If you search the Internet or look up IBM's product pages, you'll find typical sales descriptions, but you'll only find a few product descriptions from developers or companies that aren't trying to sell something. Therefore, before we dig deeper into how to customize Domino.Doc and the ODMA (Open Document Management API), I'll describe how I see Domino.Doc from my own impartial point of view. You shouldn't see this as a detailed overview or how to use Domino.Doc; this is only what I notice as a developer when setting up Domino.Doc.

In later articles I'll describe how to integrate with Domino.Doc, how to use the ODMA and API classes, and how to write custom interfaces for products like StarOffice and Groupwise.

Overview
Domino.Doc is a document management system built on Notes and Domino technology. It was developed to help organizations keep track of changes in essential documents and other content.

Domino.Doc is scaleable and reliable, and it contains and supports content throughout its life cycle, including review, approval, and archiving. It uses check-in/check-out, versioning, full-text search, audit trails, and notification in order to make Domino.Doc a full-blown document management system.

By using it as the general container for all documents in a company, it will help you search and categorize your company's documents. Instead of using the file system to store your documents, you can use the Notes databases together with easy access user interfaces.

It supports almost any document format. Here are a few examples.

Microsoft Word
From Microsoft Word you're able to save a document with metadata and/or with approval directly from your MS Office application into Domino.Doc. The Save As dialog box is shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A


This is the Save As dialog box in Word. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Notes
Take mail archiving in Notes for example. When viewing the memo, use file/export, and you can browse the Domino.Doc neighborhood in order to determine where you want to save the memo.

Windows Explorer
From Windows Explorer, you're able to browse the hierarchy in Domino.Doc. Then you can take any stored document and drag and drop it to the Domino.Doc neighborhood.

You can see the Domino.Doc neighborhood in Windows Explorer in Figure B.

FIGURE B


The Domino.Doc neighborhood is displayed in Windows Explorer. Roll over picture for a larger image.