New Tech Experiences

Well, given that I've had my nose stuck in a book more in he last few weeks than at any time since ... hmmm..., high school?  Naaaah.  More like sixth or seventh grade.  Or maybe ninth, when sports gave me two study halls and home room to end the day.  In the library.  Heaven.  (Although, there was the six weeks when my table of boys in study hall had an A, B, C, D, and F in conduct.  Idle hands are the devils workshop, or something like that.)

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Reading.  Or, rather, what I've been learning when I haven't been reading.  (I'll get to that, but I've got to process a little first!)

Tech stuff:

Microsoft Sharepoint Server:  I had no idea what this was until the last two weeks.  Then, the company programming Form1.org, Intellinet, set one up as the respository/workspace for that project.  As President of Form1.org, Inc., I have access, so I've gotten a little feeling for it.  It's a wiki.  Ok, now I know that if anyone who REALLY knows what Sharepoint is reads this they'll likely light me up for that statement and explain how completely off base it is.  But, that's what it looks like to me.  Document storage, notices of updates when things are added or changed, comments, and entries much like a group blog.  Yep, looks a lot like a wiki to me. 

X1 and Exchange:  I've gotten these technologies installed at work and they're beginning to take hold.  We have a public folder on Exchange that gets a copy of every incoming and outgoing e-mail, and X1 on everyone's desk that is set to index that folder.  So, no matter who's been involved in an e-mail exchange with an attorney or provider, any of us can access that exchange easily and quickly.  Cool.  And very helpful.

Document Imaging:  We've also installed a document management system by a company called Infodynamics.  We scan it in on our multifunction copier/scanner and put the attorney, provider, or course ID, plus other key information in the title of the documents for identification.  Then, one of our folks moves each to a "Work in Progress" folder for the appropriate person.  When processed, that person may add a little more to the title and then sticks it in a "storage" folder.  Again, entering an attorney's id number can call up all correspondence between us and that attorney, regardless of who's desk, I mean, WIP folder it's in.  I'm planning to set the system to do an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on each document so that we'll be able to search on text in the document, but haven't gotten that done yet.

Open Office:  A while back, a disk drive died in this computer and we had to get a new one installed.  We saved all the data, but not the programs.  Generally not a problem, but I had Microsoft Office on here from some time or another when it was ok to install on an office and a home system.  Don't know if that's still ok, and hadn't gotten around to checking.  Then, last week, Patrick needed to finish and print a Word document he'd started at the library.  So, I downloaded the current version of Open Office and told him to go at it.  No questions from him since, so it must be a fairly close work-alike.