellectual resources.  CIO's are challenged to manage security, to monitor traffic and to maintain the storage of these modified "draft" documents, e-mail messages and potentially thousands of pages of redlined or renamed documents.

Document collaboration is required in many critical processes.  Ensuring that the output of any critical process is delivered with the quality, speed and security required in today's competitive environment can separate one firm from their toughest competitor.  Document collaboration using intranets, extranets and portals can dramatically affect all of these aspects.  What document collaboration system would provide the most leverage for your firm?

Intranets and Document Collaboration
Intranets allow for file sharing with colleagues within an organization.  When document collaboration is required, the author of a draft document uploads his or her file to the company's secure server allowing all or identified users inside a company's firewall access to this document.  Once accessed, the reviewer would be required to save a modified version of the author's document as a new revision.   What started as one draft document can quickly grow to dozens of revised draft documents on a server.

Intranets do not allow for synchronous or simultaneous collaboration.  The reviewers would be required to submit their revisions or modification as a new document, giving the author dozens of new files to sort through.  For the owner of the document, this creates a need to review what may grow to dozens of modified or renamed documents, potentially thousands of pages of revisions to monitor or review who said what.  Document collaboration using this system can be tedious for the document owner, contributing to decreased efficiency, thus hindering the speed and potentially the quality of output.  For the CIO, document collaboration using an intranet system is not viable for external reviewers due to security considerations.

Extranets and Document Collaboration
Extranets allow file sharing with clients or outside reviewers with built-in security and access control.  In most cases, extranet functionality is identical to the intranet functionality and workflow described above with the exception of allowing access to users outside of a secure firewall.

Much like intranets, the key element that is missing is the ability to allow synchronous or simultaneous collaboration.  Synchronous collaboration would add the ability to view all changes in real time, while simultaneous collaboration means the ability to allow all reviewers to work on the same document at the exact same time.

Portals and Document Collaboration
Portals serve as a platform allowing shared applications, information and files inside a preconfigured dashboard.  Employing portals for document collaboration would be considered a good start, offering users the functionality similar to extranets.

A portal interface is generally friendlier than that of the traditional extranet.  Traditional extranets are restricted to being merely a "file server," where portals tend to have an enhanced user interface, often incorporating calendaring and other desirable features.  Another differentiation between extranets and portals is the perception and perhaps the reality that the document exists in what is accepted as "neutral space."

While portals allow for both internal and external users to participate in document collaboration, multiple applications and expanded file sharing beyond intranets and extranets, none of the portals on the market allow for effective synchronous or simultaneous collaboration.

Document Collaboration Software
The function that is missed in all intranets, extranets and portals is the absence of one single live document that all reviewers work on without the need for every user or invited reviewer to create a new version.  This tremendous shortcoming is the force fueling dramatic advances in document collaboration software.

With document collaboration software, the author of a document defines a collaboration tree, a list of users invited to collaborate on a document.  That document is then posted on a secure server, perhaps a neutral location or the owner's server.  The document is then reviewed by invited users and submitted back to the author's system.  The collaboration software then "databases" all the suggested changes and comments, allowing the author to concurrently view all additions, modifications, and recommendations of anyone invited to participate, all on one screen, without opening multiple versions of the document.  Paragraph-by-paragraph, the owner can view the original document concurrently while viewing all contributors' suggested changes.  The draft owner may accept or decline any one of the invitees' changes and can make document revision decisions rapidly.

Document collaboration software captures all changes, all contributors' revisions, embedding this information into a database linked to this living document.  This database function allows users to maintain a full audit trail of all suggested changes and full history of the revisions in the document by person, date, topic and various other criteria with little effort.  This software allows for quick review and future clarification, including a detailed map of the evolution and life of this document.  In essence, document collaboration software utilizing the database functionality virtually eliminates the need for maintaining dozens, hundreds, or potentially thousands of redlined and renamed copies of a document.

In addition to the enhanced efficiency of the document collaboration process, firms enjoy significant increase in the quality, productivity and speed of collaborative document output, which directly benefits the firm and its clients.  For the CIO, there is the additional benefit of reducing the volume of overall server storage capacity requirements.  Many firms are required to utilize multiple high-capacity storage devices just to store both e-mail and the thousands of duplicates of the same or modified document.  Rather than requiring users to store modified or renamed versions of the same document, document collaboration software embeds all users' contributions as a database, eliminating the storage for duplicate files.

Document collaboration software with digital rights management can also add more than the basic access control.  For example, it is possible to limit reviewers' ability to view the entire document; certain paragraphs can be added to a protected "side bar" so only selected reviewers can view them.  It is also possible to restrict who can view everyone's suggested changes or redistribute the document.  Since only the owner can make the actual modifications in the "real" document, it is also important to have the ability to assign the ownership role to another individual, either temporarily or permanently.

True collaboration software allows the user to invite internal as well as external reviewers without compromising any security parameters and should have the capabilities of being fully integrated with portals and DMS, to enhance the file sharing and versioning capability.  This would allow users to transfer live documents from the DMS or portal to a collaborative environment and use a side-by-side database to capture changes without creating multiple versions.

The current intranet, extranet and portal delivery methods of sequential document collaboration including posting, accessing, opening and reviewing the "redlined" or manually "red-penned" copies of a draft document is seemingly archaic.  Integration of document collaboration software would allow for easy assimilation of input, seamless inclusion of internal and external reviewers, speedy resolution of issues and significantly improved negotiation and collaboration processes.  Internal systems, software and firewalls would remain secure.  Extranets and portals will be "turbo charged" to function as more than just a "file server."  Document collaboration software can give your operation the power to efficiently leverage intellectual resources, to operate with increased executive productivity, and to more efficiently function in an environment driven by rising administrative costs and tight timelines.  What is in your firm's document collaboration future?

About our author . . .

Deepak Massand founded Litéra Corp. (www.litera.com) in 2001 to develop software to enhance the quality, speed and security of document change management and executive collaboration for law firms, internal counsel, corporate governance and regulatory compliance executives.  He has been featured as an expert speaker at LegalTech in New York, and participated as an expert panel member on ABA Business section panel meetings regarding information technology.  Deepak can be reached at dmassand@litera.com.