The Workshare Blog

Improvements Provide Better Workshare Support Resources

cdoell — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:59:00 GMT

New Customer Service Team at Workshare
Following Alan Fraser’s May announcement “Customer and Industry Feedback Drives New Workshare Changes,“ we have continued to make improvements within our worldwide customer support infrastructure. Today I am pleased to announce new customer service teams in the London and San Francisco call centers.

These new teams will not only help you open new support cases via the phone (if that is your preference) and route you to a support engineer, but they can help address a large number of other non-technical issues like license key questions, support portal ID requests, software downloads, and customer order adjustments.

In the past these non-technical questions have been answered by technical support engineers and limited the resources available to troubleshoot and resolve technical issues. By splitting these non-technical queries off to a separate new team we expect to provide you with technical solutions more quickly.

This change was a direct result from the feedback customers have provided:

Make it easier to speak with someone at Workshare
To reduce the levels of automation
To increase the response times to support questions

Here are a few more things we are doing to address these needs:

Extended Support Resources
We have selected a small number of key global partners to provide complete end-to-end services to Workshare customers. These partners are currently undergoing extensive product and support process training. Workshare partners will utilize the same support systems the Workshare teams leverage and effectively double our global support capacity. This will provide more personal attention to every customer while still providing the full backing of the Workshare Support and Engineering teams.

Partners providing support will be introduced gradually as they become trained and ready to help you. Other than increased response times and more personal interactions you may not even notice a change as you will continue to use the Workshare support portal and manage support cases online as you always have.

Initiating Support Cases via Phone or Customer Portal
There have been three means to open up new support cases - via the customer support portal, by phone, and via email. Many customers have said the automated responses from email support requests are not helpful and it takes too long to get to the root of issue. Unfortunately this is typically due to the nature of email exchanges. It usually takes a few emails to gather all of the environmental details with which to begin diagnosing a potential problem. So we are effectively losing mutual time over the email medium as a means of starting to work on a support case.

Only by ensuring that the support team has the necessary variables up front can we expedite your resolutions, and both phone and customer portal options will ensure that happens right from the start. As such, effective August 1, 2009 we will adopt the industry standard practice of initiating new support cases via the phone or the customer support portal only. Once the case is open by these methods, we can communicate over email toward a resolution if you desire. Until that time we will continue to process inbound emails to open cases.

Your feedback continues to drive changes at Workshare and we truly appreciate your business. With over 14,000 organizations using Workshare software we make changes carefully, and always with an aim toward improving your experience. If you should have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Chris

Get a Scholarship to Attend ILTA 09 Conference

Alan Fraser — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:04:00 GMT

Workshare would like to help you attend the ILTA 2009 conference in Washington DC.

With a tough economy traveling to the conference has become a challenge for many in the legal community. Workshare will provide scholarships to five qualified members of the ILTA community. The scholarship will include travel costs, and conference registration fees (maximum of $2,000 per scholarship).

Workshare will hold a random drawing on July 23rd, 2009. To be eligible you simply need to be a current member of ILTA and send an email to ILTAScholarships@workshare.com. Include your name, position, firm or company name, and mailing address in the body of the email.

Submissions need to be received by no later than July 22.

Scott Smull Joins Workshare as Chief Financial Officer

David Brennan — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:00:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce Scott Smull has joined the Workshare team as Chief Financial Officer. Scott brings many years of financial leadership and we are excited to have him on board.

You can read Scott's bio on the management team page and the full announcement below:

Workshare Appoints Scott Smull Chief Financial Officer
CFO with 30 Years of Leadership Joins Workshare's Team

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., June 24, 2009 - Workshare announced Scott Smull has been named chief financial officer. Smull brings 30 years of finance experience to Workshare, including financial leadership, operations, managing mergers and acquisitions, and extensive experience leading software companies through various stages of growth.

Smull has financial experience in both large and small organizations, managing in complex environments, and establishing scalable, cost-effective processes and controls. Smull will oversee company financial operations, direct Workshare's growth and evaluate acquisition targets.

"Scott's proven leadership in all aspects of finance will help ensure Workshare continues to deliver competitive solutions to the legal industry," said Alan Fraser, chief executive officer of Workshare. "We are excited to have Scott join the team and help drive Workshare's growth."

"As a profitable company with 10 years of legal expertise Workshare is totally committed to the industry" said Smull. "I am excited to join a team where the management, board of directors, and investors are all focused on long term success. My goal is to ensure that all company financial matters are proactively addressed to allow Workshare to continue to provide exceptional service to the 14,000 organizations using the software."

