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Livelink
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http://www.opentext.com/what-w...

Disclaimer: my cousin works there.

Simple Approach:
Use a good naming convention and do not index. I do not know what you are indexing on or what is in the files. However, you could pick an appropriate naming convention and folder structure and then let the human brain find the right thing.

Slightly More Complex Approach:
You do not have a share anymore. Instead you have a web page with a database backend. Now fast forward that line of thought. Several commercial products do just this and even offer additional features such as desktop integration. One example is Livelink.

There are a ton of Document Management systems out there, our company uses http://www.opentext.com/ look for DM You can use Microsoft Share point as a document management system, but it is not really what it was designed for. DM will integrate with all the Microsoft applications. It will give you document numbers, version numbers, etc... you can profile your emails as well if you want. We have had some performance problems for the remote locations, but it is still usable. I did a search for open source document management systems on Google and there are a ton out there if you don't feel like paying for something.

My wife is a fan of Livelink, which she implemented for document and workflow management at her last job.

This is built for the exact situation you described:

http://www.opentext.com/2/global/sol-products/sol-pro-docmgmt-collaboration.htm
You can either import the files into the system, or leave them in place, index them and use the search engines to locate the needles in your haystacks...

About Open Text:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Text

Hummingbird is a subsidiary of Open Text, the solution mentioned above...

Full Disclosure:

I am an Open Text employee.

Livelink by Open Text is simply the best solution on the market for ECM.

Livelink by Open Text is simply the best solution on the market for ECM.

Livelink by Open Text

that work, like Livelink for E-mail Archiving, that are easy to use and very well integrated into Exchange. Also, there's a fulltext search available for that product that would make sure that 'lost' mails get found in a hurry.

It's also quite possible for others to extend Office functionality to integrate with a document management system. We do it, as I'm sure many, many others do.

Yea, but what about OpenText... search.opentext.com used to give a stale, but workable search engine. The company has now since begun to sell their search engine to companies.

I found opentext's search results very relevant at the time...this may have changed with time, but it was still a good search engine...

Archive.org still has the old front page...

Don't re-invent the wheel. Get a customizable product and an expert that can customize it.

I suggest Livelink. Well, it's not free. It costs money. It may cost lots of money if you want all those nice features. It's not open source. But I have enough Karma to burn. ;-)

Web page: http://www.opentext.com/

The consulting company I work for is based on knowledge. Fast, reliable and secure (permisson based) access to archived knowledge is mission critical. So there never was a problem buying the software we need for business, no matter what it costs.

My job is not Livelink. But I work in the same room as our Livelink expert. So I collect a little bit of knowlegde about Livelink. I'm the one he asks for Unix and network tricks.

Livelink has a document management (that's the main part), team rooms, workstreams, and a lot of other nice features. For details, have a look at the web page. Livelink is a core server, extended by a lot of scripts (in a custom language named Oscript), and a tiny CGI that passes requests from the webserver to the core server. If you own a development kit, you can customize nearly every aspect of Livelink, and you can see lots of code written by Opentext. So if you have the money, you can at least see most of the sources.

We use three dual-CPU W2K machines with Apache 1.3.x as Web and application servers, a fourth dual-CPU W2K machine for the indexer and search engine, a Sun 420 running Solaris 9 for the database (Oracle), and Linux Virtual Server (LVS) as load balancer for the webservers. We have about 1500 users all around the world.

Why so many servers? Most of the time, one web server is completely idle. Opentext would recommend a single server setup, and that would be sufficient. But we have demanding consultants, our problems are response time and availability. We have some queries that block a server for a while. So we need at least two servers. The third server is for load peaks and for downtimes of one of the other servers. Index and search also need a lot of power that would block a single machine, so it's placed on the fourth server.

Why W2K? The most recent version of Livelink requires it.

Why Sun? Oracle on Windows simply sucks, the raw CPU power of the previous multi-CPU x86 database machine was larger than the one of the Sun machine, but Oracle runs much faster on the Sun. (Now all corporate databases are switched to a Oracle/Sun cluster, but that's a different story.)

