Document Storage & Processing

Documents is a generic term for any structured or unstructured information that is contained in a single entity. Examples of a document may be an Microsoft office document (Word, Excel, Project plan etc), an image (either drawn, from a CAD package or scanned in), a data file (such as a CSV, XML, HTML file), or a catalogue file (such as a ZIP, or RAR compressed catalogue).

Metemation stores these items as 'documents' within an internal library. Think of documents as books within a virtual library. The room has virtual storage areas which may be anything from a file within a storage cabinet, a shelf, room or even a different building. All the books are there, but subject to which areas you can access defines which books or documents you can see.

Each book (or document) clearly has a title, but it also has a lot of other information regarding its location, who last read it, who has checked it out (so the librarian knows who to chase when it becomes overdue) and also some other cross-relating index information, so that the librarian knows what books or documents relate to different subjects.

The Metamation library has a back-catalogue as well. As new updated versions of documents become available, it removes the old copies off the shelves and replaces the document with the new version. But the old version is not lost. Instead, it is filed away for future reference just in case it is needed.

Because the books or documents are held in virtual locations (virtual rooms, shelves, cabinets, filing trays and so on), it is easy for the librarian to move these virtual stores around. When the virtual shelf or filing cabinet is moved, all the documents or books in that cabinet are automatically moved at the same time.

These virtual storage locations are referred to as Nodes within Metamation, and the books are called Documents.

Metamations jobs is to act as a virtual librarian, keeping the library up-to-date with the latest documents, keeping a note of who reads, checks in, or checks out documents, allowing new documents to be added to library with the necessary indexes for rapid retrieval, and to provide other services associated with the documents, such as controlling the review of new documents.

Documents can be submitted to the library either as general documents (which are stored in the correct location), or documents can be associated to structured data . Documents against data allows documents such as maps, invoices received, purchase orders, plans etc to be indexed to know structure data records, such as project files, customers, suppliers, staff or any type of other information.