Note that we’ll be posting more articles as we learn more – and our FAQs will have a summary of the most up to date information that we have.  If you want to learn more about Trumpet’s Worldox deployments and other software, please check out or financial home page or our legal home page.

Release Date

Worldox GX3 Professional will be officially released on February 1st, 2012.  Trumpet will begin rolling out GX3 to existing GX2 users after we finish our internal evaluation and testing.  If you are interested in upgrading as soon as we finish our evaluation, please email installs@trumpetinc.com to be placed on the early update list.

What’s New in GX3

A Redesigned User Interface

• Named toolbar buttons – still one toolbar, but now with the key advantage of labels, as seen in new “ribbon” toolbar styles
• User configurable toolbars – add, remove or rearrange choices however you like
• Personalized, configurable folder-tree views
• New view buttons – a reorganized left-side pane presents new view choices, gives users ways to move between content categories to this visual space
• Expanded My Workspaces – My Workspaces is now even more flexible, offering the ability to visually bookmark personal folders – yours and others

Enhanced Speed and Integration

• Speed – a redesigned and optimized architecture delivers data to your screen faster – as much as 60% faster in certain critical operations
• More 3rd party integrations, connectors and system tools
• Ability to view Portfolio PDFs
• Upgraded Oracle Viewer technology built in, for improved viewing, previewing of files
• Tighter MS Active Directory Integration
• Better MS server integration, for faster, easier maintenance and setup

New Deployment Options

The basic tenets of that article still hold, but technology has moved considerably since those days, and we get questions from time to time about good backup practices for advisors, so I thought I’d put together a bit of a refresher on the topic.

Being Compliant

As a refresher, the biggest thing to understand about backup requirements for financial advisory firms is that no backup application is going to be “compliant” in and of itself.  Compliance isn’t about the specific software you use – it’s about whether you achieve the following goals:

1. Meet compliance requirements by showing how a given documents has (or hasn’t) changed over time. This is especially important for scanned documents.
2. Meet disaster recovery requirements. You really need to be able to restore your entire system from a single piece of media – without having to wait 2 days for a disk to be mailed to you (this is a primary issue that I have with online backup systems – trying to recover a huge server worth of files over the Internet isn’t prctical – especially because in a disaster scenario, it is unlikely that you will even have Internet access)
3. Ensure that any data written to media that can be easily taken off site is encrypted

Technological Changes

The big change in technology from what was described in the original paper is the move away from tape media to external hard disks.

The same grandfather/father/son media rotation strategy could technically be achieved using external hard disks – however, it would be very expensive to have to have 20 or more hard disks.  Fortunately, disk capacity has increased dramatically over the years, so it now makes sense to use 2 or 3 external disks in a rotation, storing many snapshots on each disk.  The reason for using multiple disks in rotation is to protect against the case where one of those disks might be damaged, in which case you can purchase a new disk and initialize it using the data from one of the undamaged disks.

Managing Snapshots

One key technology that you need to understand when storing many snapshots to a single piece of media is the concept of data de-duplication.  From one day to the next (and indeed, from one year the next), the vast majority of the data on your server’s hard drives does not change.  This opens up the possibility of only storing data that changes, which can dramatically increase the number of backup snapshots that can be stored in a given amount of space, at the expense of a bit more accounting overhead in the software to keep track of things.

How Many Snapshots

For your working documents (your scanned files, Word and Excel documents, etc…) you would ideally hold on to every version of them ever created.  This may sounds like a lot of data, but it’s actually quite modest.

For large monolithic files like database files (i.e. the files that backup up the various SQL Server databases in your firm), storing every single version would be quite difficult – these files tend to change constantly – plus the files are very, very large.  For disaster recovery purposes, you probably want to have versions of these files going back 2 to 4 weeks (in case there is a database corruption that takes a couple of days to notice), but it is doubtful that any backup older than that would have any practical value.

The operating system and application executable files on your server don’t change very often, so holding on to multiple versions would be ok – but practically speaking, you would never restore files older than about 2 weeks from backup – so holding on to lots of old snapshots of these files is not beneficial.

Back up the entire disk, or the files?