Prior to joining Workshare, Scott served as Chief Financial Officer and COO for PriMetrica Asia, a marketing research and database solutions company located in six Southeast Asian countries. Additionally, Scott's experience includes several CFO positions in software based companies.

Visit Workshare in Booth 124 at Legal Tech West Coast

David Brennan — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:12:00 GMT

Workshare will be in booth 124 at the Legal Tech West Coast conference next week and we hope to see you there.

The show will open on June 24th and run through June 25th. Stop by the Workshare booth to see the latest product enhancements and to learn more about the upcoming service release for Workshare Professional and Workshare Protect.

You can follow the Legal Tech show updates on Twitter at twitter.com/LegalTechShow or learn more about the conference at www.legaltechshow.com.

In Memory of Chuck Nielson

Alan Fraser — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:39:00 GMT

It is with great sadness that I announce we lost Chuck Nielsen to pancreatic cancer on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009. Chuck has been a member of the Workshare team for over a year and has been a great contributor in his role as CFO.

It was a pleasure to have known such a great person and he will be missed. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Nielsen family.

In honor of Chuck’s memory donations are being made to the American Cancer Society.

Is Office 2007 Document Comparison Enough?

Kevin Docherty — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:00:00 GMT

We often get questions on the specific differences between Workshare Professional and the features offered in Microsoft Office 2007 for document comparison, metadata removal and document security.

Every organization’s software requirements are different but I have gathered the most common questions that are asked as customers migrate to Office 2007 and evaluate their need for a third party comparison application like Workshare Professional.

Questions to ask about document comparison features:

How accurate do you require the document comparison to be?
Will a comparison involving tables, numbering, and lists be compared accurately in Office 07?
Do you need to compare RTF, DOCX, DOC, HTML or Text only file formats?
Do you ever want to compare PDF to PDF or a Word to PDF?
How are embedded objects, images or excel tables compared within documents?
Do you need to be able to compare a scanned (OCR) or image based PDF?
Is a consolidated view to compare more than two documents important?
Are training costs a concern?
How easily can you accept and reject changes from multiple document reviewers?
In addition to Track Changes, are redline format options in PDF, DOC, DOCX, RTF, or XML a priority to you? How fast do you need the document comparison to run?
How flexible or customizable do you need rendering set functionality to be?
Would you like to print only the pages with redline changes?
Is DMS integration a necessity?
Would you like document comparison features integrated with your email application to speed workflow?
Will each document comparison solution provide the same level of support on issues that arise over complex documents or templates?

Questions to ask about PDF features:

Do you need PDF to Word conversion?
What file formats are supported?
Are PDF security options a priority?
Does combining files into one PDF (PDF Bibles) offer value?
Do you work within a DMS and require the ability to create PDF files from there?
Would you like to enforce a policy to make sure everyone converts specific documents to PDF?

Questions to ask about metadata features:

Do you need all hidden data elements to be identified by the software solution?
Is performance important? Do you want to avoid being slowed down by your metadata cleaning software?
Does metadata cleaning need to be enforced for scenarios important to your organization - Outlook, Lotus Notes, Outlook Web Access, BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile Devices?
Is the user experience easy to use and/or customize, or will training be a requirement?
Would you like to be able to configure the application to exclude important metadata items like document reference ID’s, headers and footers?

Other questions to consider:

Are other matter-centric security features important such as removable media encryption, blocking file transfers to USB devices, or full disc encryption?
Would you like to classify and tag documents for their sensitivity?
Are redaction features available and easy to use?
Would you like to be able to identify proprietary content within emails or documents?
Are centralized policy management, policy distribution and software deployment tools important?
Would you like to have visibility into metadata risks, and monitor, track and audit policies?

If you are in the process of evaluating legal document management software solutions you may also benefit from reading these latest research reports by Osterman Research; A Guide to Managing Documents in Today’s Law Firms, and A Guide to Document Comparison and Security For Corporate Legal.

Document Redaction is Coming in Workshare Protect 6.2 SR2

Matthew Brown — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:11:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce the availability of the Workshare Protect 6.2 SR2 Release Candidate.

Just like the Release Candidate for Workshare Professional that was announced last week, the new version of Workshare Protect has been very focused on improving product quality. If you missed it be sure to read the post on Professional for more details on how we realigned resources, improved processes and focused the entire engineering team on product quality to improve these products.

