The latest release of the M-Files document management software, M-Files 7.0, provides enhancements to e-mail and workflow management as well as improved search capabilities.

With the volume of documents rapidly increasing in many companies, M-Files 7.0 adds support for large document vaults that contain millions of documents.

M-Files 7.0 adds 'M-Files aware' folders and support for standard Outlook rules for automatic e-mail processing. When an e-mail is moved to one of these folders, either manually, by dragging and dropping, or automatically via an Outlook rule, it is automatically stored in the M-Files vault and classified with user-defined tags. This direct connection to the corporate document vault via Outlook folders requires no special technical skill and enables automated archival and workflow processing based on who sent the e-mail, to whom it was sent, or what it is about.

When e-mails are stored in the vault, in addition to tagging them with user-defined properties, or metadata, all threads are maintained, along with relationships to companies or customers, and contacts. This allows an e-mail to be quickly and easily located and sorted based on the customer or contacts to which it is related, or by any property, such as the subject, the date received or sent, the project to which it is related, and so on. In addition, M-Files eliminates duplicates by checking to determine if an identical e-mail has already been saved.

"M-Files 7.0 makes major strides on numerous fronts, continuing our relentless drive to make professional document management accessible to any business, no matter how small or budget-constrained," added Greg Milliken, president of Motive Systems.

"While M-Files is a feature-rich solution that can meet the needs of even very large enterprises, ease of use is our primary goal. When we add new functionality we will only add it if it can be implemented in a fashion that is easily accessible to any Windows user. The e-mail management features of M-Files 7.0 are a great example of this: to save e-mails to the vault you just drag and drop them right into an Outlook folder, or set up a standard Outlook rule to automatically move it to the appropriate folder. These are standard features with which Outlook users are already familiar, so there is nothing new to learn. In other words, if you know Windows, you know M-Files."

Other new features in M-Files 7.0 include:
* New grouping options within search results that speed up the location of documents and other objects;
* Predefined search criteria, such as searching only for documents or customers;
* Improved workflow assignments and shortcuts for changing workflow states; and
* The ability to save to the vault as a PDF without opening the document in an application;
* Improved handling of larger document vaults that include millions of documents.

Most companies store documents in cluttered network folders, or deal with the problem of important documents scattered across individual PCs. Professionals spend up to 50% of their time looking for the right information, including unproductive tasks such as searching for documents and e-mails, interrupting colleagues to locate information that should be available instantly, determining if a document is the latest version, or worse, needlessly duplicating work already completed by a colleague.

Each day, when opening or saving a file from applications like Acrobat, Excel, PowerPoint, Word and QuickBooks, millions of office workers are wondering: “Where is the file I need?”, “What was it named?” or “Is this the latest version?” This is a huge drag on productivity, especially if one factors in those times when a document simply cannot be found and must be recreated, or when work progresses using the wrong version of a document.

M-Files eliminates traditional Windows folders; instead, users open from, and save to, the M-Files Vault. Documents are simply classified as a common type, such as an invoice, proposal, e-mail, contract, etc, and a descriptive tag or two is added. Finding a file is as simple as typing in a tag or performing a full-text search right from the Open or Save dialogue box of any Windows application. This is possible due to M-Files' "Virtual-Local" drive technology that allows the vault to appear as a local hard drive (the M: drive), in any standard Windows Explorer dialogue box, whether online or offline.