I recently saw a demo of M-Files. I wanted to hate it, being a Vault proponent. But it's really good, they have nailed what data management for the end user should be like.
Data Standard goes some way towards improving that for CAD users, and frankly could be molded to very closely match the M-Files setup at the front end. But Vault is lacking some of the back end M-Files has, since it uses a different approach. Any way, what set it apart most clearly from Vault was a form based UI everytime an Office user created a new document. It asked a series of questions and requested input of values into properties before the user could start to build their new document.
There were two approaches; Create a new file using M-Files within Word, or Save a normal Word file to the M-FIles drive in My Computer.
Either way the M-Files form appears.
This is almost identical to the way Data Standard works in AutoCAD and Inventor. It would be really good to see this functionality extended into Office as part of Vault Office, Workgroup & Professional. Then non-CAD users can be sold Vault solutions instead of needing to purchase an additional SQL based document management system for the rest of the company.
Often management can relate to needing a document management system, but fail to understand or balk at the costs associated with getting one for their Design / Engineering departments. This type of functionality would be a door opener for increasing the number of companies moving from Vault Basic to WG / Pro or even buying it from the outset.
