New features of Open Bee DMS platform
New features enrich the Open Bee DMS platform with the release of version 6.12. Here is a presentation of the new software products: Open Bee Portal and Open Bee Sphere!
New features of Open Bee DMS platform
1. Online Edition
Document preview
The Online Edition – Office 365 add-on comes with Open Bee Portal and Open Bee Sphere 6.12. This feature allows you to view content via Office 365 and co-edit documents online.
- Preview Office documents in Open Bee as an embedded Office 365 experience.
- Benefit from a greater experience to preview your Excel spreadsheets and to navigate through tabs.
Collaborate on documents in real time
With the integration of the Office 365 plug-in in Open Bee DMS, you can collaborate with others on a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or PowerPoint presentation, with everyone having the document open at the same time.
- Office 365 Experience: Each Office document (Excel, Word, PPT) can now be opened and edited in Open Bee Online thanks to the Office 365 Plug-in. Editing files requires an appropriate Microsoft Office plan subscription. Each Open Bee Portal user must have an Office 365 account (only required for online edition).
- Co-authoring in real time: Several Open Bee users can now edit simultaneously the same document online and see their changes in real time.
- Track Changes support & versioning: As an Open Bee DMS administrator, you can define a time interval to save new versions. By default, the interval is set as 60 minutes, which means that if several users are working on a document at the same time, the last modified version will be saved at 60 minutes. As a user, you can manage Office 365 document version history in Open Bee, including reverting to older versions.
2. Electronic Signature
Electronic Stamp
This new feature, introduced in Open Bee Portal 6.12, allows you to create electronic signature stamps that can be easily applied on the document.
- Insert a graphical representation of your signature such as an image or drawing anywhere of the document.
- The stamp can be created by drawing it with your mouse (tablet pen also supported) or by importing an existing scanned image of your signature.
- Choose the location of your choice on the document to be signed with a simple “drag & drop”.
- Once electronically signed the document will include the Universign logo, the name, the stamps of each signatory, and the signature date.
Automatic sending
Automatic sending allows you to send to multiple recipients one or several documents to sign.
- The Open Bee Sign module makes it easy to send a document to others for signing. You can send it to just one person or to multiple people to sign.
- Associate this feature to a filing category or a specific folder of Open Bee DMS to automatically send a document to multiple recipients.
- Leverage document metadata (name, first name, email, date) to dynamically identify your recipients and send them the document to sign.
- Automatically send documents to one or more recipients when approving a workflow task.
3. Extranet
Creation of a shared folder
With Open Bee Portal 6.12, it is possible to set a folder in an Extranet that will be shared with all external users, who have access rights to the Extranet.
- Previously in Open Bee DMS, it was only possible to share documents (contracts, invoices, …) and folders that were unique for each external user/guest.
- With Open Bee 6.12, Extranet administrators can now set a specific folder, add content (Terms and conditions of sales, product information, … ) in it, and share it to all external users who have access rights (or more) to the Extranet.
Email customization
Now you can send customized messages per different document types you share with others.
- Previously in Open Bee DMS, it was only possible to use 1 and only 1 email message template when sharing documents to multiple extranet guest users.
- With Open Bee 6.12, Extranet administrators can now create multiple email templates to suit the needs of sharing different types of documents.
- Ideal should you have 2 extranets and above.
4. Workflow
Automatic metadata modification
Within a workflow and upon validation or rejection of a task, it is now possible to automatically modify the value of a specific metadata.
- Automated feature. No need to enter manually the value of the metadata to update.
This is useful for many processes… Have an invoice status switched as soon as the payment has been processed. - Only metadata listed in a filing category is compatible with this new feature. Electronic form metadata IS NOT compatible with this new feature.
5. Multi-instance
Traditionally, Open Bee Portal DMS is configured like a single-instance environment where every single instance is installed on one on-premise server or across cloud infrastructure, with no possibility to interact with other instances. The 6.12 version of Open Bee Portal enables multiple single instances hosted on different servers to communicate together to ease the sharing of files and folders while increasing content security.
Key features
- Sharing folders: share folders and files between several instances
- Adding a file to multiple folders: select a file and automatically publish it into shared folders of multiple Open Bee Portal instances.
- Multi-instance Search: perform a unified search across multiple Open Bee Portal instance shared folders
- Managing a Workflow task: allow Open Bee Portal users to interact in a workflow hosted in another instance.
Benefits
- Content sharing within a large organization while each instance has its own data structure (users, documents, templates …) for greater privacy and security.
- Provides safeguards against centralized hardware failures and other unexpected outages across multiple instances while enabling collaboration.
Other products and new improvements of DMS platform
Open Bee Smart Capture – Multi-outputs
Within Open Bee Smart Capture, it is now possible to dynamically set multiple output destinations based on defined criteria.
- Based on document type, folder location, or metadata value (found in content) you can now set a specific output path for documents.
- This is useful for many processes… While processing customers’ invoices in Smart Capture, define a condition on a specific index (metadata). If for instance the index “send to online extranet” is set as “Yes”, then processed documents will be sent to Open Bee DMS to be shared online. If the index “send to online extranet” is set as “No”, then processed documents will be sent to a Windows folder as a PDF file, for printing.
Open Bee Portal: Improvements in 6.12 release
- Security: allow the use of Open Bee™ Portal cookies from a third-party app/website
To prevent Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks, the Open Bee portal enables now to allow or restrict cookies. This will force the user to authenticate every time he accesses Open Bee™ Portal from a third-party app or website.
- Roles: Creation of a new “Links consultation” role permission
A new role permission has been added to enable the consultation of documents linked together.
- Search filters: Increased performance
When searching for content, search time has been improved for queries related to lists with a high number of records (200 and above).
- Automatic sharing: Electronic form: email field can now be used to share documents
It is now possible to perform document automatic sharing based on email metadata of an electronic form.
- Automatic sharing: Ability to query multiple metadata
Automatic sharing can now be triggered on multiple metadata and conditions.
- Folder Subscriptions: Create a subscription for multiple users or groups
It is now possible to directly assign several users or groups to a folder when creating a subscription.
In a nutshell, the release of Open Bee Portal 6.12 grants you with numerous improvements. Among them, major features such as the possibility to edit Office documents online, or to automate signature notifications to multiple recipient at once. In addition the new multi-instance module boosts collaboration across subsidiaries while enjoying the same top-notch level of security.
Open Bee events:
Let’s celebrate innovation and technology in Dubai
The release of version 7.0
The release of version 6.13
The release of version 6.11