Orchid Notes & DML support Collaboration

Thu, 10 Aug 2017

These Orchid products help you create, locate, update and share information in ways that are intuitive, powerful, and support the way you use Sage 300.

Everyone seems to be talking about collaborative working environments, but this means more than open plan offices and gossiping at the water cooler. As mobile and geographically distributed workforces become the norm, the focus has shifted to collaboration within a virtual work-space.

Collaboration starts with the willingness to share ideas and information, but it also requires the processes and the tools to support this. One of the prerequisites is reducing or even eliminating our reliance on personal notes and physical documentation. That starts with digitization and shared data repositories, but it certainly doesn’t end there.

The last thing we need is another layer of complexity. Instead, to support and simplify our day to day work, we need to be able to create, locate, update and share information in ways that are simple and intuitive.

This is where Orchid’s Notes and Documentation Management Link (DML) products come in.

Notes in a Nutshell

Notes enables you to attach context and data sensitive electronic notes to Sage 300 (Accpac) fields, telling your users what they need to know, where and when they need it.

Notes can be linked to just about any Sage 300 data, e.g. to specific users, customers, items, batches or transactions
Notes can appear every time the linked data is displayed, or be restricted to specific screens, and can also be targeted using role-based filters
Notes can comprise not just plain text, but also rich text, hyperlinks and even small images

When combined with other Orchid products, especially Extender, Notes provides a powerful platform for further customization of Sage 300.

More about Notes:

See the Notes product page, where you can also download the product brochure.
Watch our short Notes Overview video
Watch our more detailed Notes Product Demonstration video
See the Roundup of Notes & DML KnowledgeBase articles (login required)
Browse all articles about Notes in our Knowledge Base (login required)

If you are ready to get into the detail, download our Notes Training Guide from the Resources area of our website (login required)

DML Show & Tell

Document Management Link (DML) allows you to link multiple files and documents to Sage 300 (Accpac) fields, and access them directly from your existing Sage 300 screens. It puts documents where you can find them, when you need them.

Linked documents can be accessed from any Sage 300 screen or transaction record that references a nominated field.
You control how and where documents are displayed, including optional role-based filters.
Add new documents by drag and drop from within Sage 300, and have them automatically renamed to conform to your own naming convention.
Document links appear in the same Alert Box used by Orchid Notes, so the two products work well together.

Linked documents can reside in an accessible file server folder, or within Microsoft SharePoint.

By nominating a file server folder that has been mapped to a cloud based file sharing service (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive) you can take advantage of the synchronisation and sharing capabilities those services offer.
If you use SharePoint you can benefit from its collaboration and security features, and initiate workflows for document notification and approval.

About the Author:

David Lacey is Communications Manager at Orchid Systems. You can find out more about David and other Orchid staff members at the bottom of our About Us page.