One of the most useful components of SharePoint has to be document management. Using SharePoint for document management can not only streamline your business and increase productivity; it can do so in an especially cost-effective way.

First, let’s take a look at what exactly SharePoint can do in terms of document management. SharePoint allows you to:

•    Store, organize and find your organization’s documents.
•    Guarantee that a document is consistent from one user to the next.
•    Manage the meta data for your documents.
•    Protect documents from unauthorized use.
•    Maintain specific business practices and workflows for your document management.

When you use SharePoint for document management, you create a “Document Center site.” [The Document Center is not available in WSS 3.0, but WSS 3.0 can be customized for similar features]. SharePoint (MOSS) includes a template for this type of site. This kind of site is optimized for creating, accessing and keeping high amounts of documents.
These sites offer users a number of document management features, including document versioning and required check-out, both of which help to insure the integrity of a given document. These features insure that team members don’t accidentally overwrite the work of someone else.

SharePoint also lets you utilize content types. Content types are groups of settings that can be used over and over again for specific types of documents. Content types let you organize and manage specific types of documents in a uniform way all across your organization. For example, you can create a content type that relates to product information, or one that relates to specific procedures to be followed within your organization.

Using document metadata in SharePoint is just another way of being able to locate specific documents and to be sure you’ve got the most accurate and current version of that document. When you create, edit or even open a document in SharePoint, you can edit the server properties in the Document Information Panel.

In addition, SharePoint integrates the metadata created by Microsoft Office applications, storing that on the SharePoint server as well.

SharePoint also helps to insure that your document management is secure. It provides you several different methods for protecting your documents from unauthorized use. For example, you can apply IRM (Information Rights Management) to help protect your entire document library. The IRM allows you to set limits on what specific actions users will be allowed to take when they access, or try to access, files from SharePoint. Using IRM, you can enforce your company’s policies that relate to controlling proprietary and/or confidential documents, data and information.

There are other layers of security that SharePoint provides, as well. You can sue SharePoint to prevent people from being able to access a document that is in the draft process, using major and minor versions of the documents. IN addition, you can also set up permissions on specific folders, individual documents or even list items.

Finally, SharePoint allows you to manage your document workflows effectively. From the creation of a document through the review, approval and signature processes, SharePoint tracks and manages the document’s life cycle for you.
If you need a document management solution, SharePoint is definitely worth a look.