Basic DocMinder® tasks, checklists, and surveys can be linked together to create a workflow. Once activated, these Workflows will automatically follow a structured action plan to accomplish your business process.
Workflow can be utilized with decision trees to allow for the process to account for multiple possibilities (e.g., an approval or rejection). They can also attach to a webform using ARC procedures to kick the process off.
Why is DocMinder® Workflow different from other products?
How can Workflow be used?
The checklist feature provides your team with one place to view all the individual tasks in a project and stay up-to-date.
It's a collaborative to-do list for you and your team delivered to you via email. Checklist adds organization, structure, and readability to your email updates. No more scanning through long email threads to find who needs to do what and what's been done.
Do you currently?
Checklist Management Video
U.S. Patent for DocMinder® Checklist Management
The U.S. Patent Office has awarded DocMinder® a patent for its unique approach to managing project checklists through common email.
Jon Wainwright with Ascertus recently wrote an article entitled, The Business Case for Automating Contract Lifecycle Management.
In it, he shows some of the common problems Corporate Legal Departments are facing today and why automation is a valuable and much needed solution. It's an entertaining and thought-provoking read, clearly outlining the common problems with existing business practices, and including thought provoking questions to help qualify and justify the need for Legal Departments to automate.
Jon delivers a powerful case for automating the Contract Management Lifecycle. After reading the article, we were inspired to illustrate the common problems found in the 3 main components of Contract Management and show how DocMinder® solves those issues.
Creating a basic DocMinder® is about the same as sending an email to someone, but with a few key differences. DocMinder® mimics email with To and CC lines, a subject and message/body; with added functionality to set a due date and notifications.
The DocMinder® recipient is responsible for completing the task detailed in the DocMinder®. The notification schedule identifies when email notifications will be automatically sent to the recipients, keeping them up-to-date with the status of the project. The notifications include the instructions the DocMinder® manager included in the message/body, any comments that have been made on the work, related documents. The responsible parties will continue to be notified until the work is completed.
DocMinder® Homepage is available for the recipient to track the progress of their work through a basic report that resembles a to-do-list, the DocMinder® dashboard showing a graphical report of their progress, and a calendar view.
DocMinder® managers have access to additional functionality with the Reports, Calendar, and Dashboard including fully customizable reports and calendar views for a quick collection of data or to save for future use.
If you're looking for complete automation, the Automatic Reminder Creation (ARC) Module is an addition to DocMinder® for standardizing your company procedures. ARC allows for pre-configured processes to be automatically started after the completion of a web form or when a document is saved into your DM system.
We've developed a new feature for DocMinder® recipients using the DocMinder® Homepage and ARC Procedures.
Check out the videos: Homepage and ARC Procedures.
Now, Recipients can set up and send a DocMinder® to themselves using the basic creation functionality from an ARC procedure. All tasks, big and small, can be tracked in one place. Personal DocMinder® assignments will be accessible from the Homepage, Calendar, and Dashboard.
Here's How it Works
Recipients fill out a sbject line and message, choose a notification pattern and due date, and can attach a document. After selecting Submit, they receive an immediate email notification in addition to their chosen notification pattern and the assignment is visible on their homepage, calendar, and dashboard.
ARC Procedures ensure business processes are completed using a standardized, structured methodology. DocMinder® will automatically route notifications to the correct people responsible for addressing each part of the established procedure. Watch Two-Min Video
How Does it Work?
Here's How it Works
Recipients fill out a Subject Line and Message, choose a Notification Pattern and Due Date, and can attach a document. After selecting Submit, they receive an immediate email notification in addition to their chosen Notification Pattern and the assignment is visible on their Home Page, Calendar, and Dashboard.
Here’s what’s awesome!
If your work deviates from its normal process, a DocMinder® Manager can easily alter a procedure to fit the needs of that situation without contaminating the standardized process. This allows for a high volume activity to be standardized, reportable, and automatically followed up on without losing the flexibility needed to address unexpected changes.
Some common processes automated with ARC Procedures include: New Employees, Employee Termination, Incoming Legal Requests, Capital Expenditure Requests, Vacation Requests, and Training Management.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Guide to Managing Outside Counsel suggests considering a number of different reports while analyzing the performance of your Outside Counsel to determine their value.
These can include monthly reports showing the number of new matters open and existing matters closed, spending reports from Accounting or Finance showing external fees and expenses incurred, detailed budget reports for various matters and reports from matter management systems, e-billing systems, internal evaluations and information provided from outside counsel.
The Problem is they're all separate silos of information with varying results that need to be requested, created, gathered, analyzed, and summarized. It requires the work of several people and systems and can be time consuming or produce inconsistent/inaccurate results. These disparate reports also have varying monthly, quarterly, and yearly time frames to consider so valuable analysis can be difficult to attain based on the amount of data available per report.
DocMinder® Helps you to consider work delegated to your outside counsel within the context of that work rather than relying on data gathered “after the fact’ from reports produced by various systems and people. Not only that, you can view work in progress in order to easily isolate problems and address them before they become costly oversights.
As easily as emailing an assignment to your Outside Counsel, your project will be automatically followed up on with escalations until closure. With DocMinder®, both parties receive progress updates through automatic email notifications (includes summary of comments, assigned recipients, and related documents).
Automatically Create DocMinder Tasks to automate an entire process with Automatic Reminder Creation (ARC). With the ARC module, DocMinder® can connect to your existing matter management systems and e-billing systems to automatically create DocMinder® Assignments and Workflows by compiling data from those outside sources.
Reports and Analysis Reports and the Dashboard allow you to view performance results in real-time or in review by law firm, individual, topic, matter, etc. Not only that, you can also set budgets for delegated assignments and view the updates as they occur. This means Outside Counsel can be easily monitored and assessed to determine their value.