Besides improved quality and a 50% reduction in the size of the installation package, there are a few new features being introduced:

Permanently Remove Sensitive Information (Document Redaction)
Now you can redact (black out) selected content in Microsoft Word (DOC and DOCX) documents so that it is no longer discernible. Use document redaction tools to black out sensitive information and permanently delete the content from your document. Document redaction will replace your text with “pipes” (||||||) on a black background.

Redaction is designed to permanently remove content within a document and to put an indicator in its place showing a redaction occurred. By including document redaction Workshare customers will have one more tool to remove and protect sensitive information before distributing documents outside their organization.

Metadata Discovery in Password-Protected Documents
Password-protected documents that contain metadata now prompt you to clean in order to prevent future discovery of metadata.

Previewing Cleaned Attachments & PDF Conversions
When cleaning email attachments, or converting them to PDF, you can now preview the cleaned attachment or the PDF before sending your email.

> You can download the Workshare Protect 6.2 SR2 Release Candidate here. Availability of the final version will be announced in the coming weeks.

Release Candidate Now Available: Workshare Professional 5.2 SR2

Kevin Docherty — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:34:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce the availability of the Release Candidate for Workshare Professional 5.2 SR2.

Even though new features typically make the headlines, the excitement around the upcoming release of our leading document comparison product is about the commitment Workshare made to product quality in June of 2008.

A year ago Workshare realigned resources, improved processes and focused the entire engineering team on product quality. As part of the process we embarked on six months of quality assurance testing in over 500 customer environments to ensure a high level of product quality.

So even though quality can’t be made exciting with new screenshots, a few good statistics can also get the heart pumping. Here are a few improvements the release of Workshare Professional 5.2 SR2 will provide over the last release:

Comparing large documents just got 22% faster
Scanning documents for hidden metadata is now 44% faster
Converting large documents into PDF, 27% faster
A 59% reduction in the size of the installation package
A 17% reduction in the time it takes to install the product

Our beta customers have noticed the product quality improvements and we believe you will to. But just in case you also wanted to know about the new and enhanced features I’ve put that list together as well:

Comparison of Embedded Excel Tables
You can now accurately compare Microsoft Excel tables that are embedded in Microsoft Word documents. Please note the comparison is of the text in the tables not of the formulae.

Image Comparison
Workshare Professional’s comparison functionality now includes the comparison of images. After running a comparison you will see whether an image has been modified, deleted or inserted.

OCR Support
Working with scanned documents just got easier with optional OCR technology from ABBYY integrated into Workshare Professional.

PDF Combine
Combining many different files such as documents, emails, spreadsheets and graphics into one PDF file just got easier with an enhanced user interface and file support for DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, PDF, TXT and HTML. Clean metadata before conversion, apply security settings, and manipulate and organize pages, and save the state of your binder as a workbook. You can also integrate the feature with your document management system.

Permanently Remove Sensitive Information
You can now redact (black out) selected content in Microsoft Word (DOC and DOCX) documents so that it is no longer discernible. Use redaction tools to black out sensitive information and permanently delete the content from your document. Text redaction replaces the text with “pipes” (||||||) on a black background.

Cleaning Password-Protected Documents
You can now clean hidden data from password-protected documents and prevent inadvertently circulating documents with metadata.

Previewing Cleaned or PDF Attachments
When cleaning email attachments, or converting them to PDF, you can now preview the cleaned attachment or the PDF before sending your email.

Workshare Connector for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007
With this optional integration you are now able to browse, access and compare SharePoint documents

> You can download the Release Candidate here. Availability of the final version will be announced in the coming weeks.

Customer Feedback on Workshare SR2 Beta

David Brennan — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:48:00 GMT

I wanted to thank all of our customers who participated in the SR2 beta program and let everyone know that the winners of the beta contest have been notified. It’s always exciting to be able to receive customer input and reward them for their participation and feedback.