There are two strategies when it comes to backing up your server – some backup software focuses on one or the other – some backup software can do both:

File level backup – These backup systems read files from the source disk and store them on the backup media.  These backups tend to be better at allowing for purging of older versions of specific files.  Traditionally, however, they have not done a good job on the disaster recovery front – restoring from backup generally involves re-installing the server operating system, then recovering data files.

Block level backup – These backup systems read the low level bits that are actually stored on the source disk, and write them to the backup media.  These systems tend to be much better in disaster recover scenarios (recovering involves writing the data directly to the disk – there is usually no operating system install required).  Data de-duplication tends to work better in block level backup systems, so they tend to be more efficient in how they consume space on the backup media.  Block level backup has it’s downsides, though – in that they have been traditionally not very good at selective purging of versions for certain files.

No Silver Bullet – Yet

The ideal backup solution would be one that is capable of:

• holding on to all versions of some files (like your documents) while still being able to automatically purge older versions of other files (like your database and operating system files).
• backing up to multiple external disks in a 2 or 3 disk rotation
• encrypting all data written to the external disks
• data de-duplication to ensure that the backup disks are used efficiently
• use block level backup to optimize the disaster recovery process, and make the best use of the backup media

At this time, unfortunately, I am not aware of a single backup solution that meets all of these requirements. It is possible to achieve something somewhat similar by using multiple backup strategies, or possibly segmenting the disks on the server.

Trumpet’s Backup

In the absence of a concrete recommendation for backup, I thought that I’d describe how we do backup at Trumpet.  Please bear in mind that we are not a financial advisory firm, so we do not have the same compliance requirements that you do.  Don’t just blindly copy our system without evaluating it against the requirements described at the top of this article.

At Trumpet, we use two different systems to achieve the requirements (we don’t have compliance requirements, but I still like to have past versions of files). To do this, we do a file level differential backup of our documents to an *internal* hard disk on our server. And we do block-level backup of our entire server’s disks to external hard disks (encrypted!) that are taken off site every day in a rotation.  We also use Microsoft’s VSS technology to allow users to easily recover past snapshots of documents, and the VSS snapshots are part of the block level backup that we perform.

Finally, note that selection and configuration of your backup system is an activity that your system administrator is uniquely situated to help you with, and while we do understand the technology, we really aren’t set up to provide anything more than general suggestions and commentary about direction your system administrator may want to take things.

If anyone has a backup system/strategy that they are really happy with, please post a comment so others can benefit from your find – I look forward to reading your comments.

Thoughtfully, Kevin has been scouring the Internet for the 6 months leading up to Christmas for some inkling that someone, somewhere, has developed my idea. While said item didn’t arrive until after Christmas, it was a huge surprise, and worth the wait. Turns out, this gift had to be imported from China (not through a US retailer).

So, here’s the problem, then the product that solves it:

If you’re like me or have a significant other who is a woman, you know that women do not always carry their phone in their pocket. Much of women’s clothing is pocketless, and as smart phones grow in size to become book readers, phones are not even practicable to latch onto our hip. Translated, here’s the equation:

Our phones are often in our purse. Purse is not always with the woman, or purse is detached from woman, hanging on a chair in a loud restaurant, or in a loud basketball practice at a gym – you get the idea. Meaning, we don’t always have the phone with us or hear it even when the volume is hiked up all the way, which causes undue (and countless frustration) on the part of significant others who may be trying to reach their significant others.

Besides being annoying, it can also be downright problematic. I remember attending a birthday party with my 6 year old son. A classmate of his began having an allergic reaction, and his mom had dropped him off at the party. I was the only one who had her phone number. She didn’t answer after numerous attempts to reach her. Last attempt, she shared she was attending her older daughter’s cheerleading competition in the school gym. Who could blame her for not hearing her phone?

Now, for the perfect solution:  A piece of jewelry for a wearer that vibrates whenever (1) your mobile phone is called or (2) whenever you begin to go “out of range” of your phone. For example, let’s say you finish up a call with your mom, and lay the phone down to help your son to get ready for car pool. As you head out for the office a few minutes later, your fashionable blue tooth, bracelet beeps at you when you get in the car (because you left your phone on the kitchen table). Is that handy or what?!

