Document management system for automating operations performed on documents in data storage areas

#This invention is related to document management systems, and more particularly, to a document management system for automating selected operations to be performed on at least one document in a data storage area.

#Enterprises around the world are recognizing that information is the currency of their business. As such, there is tremendous value in ensuring that all corporate information, whether in structured or unstructured formats is captured, managed, and put to work in a meaningful and efficient way. Document management and content management solutions help organizations maximize the use of their unstructured data, which in turn helps maximize the use of their corporate knowledge. Unstructured data is information stored in text files, emails, documents, multimedia, etc.

#Document management systems provide organizations with an ability to create centralized repositories, or libraries, containing all of the unstructured data they generate. Powerful search and retrieval tools make this information easily available for use and collaboration across the entire enterprise. These tools often provide security and version control capabilities. However, storing and retrieving large numbers of paper documents has, in the past, been an onerous task. Present document management systems solve some of the problems faced by organizations that use a manual document filing system alongside an electronic document system. These systems provide a method for combining both computer-generated image documents and paper documents in a secure document storage and retrieval system.

#FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a network system for implementing the present invention.

#FIG. 2 illustrates a hierarchical tree structure of a repository in a document management system.

#FIG. 3 illustrates an overall block diagram of the subject invention for automating transferring a plurality of documents to at least one data storage area.

#The document management system preferably provides access to a document management repository via a folder incorporated into the existing OS file structure. Although the present invention is described as enabling users to access document management functionality from a Microsoft Windows OS, it will be appreciated to those skilled in the art that the present invention is also suitably designed to interact with any OS, such as Unix, Linux, Macintosh or other OS. In one embodiment, the document management platform (“DMP”) provides access to network-based documents via a browser, such as Internet Explorer or Netscape. In the presently preferred embodiment, a document repository managed by the DMP is represented as a folder or data storage area within an Internet Explorer window. The DMP permits a user to perform operations on the repository folder or data storage area, preferably insofar as the user has the appropriate access rights, as will be appreciated by those skilled in the art.

#Referring now to FIG. 1, an illustration of a network environment for practicing the present invention is provided. The system comprises a data transport network 100 illustrative of a LAN or WAN environment in which a preferred embodiment is provided, such as a packet-switched TCP/IP-based global communication network. The network 100 is suitably any network and is preferably comprised of physical layers and transport layers, as illustrated by a myriad of conventional data transport mechanisms like Ethernet, Token-Ring™, 802.11(b), or other wire-based or wireless data communication mechanisms as will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art.

#Connected to a data transport network 100 is a document management platform (“DMP”) 102. In the presently preferred embodiment, the DMP preferably is a plug-n-play device having a hardware component consisting of a closed-box server that is easy to install, configure and support, and software components, both of which will be described in greater detail hereinbelow.