Why LVS? Simple: It works. We tried a load-balancing software called Resonate, a really fitting name for a piece of software that should implement a control loop. We kicked it because it was hard to maintain and did not work reliably on our machines. We tried LVS on a really old desktop and it worked great, even if we tried really hard to confuse it. Now it has its own x86 server running Slackware, and we did not have a single second of trouble with it.

Why Apache? We used Netscape Enterprise Server / iPlanet. It had a pretty web-based config tool and much bloat, and it costs money. Apache does the same job for free, and its configuration is a simple text file that can be copied to the various servers. MS IIS has bugs. Lots of bugs. Its mouse controlled. We did not even think about a test system with the IIS.

Tux2000

You should perhaps try to use a knowledge management
system like Opentext's Livelink.

We are using it at our office and it works great. It allows sharing files, message boards, project management all from a web interface.

We now don't use email internally any more.

have you ever heard of documentum, livelink, imanage, hummingbird? these are all big players in the ENTERPRISE content management game. i would really like to see you walk into a 3000 user enterprise and say "oh ok, sure, just store all of your documents in CVS. its really great and its free."

i think that this book looks like a fantastic piece of work. we run our entire knowledge management system on livelink and since it moved from a user base of 30 to 150 people, things have gotten a little out of control. our taxonomies are badly defined, we are duplicating content all over the place rather than re-use. so after reading the overview and the free chapter, i think this book would be HIGHLY beneficial for large organisations that do use really solid, profressional content mangement systems.

so, the bottom line is, i think your comment is bollocks! :P

I get cold calls at least once a month from headhunters wanting me to do Livelink. I don't list a phone number, email address, or physical address on my online resume; they call information to get to my company and then work their way in from the front desk.

The product is a web based document management system, like Documentum in theory, but much easier to work with in practice. I've been using it since September 01, and it has grown on me.

Users interact via a web site or WebDAV (supposedly works on Linux) to view, add, check in, check out, or delete documents; to interact with workflows; to engage in discussions, and to do whatever else you have your server configured to do.

The web interface allows for use with any operating system, and the java widgets seem to run on our Linux, Sun, OSX, and Irix boxes. (and of course on Windows!) I can't speak for WebDAV, as I haven't used it. I spend a lot of time using their Office integration widgets, which allow me to interact with the repository directly from Windows or MS Office. (More menus appear in your apps.)

I like it because it exports XML over HTTP. I send it a URL and object number, and it sends back a pile of XML that I transform into a web page. It means that I rarely have to update web pages, as I just say a web page is made of objects of type Y, and those objects show up on the web page when a user checks them into the repository.

What's strange is that in the US, it is not too popular. Livelink consultants are impossible to find, and generally bill at around $100/hour. From my colleagues in the UK I understand that the billing is about the same, but that consultants are easier to come by.

It's strange that the product doesn't have much of a name because OpenText has been around since 1991. They're a Canadian company who do about 100 million in sales a year, so they're not small or new.

Anyway, I wasn't impressed up front, but have turned into a fan. And the user response, always important in IT projects, has been extremely positive. Just around 60% of the site's users have requested to participate in training sessions. (Which aren't cheap: Opentext bills $3000/day for onsite training!) And almost every user has been interacting with it daily, with almost no complaints.

So, it's definitely worth considering, especially if you have the money!

There's a product I've been working with for 3 years which does something similar to what you are asking for:

OpenText Livelink

They have a number of other products that probably have similar underpinnings.

Basically, a database (can be Oracle, Sybase, or SQL Server) keeps meta-information on items stored in the database. Items can be documents, folders, URL links, tasks, discussion topics and replies, etc. Meta-information includes dates of creation, updating, deletion (i.e. the makings of an audit trail), whether the document is checked out for editing and if so, by whom (that makings of a simple source-control system), who can see or edit the document (implies that a table of users is also maintained, which it is), etc.

