What is Revision Control Anyway?
Revision control is an aspect of document control wherein changes to documents are identified by incrementing an associated number or letter code. This code is known as the "revision level", or simply "revision". This convention was originally established to maintain engineering drawings. A simple form of revision control, for example, has the initial release of a document assigned the revision level "A". When the first change is made, the revision level is changed to "B" and so on.
DocLink provides this type of control for all of your documents.
Multiple user systems without revision control often experience the scenario where multiple copies of the same document are floating around all being modified simultaneously. The changes then must be aggregated back into the original copy and there can be great confusion as to which copy is "official".
With DocLink the revision history is maintained. Users download the latest version of a document by default. The "Show All Revs" feature allows them access to all previous versions.
Once a document is checked out, the rest of the users know to anticipate
changes because they can visually see that someone else is modifying the
document. They can then subscribe to the document to receive an email
notification when the document gets checked back in. Notes can be added per
revision to keep track of changes.
Web based
The entire DocLink application lives on the server. All of the clients access the
application with their native web browser. This has several major advantages over
more traditional "thick client" applications. First of all, there is
no client software to deploy and maintain. When DocLink point releases
are issued, the patch is applied to the server, and that’s it. No registry edits,
no installation packages to push, no rebooting of servers - just a simple
update of the core files. This makes the administrative overhead of DocLink
the lowest in the industry.
Once a document is uploaded into the vault, it is "web enabled" so to speak. The file itself is transferred to the web server, indexed and then stored in the vault. Anyone else with read access for the file can then download it right from within their web browser. DocLink’s search utility makes searching for files lightning fast compared to searching a network share or even a local hard drive.
Security
Technically Speaking:
All user passwords are subject to 128 bit encryption before they are stored
in the database. DocLink can be optionally combined with an SSL security
certificate to encrypt all data transferred between the client & server.
DocLink has a built in user authentication scheme, where the user is authenticated against the database and authorization credentials are stored in the session. The administrator can configure the login timeout to be as short or as long as desired.
DocLink can also be configured to allow single-sign-on for your users. It can do NTLM authentication against a Microsoft Windows domain controller or an LDAP server can handle authentication.
Unlike other systems, all of the files that are checked in are stored directly in the database. They cannot be accessed via the server’s file system. This makes the vault more secure, while at the same time makes hot backups much easier. The application also validates all "GET" & "POST" input to thwart injunction attacks from would-be hackers. After all, what good is a vault if it’s not secure?
At the Application Level:
DocLink supports full read & write permission control at the file level
by user or groups of users. Users can’t see files they don’t have read
permission for. Users with write permission can "delete" unneeded
documents, but the documents are moved to a hidden trash folder. This trash folder can
only be viewed and / or emptied by the administrator. All transactions are stored
in the database’s transaction log, so even if the administrator goofs (we’ve
all been there) the files can be recovered. There is virtually no way for
anything to accidentally get permanently deleted.
DocLink’s audit trail keeps track of all activity. Who downloaded a document and when, when was it last by checked out and for how long, etc.