This bluetooth bracelet will absolutely change my life. I’m reachable again!

Here’s a link:
http://www.chinavasion.com/cell-phone-accessories/ladies-bluetooth-fashion-bracelet-with-time-display-brown-calldistance-vibration-caller-id/

Note – that the bracelet is not always consistent. I’ve had it beep at me for no reason (bracelet is on, phone is in my pocket, and no one is calling me). So, while it can be idiosyncratic at times, I’m incredibly hopeful that technology has finally arrived and is bound to improve over time.

Thanks for great ideas whose time has come!

We have also added graphs views for each of the document list timelines (available by clicking into the list, then clicking View Timeline):

Finally, we’ve provided a button that allows exporting the raw timeline data to CSV file for further analysis:

Symphony Suite brings the full power of Worldox to the world of paper documents, with a completely optimized workflow.  Scanning paper documents into Worldox can be done in batch, with a single button press – and back-end OCR ensures that all images in Worldox (regardless of where they came from) are fully text searchable.  Even better, Symphony works with any scanner (whether a personal desktop scanner or a high volume MFP device), so you can choose the hardware that best meets your needs.

For more information, please see the full press release.

To learn more about Symphony Suite, please see Trumpet’s new Legal website – http://legal.trumpetinc.com

At http://support.trumpetinc.com, you can submit a new support request by filling out a quick form which asks just a few questions about your particular issue.  Since all of our Trumpet Support staff will be monitoring the requests we can respond to you in a more timely fashion than we can respond to voicemails and / or emails you may leave for just one of our team.

Soon, we will be adding Knowledge Books for those of you that are Do-It-Yourself-ers and for those commonly asked questions.

Europe’s largest IT firm to scrap internal e-mail
I came to pretty much the exact same conclusion a couple of years ago (email is a horrible communication mechanism), but with a drastically different solution.

Three years ago at our firm (Trumpet, Inc.), we eliminated about 95% of our internal email communication, replacing it with an internal forum system.  This allows our team to engage in discussion about various topics, but never with the nightmare of back and forth email exchanges where no-one can ever figure out who said what, when.  With the forum in place, everyone can see the current state of the discussion, review the past comment thread, etc…  We do receive email notifications when a given discussion has been updated (but only *one* notification until we connect to the forum to read up on the topic).

The key realization for us was that email is really good at sending a single message – it’s entire goal is to send a piece of information from one person to another, one time.  We then spend a huge amount of time and energy trying to tie a thread through all the emails to create a ‘conversation’ – but this is always artificial, as it works against e-mail’s core design (sending a message from point A to point B).  Gmail does a pretty good job with this – but it still breaks down (ever forget to hit Reply All?).

So what are we, as users, really interested in?  We aren’t interested in sending individual messages.  We are interested in engaging others in conversation.  And while email is a very useful *notification* tool (as is text messaging and instant messaging), it is absolutely horrible for conversation.  In fact, I would say that it is anathema to effective conversation.  A far better model would be to establish a conversation that intereted parties can partake in.

So what are some tools to help move a firm from email to conversations?

1.  Forums – the bulk of the conversations in our firm now take place in a forum based system that we are all subscribed to.  Each discussion becomes a forum topic, and each exchange in the conversation is a post in the topic.  Pros: we definitely engage in a group conversation; the history of the discussion is preserved for all time in a fully searchable system; it’s very easy to go back and determine the reasons that a particular decission was made.  Cons:  Discussion of large, complex problems or projects is still hard (if a discussion starts having posts with 7 sub-items mapped out, we know we are getting into trouble).

2.  Instant messaging – I’m a big believer in IM, as long as it is used judiciously, for time sensitive items (for example, if we start a time sensitive discussion in the forums, we might notify a key player via IM that they should look at it ASAP).  I also suggest having a very clear policy on how to respond to an IM request if the recipient feels the topic should be moved to the forums (sometimes in the heat of working on something, it’s easy to forget that everyone elses priorities aren’t necessarily the same as yours).  IM is also very effective for a quick exchange between two people that doesn’t have to be archived for posterity.  Final comment on IM:  I *far* prefer IM to casually sticking my head into someone’s office.  IM allows the recipient to come to a reasonable stopping point before responding.  This is much harder to do if there is physical presence involved.

