The City of Langford, B.C. expects to boost productivity and enhance file search capabilities through its new document management system.
The new system – based on Microsoft Corp.’s Share Point Portal server – is expected to speed up and streamline processing of around two million pages of text.
And that’s a far cry from the situation until recently, when Langford used to index all this content but – according to Mike Palmer, information systems administrator at the city – was “very disorganized” with it’s filing.
By contrast, he said, the Share Point server is “really good at indexing content both inside and outside the portal.” He said the municipality has a high volume of content on file servers that can be indexed from the portal with City employees being none the wiser.
And why was Microsoft selected?
According to Palmer, the city reviewed options from rival content management software vendors as well, but the fact that Langford is largely a Microsoft IT shop helped with the decision.
Share Point was integrated into the city’s IT infrastructure which includes Live Communications Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003, and Outlook 2003, as well as a document scanning program.
While a traditional document management offering would provide the necessary controls, it wasn’t going to help with the city’s collaboration needs, Palmer said. “We were coming at it from a couple of different angles [which included] portals and document management.”
There’s yet another difference between Langford’s setup and a traditional system, according to Rick Martin, a municipality practice leader with Vancouver-based Haba
