DocuWare vs Microsoft Office 365
March 16, 2021 12:21 PM Subscribe
I'm assisting a small non-profit organization that has issues with managing their files. They are interested in DocuWare, but it's very expensive. Can they gain some of the same benefits by using Microsoft Office 365?
The organization currently uses an on-premise Windows file server, and it's a god-awful mess. It's hard to find anything, and it's chock full of obsolete files. A sales rep recently did a demo of DocuWare, and everyone was quite impressed. But the monthly cost and the three-year contract are daunting.
Everyone in the organization currently uses Microsoft Office 2016 installed locally on each Windows desktop. The organization is looking to upgrade to Office 365 anyway, so I'm wondering if they actually need DocuWare, or if the upgraded Office suite will fit the bill.
I wanted to test Office 365 myself, but I ran into a roadblock. I tried to install it on my computer, but I can't do it without first uninstalling the local version of Office – and I would really prefer not to do that.
Here are some of the functions that are particularly relevant to this organization:
The organization currently uses an on-premise Windows file server, and it's a god-awful mess. It's hard to find anything, and it's chock full of obsolete files. A sales rep recently did a demo of DocuWare, and everyone was quite impressed. But the monthly cost and the three-year contract are daunting.
Everyone in the organization currently uses Microsoft Office 2016 installed locally on each Windows desktop. The organization is looking to upgrade to Office 365 anyway, so I'm wondering if they actually need DocuWare, or if the upgraded Office suite will fit the bill.
I wanted to test Office 365 myself, but I ran into a roadblock. I tried to install it on my computer, but I can't do it without first uninstalling the local version of Office – and I would really prefer not to do that.
Here are some of the functions that are particularly relevant to this organization:
- Creating workflows that involve having several parties sign-off on specific documents
- Scanning paper documents (invoices, contracts, etc.) and having them be OCR'ed so that they are searchable by full text
- Scanning a backlog of older documents that they need to retain for audit purposes
- Securely sharing documents with outside vendors
- Creating a permanent "vault" of important documents like board minutes, standard operating procedures, contracts, equipment manuals, etc.
Response by poster: Thanks, @alchemist. To clarify: Yes, the organization qualifies for non-profit pricing, and their current Office 2016 licenses were dirt-cheap. Also, DocuWare offers only a modest discount for non-profits. But even aside from pricing, I'm interested in whether the Microsoft product (maybe with the add-ons you mentioned?) can provide similar functionality to DocuWare.
posted by akk2014 at 12:37 PM on March 16, 2021
posted by akk2014 at 12:37 PM on March 16, 2021
-Creating workflows that involve having several parties sign-off on specific documents
- Sharepoint online has an approval workflow tool
- Scanning paper documents (invoices, contracts, etc.) and having them be OCR'ed so that they are searchable by full text
- I have not tried it but I can see the Onenote has a "copy text from image" function
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/copy-text-from-pictures-and-file-printouts-using-ocr-in-onenote-93a70a2f-ebcd-42dc-9f0b-19b09fd775b4
- Scanning a backlog of older documents that they need to retain for audit purposes
- see above
- Securely sharing documents with outside vendors
- Teams allows you to do this, but user creation is via Azure AD, such as "Azure B2B", or creating guest users
- Creating a permanent "vault" of important documents like board minutes, standard operating procedures, contracts, equipment manuals, etc.
- Sharepoint can do this and help with metadata, views, and search
posted by alchemist at 12:52 PM on March 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
- Sharepoint online has an approval workflow tool
- Scanning paper documents (invoices, contracts, etc.) and having them be OCR'ed so that they are searchable by full text
- I have not tried it but I can see the Onenote has a "copy text from image" function
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/copy-text-from-pictures-and-file-printouts-using-ocr-in-onenote-93a70a2f-ebcd-42dc-9f0b-19b09fd775b4
- Scanning a backlog of older documents that they need to retain for audit purposes
- see above
- Securely sharing documents with outside vendors
- Teams allows you to do this, but user creation is via Azure AD, such as "Azure B2B", or creating guest users
- Creating a permanent "vault" of important documents like board minutes, standard operating procedures, contracts, equipment manuals, etc.
- Sharepoint can do this and help with metadata, views, and search
posted by alchemist at 12:52 PM on March 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
A lot of the question is whether you can support the integrations/setup of O365 -- my understanding is that Docuware does a lot of that out of the box.
Workflows, scanning and OCR, secure sharing, and vaulting documents are all things that can be implemented in one way or another in O365 and/or Azure.
Most to all of them are going to require some implementation and building out your requirements . Secure sharing means a different thing to me than to you, I'm certain. Similarly, OCR is of limited use as a requirement until you can specify the accuracy you need.
