Document Control

One of the primary functions of Asset Guardian® is to log, archive, approve, issue, track and control documentation and drawings. Within Asset Guardian®, documents and drawings are essentially treated in the same way, and the topics below describe how they can be handled effortlessly within Asset Guardian®.

The four stages to document control are Identifying Documents, Entering and Backing-up documents within Asset Guardian®, Adding Revisions to documents and Approving / Issuing documents.

Document Descriptions And Numbering

Asset Guardian® allows an administrator to configure any number of document and drawing descriptions and their short code or numbers. This means the names and numbers of documents you regularly use may be entered once, and this list is then available to all users. This list may be appended at any time.

From construction sites with the need to store architects, pipework and electrical drawings, to solicitors storing records for cases, it allows you to define the documents and drawings you want to store and control. Other areas in which it can be used range from insurance companies logging quotations and policies to software houses that need to store their design and test records.

The short code defined in the configuration is used as part of the auto-generated Asset Guardian® number, which is a unique number created by the package for each document/drawing entered. It is made up of a user defined pre-fix, your document short code, Asset identifier and a sequence number. This can be over-written with your own number when you first enter your document, if you so wish.

Entering and Backing-up a New Document

(Show Me How To Enter A New Document)

From within an Asset, new documents can simply be added by clicking on new document. A simple form allows a number of details to be entered about the document. Many of these fields are auto-generated or can be selected from drop-down lists.

These fields include: Title, Asset Guardian® Number (auto-generated), Original Document Number (if appropriate), Author, Format (drop down list) and Revision (which defaults to your system setting - A or 1.0).

When these details have been entered, you are offered the choice if you would like the document zipped when you back-up to Asset Guardian® (a separate copy of Zip software is not required). You are then prompted to select a file or directory to back-up. This is achieved using a standard Windows interface and you can select either a single file or an entire directory to back-up against this document number.

Adding Revisions

(Show Me How To Enter A New Revison)

Adding a new revision of a document can simply be done by dragging the file from the Windows environment and dropping the new revision into the appropriate Asset document window. Asset Guardian® will automatically assign the next revision number which may be changed if need be.

Approving and Issuing Documents

(Show Me How To Approve A Document)
(Show Me How To Issue A Document)

If the document has been generated internally and needs to be approved and issued then this can be done from within Asset Guardian®. The document approval is performed by authorised users by using an on-line check-list that can be configured to suit your requirements.

Once approved, Asset Guardian® logs who performed this task and thus a quality audit trail is created. The document can then be automatically issued via e-mail to everyone on the Controlled copy register, which again can be edited by the user.

Once logged, the latest revision of a document can be opened from within Asset Guardian® or it can be booked out to a user if they have been tasked with editing the document to produce a new revision.