Advice Request Good apps for office work?

[spiritedawaymadmax]

We need a way to smooth out the workflow at the office, especially since the boss hired a few remote workers last month. I expected things to get lost in translation until everyone learned the ropes (and they did), but I fear some of the mistakes might keep on repeating if we don't refresh the process in general. I've been tracing the origin of some of the issues and it seems that the main cause is poor communication between the team. Granted, some of the new guys work at different hours than the rest (they also live in a different time zone), and a few times now it happened that we failed to notice the latest changes they've done during their shift, and ended up re-doing what's already been done... The simple reason for this is that they named the file (doc, PDF, whatever) in a slightly incorrect manner, so the rest of the team didn't realize that it was the latest version after searching for it in the usual manner.
So, I think we need an app that can find a specific doc or pdf just by keyword, and will also provide version control so that the more experienced members can inspect the latest changes done by others. I know there are free DMS tools that can perform some of that, but I believe genuine software would serve us better in the long run. We're using Windows btw, so I'd prefer something easily compatible with that OS, wouldn't want to spend long afternoons just to set things up... Any tips?

 

[Ink]

The simple reason for this is that they named the file (doc, PDF, whatever) in a slightly incorrect manner, so the rest of the team didn't realize that it was the latest version after searching for it in the usual manner.

Is this the main issue?

Are you also looking for a document writer and editor?

Noticed you mentioned doc, but docx should be the standard when using Word.

• .DOC up to Word 2003
• .DOCX from Word 2007 to current day
• .ODT for non-Microsoft proprietary files

For context: LibreOffice has implemented better support for .docx than Microsoft Office has for .odt.

Anti-work: We are not paid to rename documents.
Source: Humans are lazy, dumb or both.

 

[spiritedawaymadmax]

haha thanks for the joke, though it's not really a joke if it's the truth, right?

Yeah, we need a tool to help us with editing docx that we've turned into PDFs as well, we did that for some of the older SOPs to safeguard them from accidental changes. But the feature that'll probably help us the most right now is automatic routing of new files and scans - some apps allow the user to set rules (a path) that will arrange itself in order, so to speak. So, all docx or scans with a phrase like "invoice-Sep-23(customer name)" go in the file made for invoices only for that customer, for example. And if it has version control, we'll never again have to wonder who put a certain file in that particular folder or when they made the latest changes to it.
Aside from that, I think we can benefit from a feature that converts PDFs into docx ("scan to Word"), and a number of DMS tools seem to allow for it as well. They do not cost the same though, so I turned on my "research mode" for the time being, naturally. It's still not easy, one article mentions apps like Paperwise, M-Files, FileCenter, NetDocuments, another one throws in Nagix, Juro, SwipeGuide, Legito, a third one - a third set of DMS apps, and so on... Nothing to do but start with a free trial somewhere and see where it takes us, I suppose...