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Hello,

We are currently using IFS Apps 8 document management extensively for holding different types of documents. These include for example building surveys, drawings, supplier quotes and Supplier Invoices to name a few.

There are operational dependant documents and reference documents both stored in IFS currently.

Documents are linked to Objects in IFS such as Work Orders, Serial/Functional Objects, Purchase Orders and Supplier Invoices. Also worth mentioning that we use Mobile work orders for our engineers, so as part of this specific documents are transferred to the mobile devices. 

We already use Microsoft Teams and SharePoint and the business like the look & feel of SharePoint over IFS. Also the accessibility of SharePoint to all employees over IFS is another factor. 

Another driver is the ability to have one location for documents related to specific assets/objects which can be easily searched upon through a user friend interface. Again SharePoint comes out onto of IFS for this. 

Therefore the business have asked to start moving document storage from IFS to SharePoint specifically for documents not dependant on IFS processes or that would impact operationally.

We are considering upgrading to Apps 10 in the next 2-3 years; so with this in mind I am keen to get some feedback from others who have experienced similar requirements as ourselves and how Apps 10 compares to SharePoint.

Any feedback or suggestions would be much appreciated

Regards

Shaun

We are in the process of moving as many documents out of Sharepoint and into Doc Man.  The Sharepoint revisioning process is very poor.  Most users don’t like trying to find information in Sharepoint, so don’t use the documents as much as they should.  There is no advantage in my opinion of putting documents in one location within Sharepoint unless everything else about that process is also in Sharepoint.  If there is any intention to revision control a document, connect it to multiple objects related to a business process (customer order, shop order, project, etc), then Sharepoint doesn’t allow that at all.  For our purposes and our company, I can’t find any advantage of Sharepoint over IFS, at least none that I would argue for as a process change.

@ShawnBerk, thanks for that comment! It feels good when customers understand the value of keeping documents in Docman, with all the power that brings :) We get proper revision control and status handling, access control, connecting to objects, approval, and so much more.

That being said, I can see the temptation moving into SP, if you have the rest of your things there. But I would not recommend it. I think you will get a fragmented experience.

With Aurena, users will get a much more “modern” user interface compared to what you have in Apps 8 in IEE. And, the use of OData/REST opens up for interesting integration possibilities going forward, I think. There is also a lobby for Docman now, in Aurena, and some pages specifically created for easy access to documents that you recently worked with, that you have in progress. etc.

I would recommend that you continue to have the majority of your documentation in Docman, that you have a look at Aurena and what it can provide, and think strongly about, if anything, what is missing in SP. Could you perhaps just keep links to important documents in IFS/Docman, in SP? It would require manual work to create them, but perhaps with some clever thinking it will work okay, or you can thinking about how to make that happen automatically, for certain categories of documents.

 

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