Welcome to Kraft Kennedy

In an announcement today, World Software Corporation — makers of the Worldox document management system — shared the news that their latest release now supports Office 2010.   According to my notes here, this makes them the first DMS vendor in the legal space to officially support integration with Office 2010.

There are a few caveats.  At this point, only 32-bit Office 2010 is supported.  No word yet on 64-bit support, but they say it’s coming.   You also need to be running the latest version, Worldox GX2, and you should contact Worldox support to download the updated integration files.

With Office 2010 being unleashed on the world, many customers are asking when their DMS products will support it.   No need to ask around, because we’ve gathered the official stances for some of the major vendors.

• WorkSite iManage 8.5: “We will look to certify/support Office 2010 within 90 days with the current 8.5 Worksite clients and later”
• Open Text eDOCS DM 5.3:  “We will release v5.3 beta this summer and the final release is scheduled to be launched in late September”
• Worldox GX2:  “Office 2010 integration files should ship within 30 – 45 days of the official general release of Microsoft Office 2010″
• Microsoft SharePoint 2010:  “Come on, we’re Microsoft.  It’ll work day one!” (Disclaimer: NOT a real quote)

So as of right now, it looks like Worldox may win the horserace to support Office 2010.  As soon as official release announcements are made, we will be sure to test functionality in our research lab.  Of course, simply supporting integration with the application doesn’t mean that the DMS product will be able to leverage any of the extra features of Office 2010, such as the Backstage view or simultaneous editing (which requires the document live on SharePoint 2010).

Security is always a concern in a law firm, and is especially important in the legal department of a corporation. Lawsuits sometimes include the company’s co-workers, competitors, or other sensitive information, where certain matter information needs to be completely hidden from all but a few matter assignees. Securing documents or DMS folders is often simply not enough protection.

Does the system hide the matter from appearing when doing a table look-up on a search form? Does it hide the matter when accessing the matter table via the DMS web module? For some cases, you want to hide the actual matter itself, so users won’t even know it exists.

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The legal industry has traditionally been conservative when adopting new OS and software versions.  Law firms need to know that whatever solution they choose to implement has been tried and tested.   This isn’t news to anyone.  Let’s see a show of hands of law firm CIOs who have overseen successful deployments of Windows Vista.   *crickets*.    Yep, that’s pretty much what I figured.

The landscape has changed though with the release of Windows 7.  There are a few reasons why Kraft Kennedy is advising our customers to deploy Windows 7 now:

• Still 6.x:  Since the build of Windows 7 is actually 6.1 (Vista is 6.0), most applications that were designed to be compatible with Vista will be compatible with Windows 7.   When Microsoft made the jump from 5.1 (XP) to 6.0 (Vista), it took software vendors months to re-write their products to be Vista-compatible.  We’ve seen these compatibility issues become more sparse with Windows 7.
• Better than Vista:  Simply speaking, Windows 7 is the OS that Microsoft wanted Vista to be.  It looks slick, performs well, and has a lot of useful features that firms will likely take advantage of.
• From Beta to Omega: Kraft Kennedy started using Windows 7 with our application set as soon as the first Beta was available.  Nearly all our staff was using Windows 7 fully before the RTM was released on October 22.  In addition, we’ve already developed processes for a completely automated and zero-touch deployment of Windows 7 using Microsoft technologies.

For reasons similar to this, Kraft Kennedy is also advising our Worldox DMS customers to upgrade the latest version, GX2, when implementing the new Windows 7 desktop.   GX2 is already supported on Windows 7, and like Windows 7, is using similar (but much improved) code to its previous version, Worldox GX.   Kraft Kennedy has had betas running in it’s research lab, and now has the final released version running as well.   The new features of GX2 were described in a previous blog post.

This week, Kraft Kennedy will be completing its first 64-bit Windows 7 deployment and Worldox GX2 rollout at a client site.  Initial pilot and lab testing has been successful, and the performance of launching Microsoft Word 2007 on 64-bit Windows 7 is a sight to behold!   Look for myself and other Kraft Kennedy bloggers to report on the success of this deployment in the coming weeks.

It’s time to start implementing the future today.

World Software Corporation just released their latest version of their DMS product, Worldox GX2.  It is available for new installs now, but the upgrade package for existing customers is still a few weeks away.  The upgrade will be free for customers who are current on maintenance.  A couple of the key new features of Worldox GX2 are the improved Outlook integration and the ability to create Ethical Walls. 

We have been running a Beta version in our virtual research lab for a few months now, and tested these new features as well as a few other highlights.

A few screenshots and comments are below the fold.

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