I thought I would share a few of the comments the Workshare team received from beta users of Workshare Professional 5.2 SR2:

“My comments about the experience are all positive you will be pleased to hear! When I did run into difficulties, the team were very quick to respond and had a good understanding of the product and solutions to get me resolved and working again very quickly, which in a busy environment is crucial. I worked closely with the team originally as I had some installation problems, which were mainly due to our environment, but again, all resolved in a timely and professional manner. Many thanks.”
Annette Brown, Milbank

“The Beta is very well organized, with complete documentation, scripts and expectations laid out. While I always deviate from any scripted testing (too much experience with users) it's extremely helpful to know what paces the program should be put through. The ability to mark embedded Excel files is a huge enhancement. Document compare is a critical program for us. Secondly, I continue to be impressed with your support group. An initial problem with installation was quickly resolved by a most helpful tech person. Questions and issues have been addressed promptly. This has been our experience with Workshare in general, and it continues through the Beta testing.”
Marie Pisarek, Chapman and Cutler LLP

“I'm very excited about the new features which are available in the next release of Workshare 5.2. In addition to Workshare's "Fast" comparison option and its ability to correctly identify the "best method" for comparing files, I think will be most beneficial new features to the legal community are:

Redaction - The tool is fast and efficient!
PDF comparisons - Not just comparing to each other, but being able to compare a PDF to a Word document... wow!
Multi-version comparisons - Quickly and easily loading files from multiple editors to view their changes will certainly streamline workflows

I look forward to seeing the final release and am certain our people will embrace it.”
Karen MacKenzie, Greenberg Traurig, P.A.

Thank you again for all the input and dedication to helping make the SR2 release successful.

New Guides on Legal Document Management

David Brennan — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce the availability of two new legal document management guides by collaboration expert Mike Osterman of Osterman Research.

Sharing documents often creates a mish-mash of document management practices, version control problems, and lost productivity. These guides look at these key challenges and the technology that can help you exchange documents and manage review cycles easier.

These guides are intended to help corporate counsel, lawyers, IT professionals, and senior management understand the key issues with legal document collaboration.

You can download these guides and other reports here.

Customer and Industry Feedback Drives New Workshare Changes

Alan Fraser — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Over the past six months I have met with more than 150 customers, 40 partners and multiple legal organizations like the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) to identify how Workshare can change to better meet the needs of the legal community. A clear message came from everyone I spoke with; improve product quality, increase support resources, reduce organizational complexity, and simplify policies and processes.

The improvements outlined below will allow us to continue to improve upon the technical and account management resources available to you while maintaining and strengthening our ability to support the legal community. Some of these changes have been implemented, and some will be phased in slowly to provide the appropriate transition.

Extended Support Resources
Your overall customer experience is important to us. We have revamped our reseller program and have selected a small number of key global partners to provide complete end-to-end services. For the past two months we have worked on a transition plan to equip these partners with the tools they need to support our customers. This includes pre-sales information and training, implementation services, and customer support. By focusing our resources on partners offering services beyond the sale, we are doubling the support resources available to customers.

Continued Improvement to Product Quality
As communicated in December of 2008, we improved product quality with changes to the engineering organization and product launch. Product quality improvements to the Workshare Professional Service Release (SR1) have been a result of customer input and validation. The upcoming Workshare Professional Service Release (SR2) extends these improvements with the much appreciated feedback from over 500 beta testers. We will continue to evaluate internal processes, as well as invest in needed resources, to ensure product quality only improves.

Workshare is Committed to the Legal Industry
For more than 10 years, Workshare has provided industry leading technology to the legal industry. As a profitable company we will continue to invest in technology, support and training resources all with the sole focus on the legal community.

With the changes outlined above, and 96% of all Workshare DeltaView customers now migrated to the Workshare Professional platform, we are in a strong position to focus and serve the needs of the legal community.

With 14,000 customers and one million legal professionals using Workshare software we do not take change lightly. If you should have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Alan

Sneak Peak at Upcoming PDF Enhancements

Matthew Brown — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:15:00 GMT

The PDF software used in today’s law offices goes well beyond the basic functionality of simply converting a document to a PDF file format for enhanced security. With today’s technology you can convert almost anything into a PDF, convert a PDF back into Word for editing, add and manipulate pages within a PDF, and the list of features goes on and on. But one feature that has always brought convenience and excitement to the legal community is the ability to combine multiple client matter files into a single PDF.

Combining files into one PDF becomes extremely useful when court submissions are required to be submitted as a PDF, or when a project is finished and you need to send a 3rd party the client matter information in PDF format. Since case information can include contracts, financial spreadsheets and email conversations, and live in local file repositories or in document management systems, PDF solutions need to be flexible, easy to use, and able to combine whatever you throw at them.

With that in mind Workshare has spent considerable time talking with technical staff in law offices, and the legal professionals who use the software on a daily basis, about how to enhance PDF functionality for the legal community. With the Workshare beta program in its third month customers have provided an abundance of guidance to help us refine and improve the technology we will announce with the next release of Workshare Professional.