Personally, I'd lean the O365 route because you can put the difference in cost towards support/training/implementation in the first year, then repurpose those dollars for other things. It's also going to be much cheaper and easier to find an O365 contractor than a Docuware contractor.
posted by bfranklin at 12:52 PM on March 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
Workflows, scanning and OCR, secure sharing, and vaulting documents are all things that can be implemented in one way or another in O365 and/or Azure.
Most to all of them are going to require some implementation and building out your requirements . Secure sharing means a different thing to me than to you, I'm certain. Similarly, OCR is of limited use as a requirement until you can specify the accuracy you need.
Personally, I'd lean the O365 route because you can put the difference in cost towards support/training/implementation in the first year, then repurpose those dollars for other things. It's also going to be much cheaper and easier to find an O365 contractor than a Docuware contractor.
posted by bfranklin at 12:52 PM on March 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Lol Sharepoint has been ruining my day for 3 solid years now so I would advise using literally anything else, particularly as you want searchability and outside vendor sharing. It all is technically possible within Sharepoint but we are finding consistently that it does not work as advertised.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 3:33 PM on March 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 3:33 PM on March 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
Friends don't let friends get involved with Sharepoint if they can avoid it, but I'm an internet rando and not (yet) a friend.
Office 2016 will end-of-life and the plan can probably be made to adapt and adopt in a few years. A bit more structure supporting better processes are things you'll have to build along the way that have nothing to do with Docuware or Sharepoint.
posted by k3ninho at 3:38 PM on March 16, 2021
Office 2016 will end-of-life and the plan can probably be made to adapt and adopt in a few years. A bit more structure supporting better processes are things you'll have to build along the way that have nothing to do with Docuware or Sharepoint.
posted by k3ninho at 3:38 PM on March 16, 2021
Best answer: alchemist and bfranklyn have covered your specific questions and FWIW I'll +1 them.
To those people who've had bad experiences with SharePoint, I feel for you. I've used it for 10 years from on-prem to purely online, and I think it's wonderful, but I've been fortunate to have good admins initially, and latterly to be an admin myself.
The blessing of SharePoint is that it can do so many things, but unfortunately the curse of SharePoint is also that it can do so many things. It is easy for inexperienced people to set it up in such a way as to make it difficult to use, and it's easy to configure it so that sharing is very difficult, under the guise of "security".
Every time I hear someone tell me how awful SharePoint is, it turns out it's been misconfigured, or deliberately configured in such a way as to make it awful for the users. Done right, SharePoint is a phenomenally beneficial document management tool. Done badly, it's horrible.
Personally I would go with SharePoint because it's easy to find experts who will work with you to configure it the way you need it configured., and it's very tightly integrated with Teams and Office. But if you are not able/willing to pay someone to set it up, and also to have a member of staff get trained up in how to deal with (especially) permissions and site/library administration, I wouldn't recommend it.
It's a very powerful tool, and like all powerful tools you can do a lot of dumb things with it if you don't know how to use it (ask me how I know). It's not rocket science, but because it is so big and can do so many things it is a career in itself for many people.
posted by underclocked at 7:45 AM on March 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
To those people who've had bad experiences with SharePoint, I feel for you. I've used it for 10 years from on-prem to purely online, and I think it's wonderful, but I've been fortunate to have good admins initially, and latterly to be an admin myself.
The blessing of SharePoint is that it can do so many things, but unfortunately the curse of SharePoint is also that it can do so many things. It is easy for inexperienced people to set it up in such a way as to make it difficult to use, and it's easy to configure it so that sharing is very difficult, under the guise of "security".
Every time I hear someone tell me how awful SharePoint is, it turns out it's been misconfigured, or deliberately configured in such a way as to make it awful for the users. Done right, SharePoint is a phenomenally beneficial document management tool. Done badly, it's horrible.
Personally I would go with SharePoint because it's easy to find experts who will work with you to configure it the way you need it configured., and it's very tightly integrated with Teams and Office. But if you are not able/willing to pay someone to set it up, and also to have a member of staff get trained up in how to deal with (especially) permissions and site/library administration, I wouldn't recommend it.
It's a very powerful tool, and like all powerful tools you can do a lot of dumb things with it if you don't know how to use it (ask me how I know). It's not rocket science, but because it is so big and can do so many things it is a career in itself for many people.
posted by underclocked at 7:45 AM on March 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
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https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/nonprofit/office-365-nonprofit-plans-and-pricing?activetab=tab%3aprimaryr1
you can see if they qualify and maybe can get it for free, or free-ish.
posted by alchemist at 12:31 PM on March 16, 2021