Version Management

Version Management, also often called Revision Management, is a key concept of document management. The basic idea is that old versions of individual documents are stored, and remain available, although the document is changed.

First, when a document is added to the archive, version #1 is obviously created.

The documents stored by Paperiton DMS are stored inside a database, not as individual files on a server. Later on, when a document needs to be modified, it needs to be "checked out". Checking out a document means that it is reserved for the user for modifications. Other users can still access the previous, or newest, archived version of the document. However, they can only view the current version as well as the older ones.

When modifications to the document are ready, the document will be "checked in" to the document management system. At that moment, a new version is automatically created for you. You can also change the name of the document, as well the meta information, to better match the contents of the document at that very moment.

In Paperiton DMS, the powerful search functionality can be used also to locate the old versions of documents.

If undesired changes were made, or for some other reason a document needs to be "rolled back", that is very easy. As a matter of fact, if you revert to an older version, again a new version is created, and the full document history remains. This is in contrast to the common idea of how roll-back is done. Usually that means that all of the newer changes are lost when you revert to an older version. This often means that also some useful information may be lost in the process.

With Paperiton DMS, it is actually not about "rolling back" anything, but rather letting an old version "roll over" the current one. Anyways, we feel that in this way the probability of an accidental loss of usable information is minimized.