Since pictures speak louder than words I thought I would give you a sneak peak at one of the PDF feature enhancements (don’t tell anyone):

Beta Update: Workshare Professional

David Brennan — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

The next release of Workshare Professional is currently in beta so I thought it would be a good time to check in with Matthew Brown, V.P. of Product Marketing, to get an update. Matt’s based in our London office so as I was sleeping in San Francisco he was answering my questions via email.

Dave: I’ve been at Workshare for 6 years, but that pales in comparison to your Workshare experience. How long have you been in the product group?
Matt: About 10, when you write it down and look at the number it seems like a really long time.

Dave: So you’ve been through quite a few product releases. With the organizational changes this past year and the significant increase in resources going into product development, how is this release different than those in the past?
Matt: Over the past year, we have redefined the way we release products. We have introduced more rigorous and consistent release planning and QA that has resulted in more predictable release schedules and a zero "priority one" policy for all releases. The SR1 release in Sept 08, and the upcoming SR2 release are of the highest quality and a direct result of the changes. This is also reflected by the 500+ beta testers telling us that they are extremely happy with the progress that has been made.

Dave: So overall the beta is progressing as planned?
Matt: Yes, the process and product quality is what we expected at this phase. But we have actually lengthened the beta program and taken more time to test the product than originally planned. We’re determined to release a quality product that is beyond anything our customers have experienced in the past.

Dave: What is getting beta customers the most excited?
Matt: There are a number of new features that are getting beta testers talking; your favorite feature is not necessarily my favorite feature. But one that I will share with you is the enhancements to comparison functionality. When you think of comparing word documents you often think of accurately detecting text changes, but the ability to detect changes to an image, a scanned PDF, or an embedded excel table are some of the requirements we will have significant advances in.

Dave: What else can you reveal about the next version of Professional?
Matt: Check back next week and I’ll provide a sneak peek into the advancements around combining files into a single PDF. Sometimes this is referred to as PDF Bibleing, or “packaging up” all matter related documents into one PDF. The current version has basic PDF combine functionality, but we spent a lot of time updating the functionality as well as the usability (the feature is now user friendly) . And the feedback we’re getting is making it easier to sleep at night.

Post a comment if you’d like to me ask the product management team a specific question, or stay tuned for the next update.

Workshare on Linkedin and Twitter

David Brennan — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:50:00 GMT

Besides this blog, the community forums and the newsletters there are now two more ways to stay connected with Workshare - Twitter and Linkedin. Currently we post corporate updates on each of these social networking sites, but you can also find Workshare employees on these sites to interact with. If you have another website you think we should be on just let us know.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/workshareinc

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/companies/workshare

New Patent For Document Collaboration Technology

David Brennan — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:27:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce that Workshare has been awarded another technology patent, this one focused on document collaboration technology.

When an author of a document is using a document management system (DMS) to work with one or more contributing authors on a document, Workshare's technology provides a unique ability to control the master document while allowing all of the authors to contribute to it. Read the full announcement below:

Workshare Receives U.S. Patent For Document Collaboration Technology

Over 1 Million Professionals Utilize Workshare For Document Version Control

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 29, 2009 - Workshare announced it was awarded a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, patent number 7,496,841, "Method and System For Document Collaboration", which extends document collaboration technology between a managing author using a document management system (DMS) and one or more contributing authors. The ability to control the master document while multiple contributors simultaneously edit the document outside the DMS represents a technology leap for document version control.

Historically document management systems have provided the infrastructure for document version control where a managing author needs to maintain control over the evolution of the document. By leveraging Workshare with traditional systems, as well as new technologies like Microsoft SharePoint, organizations can improve the control and security of a document while greatly increasing user productivity and their return on the DMS investment.

Changes made to documents posted to collaborative workspaces are automatically tracked, extracted, and synchronized with changes made from all other contributor sources, such as review copies returned by email. Workshare's solutions are used by more than one million legal professionals to easily control the master document version while enforcing corporate security policies to remove hidden or proprietary information.

Some of the most compelling solutions today improve the ROI of existing infrastructure investments," said Workshare General Manager Babak Salimi. "This latest patent represents Workshare's commitment to delivering innovative document solutions that make people more productive and simplify the task of managing document exchanges."

Workshare delivers a combination of desktop and server products that allow knowledge workers to create and collaborate on documents and securely share information with users within and outside an organization. With Workshare, organizations can deliver reliable document comparison and review, and ensure the necessary compliance and risk management processes are enforced in order to protect sensitive information.