Livelink provides a server (basically a big CGI app) that you can run through a web server, allowing this stuff to be navigated and maintained through the web. The web pages are customizable. Really, the whole thing is customizable, which means you can write all kinds of little apps and processes above and beyond what is supplied by Livelink (our most common examples are scanning apps, that scan and store new documents in one step, and document expiration processes, which force certain documents to be read and revised every 6 months or whatever). There's also an API for VB, C++, and Java, to allow access methods other than the web.

Depending on the number and size of documents you're storing, documents can be kept in the database itself, or can be kept in a filesystem, and pointers to those documents stored in the database. The second option is usually preferred because the first option will cause trouble when it comes time to backup or restore from backup, or to migrate data, etc.

The biggest disadvantage from a user's point of view is the need to log in, if you plan to keep any semblance of an ACL, source control, or auditing. You could provide one common login for read-only access to most of your files, which would ease the pain a bit. Or you could 'roll your own' solution, based on some of the premises used by this type of system.

I'd like to add that I think the technology to use is the least of your issues. The biggest issue will be in finding and categorizing all of the content that's already out there. When you find 4 different variations of the same document, or 3 different builds of the same source code, or tables for 3 different apps in one database schema, and it's not clear what is what, how will you know who to contact? Who among your users has the extra headcount to spare to give you detailed info on all their files and databases, etc? How much stuff is out there, that was owned by people who have left or been laid-off, who no one else can provide info on? That's gonna be your real battle.

If overkill is your thing then you may want to look at Opentext. Their BASIS product seems to do everything you want. It supports over 250 document formats ranging from plain text to binaries to XML/SGML. It has secure access, is cross platform, and supports document check-outs.

Another possible option is Athena from Global Recall. This is what we use here and it seems pretty comprehensive. One nice option it has is the ability to render office documents to web. While I haven't had to deal with the version control aspect of it the online documentation seems to tout it a lot.

Sorry for the shameless plug (I work for Open Text Corporation), but Livelink is a great document management system product. It may be out of your price range, but it does allow you to have versioning on your documents, and it has a whole whack of other features that many enterprises demand.

It seems that they're marketing it now as "a highly scalable and comprehensive collaborative environment for the development of Web-based intranets, extranets and e-business applications." Oh dear.

Sorry for the shameless plug (I work for Open Text Corporation), but Livelink is a great document management system product. It may be out of your price range, but it does allow you to have versioning on your documents, and it has a whole whack of other features that many enterprises demand.

It seems that they're marketing it now as "a highly scalable and comprehensive collaborative environment for the development of Web-based intranets, extranets and e-business applications." Oh dear.

Actually, no. Way back in the day, Yahoo! was a web directory. They offered a modified grep to search their directory, not the contents of the pages in their directory.

They added search functionality in a partnership, first with Open Text (my beloved OTI...sigh...), then with Alta Vista, now with Google. [ There may have been others in the mix...I got away from search engines for a while...sigh...;-) ]

Probably the most popular are TeamSite and Documentum, but there are also contenders such as LiveLink and NetPerceptions.

My own personal opinion leans towards TeamSite, but because I've heard good things about rather than trying it myself.

OpenText used to have a blind developer (as in programmer) working for them. He may even still be there. Basically, he had a VT like terminal that would speak to him. It doesn't surprise me that there are blind websurfers, especially because of the lawsuit against AOL for ADA Non-Complience

We have been using OpenText's Livelink system for a few year now, and have moved all the database parts to Linux + Oracle (Sybase is also supported), with NO problems what so ever. It's is the leading document management/workflow solution with 49% of the market apparently. And better still is ALL web based, with filters that will convert documents e.g. Word in Webpages!! I only gripe we have is the need to have a NT or SUN webserver running Netscape or Microsoft web servers for the livelink application to run. I understand 'thought' is being given to writing a Linux/Apache module/version at some stage. I wouldn't recommend anything else, as its straight out of the box and VERY, VERY powerful. Tad pricey though :( Give it a try you won't be disappointed.