Next-Gen Workshare To Add PowerPoint, Excel Functionality

The current Workshare 3.5 product is used by law firms and other companies that collaboratively build Word documents such as contracts or sales proposals. The need for better change-tracking and the ability to scrub sensitive, often hidden data from documents has taken on more urgency with the raft of regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and HIPAA.

Available since April, Workshare 3.5 manifests itself as a small panel on the Word screen and enables users to attach multiple documents and mail them out for review without leaving their familiar Word interface.

Workshare 3.5 adds security, auditing and e-mail control features, said Amy Millard, vice president of marketing at Workshare, San Francisco.

New reporting tools provide an audit trail of who suggested changes to a given document. "What that means is there's a record of Jack said this and the CFO said that and the internal controls people said this," Millard said.

But as important as providing all that information for internal use is the ability to strip it from the documents once they leave the premises.

"We just sold it to a very high-profile law firm in the United States that bought it because they send out documents that contain meta-data. The meta-data stripper now is a big buzz item," said Grant Watt, director of sales and marketing at Premier Technology Solutions, a New York-based integrator.

The software "not only gets rid of the meta-data,the internal vs. external policies,but it's an automated process that can be done in the background. It automatically sets up a PDF that is sent out," he noted.

Because meta-data sits within documents, users who are technically inclined can modify the coding of a Word document to expose its earlier versions.

"There are 15 types of meta-data in Word, and if you're very, very technical, you could remove maybe seven of them yourself. But some cannot be removed from Word because they're saved outside the document," Millard said.

Workshare 3.5 automates more change management and eliminates the need to cut and paste changes to update document versions. E-mail integration with Exchange Server, Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise also promises to eliminate the toggling back and forth between Word and e-mail.

Workshare 3.5 costs $300 per user, with volume discounts available.