How Aviator’s ODMA Client Integrates Seamlessly with Office Applications

Susan is the Administrative Assistant for the Human Resources department in her 8,000 employee multi-location company.  One of her major responsibilities is to keep policies updated and distributed to all key personnel – which used to take up a great deal of time.

But then her company bought Aviator.  With Aviator's ODMA client, Susan can quickly and easily create, retrieve, edit and distribute information to and from the central knowledge base. She can also automatically notify anybody in her organization about changes to policies right from her desktop word processing application.

Today, Susan has two urgent tasks.  The department director has asked her to create and distribute next year’s vacation days list, and then update a section of the Employee Handbook per new Department of Labor regulations.  The information needs to be filed in the knowledge base and all employees need to be notified about the new information ASAP.

To quickly accomplish her first task, Susan opens her MS Word application, and creates a new document as she always does.  She types up the vacation days list for the upcoming year, and selects File – Save As to save her new document.  The first time she accesses the knowledge base through her Word application, Susan is prompted for her Notes ID.  For security purposes, the ODMA client requires you to sign in to Notes before accessing the Aviator library databases.

After signing in to Notes, the Aviator Save dialog box opens to save her document.  If Susan wants to reach her standard Explore dialog to save to her C: or shared drive, she simply clicks the File System button.  But Susan is adding this document to the knowledge base, so she clicks the “Create New” button to bring up the Aviator document attribute form.

Susan selects the HR Document profile that she uses for documents she creates that are to be released directly in to the knowledge base with notification to all company employees.   She has pre-defined the distribution list in the profile so that upon the document’s release in the library, every employee will receive an email notification that the new document is available.

She names the Aviator document, and enters a brief descriptive summary so users will know what information it contains.  After clicking “OK”, she will name the Word file and click “Save”.

When Susan selects File – Close, she will be prompted to check in the Aviator document.  When she does, the Word file closes, her document will appear as released in the knowledge base, and every employee will receive an email message with a DocLink and URL to this new document in the library.

Susan then turns to her second task – updating the Employee Handbook.  With Aviator, her company is able to keep all employee information in a secure, structured, centralized place so employees can always find the most up-to-date information without searching through file drawers and old paper copies.  Susan can make changes right in the document in the Aviator library and send an instant email notification to everyone in her organization that the document has been updated.

Still working in her Word application, Susan selects File – Open.  Her Aviator dialog box opens, and she drills down to where the Handbook is categorized under Employee Policies.  She clicks the Edit button, and the file opens in Word.  Susan knows that anybody who accesses this document in the library now will see that it is checked-out for editing.

Susan updates the Handbook, and is ready to check the document back in to the knowledge base.  She knows that this document has also been created with her HR Document profile, so all employees will receive an email notification as soon as a new release is checked back in to the library.

When she selects File – Close, Aviator will prompt her to save the last revision and increment the revision level when she checks the document in.  Since she is required to keep histories of all versions of HR documents, she chooses to save this as a new revision, and enters the reason that she has amended section 4A regarding pension benefits so readers will know what has been done to the document.

When the document closes, Susan knows her updates are complete and secure in the knowledge base and that every employee has been notified of the changes to the Handbook.

Thanks to the Aviator ODMA client, Susan was able to accomplish two important file management tasks from within her familiar desktop Word application, while leveraging the security, structure and power of Aviator.