3.  Social media – I’m still not convinced that social is appropriate for internal business communication.  Social networking is more about connections and dipping our mind into a shared social conscious.  This is fantastic for personal interaction, but in most business transactions, it’s not ok for someone to just dip into a conversation from time to time.  So for now, I’m holding to my current position that there *may* be a place for Social in the business communication space, but only for non-critical communications (akin to employee newsletters, firmwide announcements that really aren’t hyper critical or time sensitive, that sort of thing).  I’m certain that 3 years from now I’ll be laughing at this, but so far, I haven’t seen it.

As a side note, we recently overhauled our outward facing support system – eliminating the use of emails as a communication mechanism, replacing them with a system that creates discussions related to each support request.  Interested parties are invited into the conversation as needed, and everyone can see the history of the conversation.  Email is still used, but only as a notification mechanism for users who wish (another notification method available to us in our new support system is RSS feeds, which I use to keep casual tabs on what everyone is involved with).

I see this trend away from email growing – but I don’t think the way to get there is by just tossing out email – I think that having an awareness of what we are really trying to achieve (conversation) will help us all in evaluating the best set of tools for our specific organizations.

As an aside, I’d love to see a CRM built from the ground up around this concept of conversation – I think it would be a very compelling solution.  If only I had a another 80 hours a week to devote to creating such a beast!

Trumpet Inc. (www.trumpetinc.com), a Worldox consultant specializing in the financial industry, had submitted Worldox for ActiFi’s consideration.  The ActiFi report reviewed 8 leading DMS products and was based on a combination of vendor interviews, software functionality testing, and a quantitative online survey of financial advisors. The resulting comprehensive analysis reflected the core issues concerning financial services industry users.

In addition to scoring highest for flexibility which measures the degree of customization and other features, Worldox ranked well above average for integration, filing features, retrieval tools, workflow and most of the other 18 categories.  Worldox achieved a perfect 4 for both filing features and retrieval tools.

World Software President Ray Zwiefelhofer remarks, “World Software Corporation is very pleased with Worldox’s performance in the ActiFi study.  While known for our legal market leadership, Worldox also has a significant financial market footprint and is an ideal solution for the financial industry.  We are pleased that the product’s customized features and flexibility meet and exceed the integration needs of this sector.  Worldox strives to be the best DMS, and ActiFi’s independent verification of its strong feature set for financial services professionals is important to advisors and to us.”

According to Joanne Day, co-founder of Trumpet Inc., “The Worldox DMS is an excellent match for the needs of professionals in the financial services industry.  At Trumpet Inc., we customize Worldox to meet the rigorous integration needs of our client base.  Based on our own experience and continuous client feedback, advisory firms are thrilled with the performance and price-point of Worldox, and we are very pleased by the results of the ActiFi study which corroborate that fact.”

For more information about Worldox DMS, please visit: www.worldox.com.

About World Software Corporation

Founded in 1988 and based in Glen Rock, New Jersey, World Software Corporation is an innovative leader in the Document Management Systems (DMS) category. The company’s flagship product Worldox has an install base of over 5000 companies in 41 countries.  For more information about World Software Corporation and its products, please visit us at www.worldox.com. Follow us on Twitter @worldox.  World Software Corporation® and Worldox® are registered trademarks of World Software Corporation.  All other trademarks are held by their respective owners.

About Trumpet Inc.

Since 1999, the Trumpet team has partnered with financial advisory firms to deploy a suite of robust software to improve the workflow efficiencies within practices throughout the country. Trumpet is a leading provider of document management & document assembly solutions for the financial advisory community. With several decades of combined experience working with advisory firms’ technology, workflow as well as Worldox document management software, Trumpet’s custom software applications enhance the abilities of Worldox and provide advisory firms tailored solutions to critical workflow needs.  For more information about Trumpet Inc., please visit:  www.trumpetinc.com.

Please stay tuned!