Sohodox Review

Posted by 22111
Sep 11, 2013 at 07:10 PM

I don’t know if readers here are interested in this topic, since it has not got any commentary, and it’s about a DMS, not an outliner, but it had not been myself who brought this up, and I don’t want to leave a loose end.

Just “one hour ago”, on second day of bits offering, the developer added a second, now very serious answer to my questions which I would like to paste here in full; I do not think it’s copyright infringement of my part since it can savely be assumed the developer will be more than happy to see his comments near what I wrote:

Apologies for the earlier brief reply from us. As your message was long it got truncated in the comments sections and we completely missed the latter part of your message :) We appreciate you having taken the time to send in your questions. I am sure other users would also have such questions and am hoping that you and other users find our replies helpful.My reply is long so I request our viewers to expand it to view the entire message.

The database (db) is just for the index, the files stay within the file system (I think that’s very good; I lost thousands of photos by Adobe Lightroom, for its way of storing your files under new names, I never understood where and how, and I cannot bear to happen the same thing with my other files, so I must know what’s going behind the scenes before buying.)

You are right about this. We chose this approach because apart from
other advantages, customers tend to be most comfortable with it.

1 In your screenshots, I see “Public folders / private folders”; may I assume these are virtual folders within the db, and do not correspond to the file system and to the names of the physical folders?

Yes these are virtual folders in the DB that do not correspond to the physical folders in the file system.

2 So what about the folders and files in the file system? Does your software check for moves/renames of the physical folders and/or files, made outside your program (within any file commander)?

We designed Sohodox to be a Document Management Software for small
businesses. Its design, pricing and feature set are aimed at making it easier for small businesses to adopt document management. In our experience price and complexity are two of the main reasons which prevent small businesses from adapting document management even though they have a definite need for it and are usually clear about how it would benefit them. Though there is some overlap between a File Manager and a document management system (DMS), both types of applications are designed to solve different problems. Sohodox aims to create a single, centralized and well categorized repository of
documents which can be searched from multiple machines. One of the
main goals is to be able to find documents quickly based on different criteria (for e.g. All bills paid last month). A DMS like Sohodox therefore has very powerful indexing/categorization features. An area that File Management applications are not very strong at.

When you add files to Sohodox they are copied to a folder which Sohodox refers to as its File Store. Paths to these files within Sohodox’s File Store are added to the Sohodox DB. Like most DMS software we do not recommend direct access to the File Store via Windows Explorer or via any application such as a File Manager application. Monitoring for and responding to external changes to File Store would add needless complexity to Sohodox.

3 In both cases, is there a way to rename/move physical folder and/or files within your program? By what commands? Can we see a screenshot for the dialog doing this? Is moving files only possible by drag and drop, or do you have some file commander gui for doing this, with two panes, source and target?

No there is no way to rename or move physical files or folders from within Sohodox. You can change the names of virtual folders and document titles.

4 Is the “Document title” within the pane “Documents”, right to the pane “Workspace”, the original title of physical file, or is it something other? In other words, can this “Document title” be changed, within your program, and then appears as a renamed physical file within the file system, just like you renamed it in “Douments”? Or is it possible that the title here is / becomes something else then the name of the physical file represented by this “document title”?

The “Document Title” of file is initially generated using the file name and it can be changed within Sohodox. However changing the “Document Title” does not change the name of the underlying physical file. This ensures that any external backup programs being used work correctly. However when you export the file from Sohodox (for e.g. via Drag and Drop) Sohodox will name the exported file using its current Document Title in Sohodox.

Please note that we have received request for renaming of the physical file and may implement this in a future version.

5 With respect to 1, can one virtual sub-folder appear in more than one virtual parent folder?

No virtual sub-folder can have only one virtual parent folder.

6 Ditto for files, can one file (“document”) appear in more than one virtual folder?

No a file can appear under only virtual folder. However if a file requires multiple categories we suggest the use of tags. In fact our users have found the combination of tags and folders extremely powerful.

When it comes to indexing and categorizing documents, the real power of Sohodox lies in the Document Types feature. This lets you store different pieces of information along with each document and later use that information to search, sort and group documents. For example with each invoice you could store the Vendor Name, date, amount and payment status. And then quickly locate things like “all unpaid invoices from a particular vendor”. You can even save such searches. Such saved searches act as dynamic folders.

7 If “yes” for questions 5 and / or 6, does a “delete” just delete the reference, or the physical folder/file? Even for the last instance of that physical file? Is there a warning for this delete, when it comes to the last instance/reference, and thus it would delete the physical file, instead of just a reference?

You can delete the actual physical file along with all its references (Del key) or just a particular reference (Shift+Del). Appropriation confirmation/warning dialogs are displayed.

P.S. Because of the offer there has been a large volume of questions over
email, chat etc.. and our replies have sometimes been shorter than
normal.

Now, if you are interested in DMS and read all this carefully, you will see that this perfect answer (you simply could not be more specific, it’s really a treat and sheds some good light on this software development in general), it’s almost incredible how much this software is lacking in functionality): No synching between file system and files in the DMS, both ways: Renames in the file system will not be monitored by the DMS, and renames there will not be replicated into the file system; let alone for moves.

Then, the big advantage of a virtual folder system is not brought into play: No file into more than one folder, no sub-folder into more than one parent folder. So, what I explained for the file system, and what I thought was realized easier in this DMS, can’t even be done here.

So the developer speaks of tags, and as we all know, tags can be put into file names, and into file comments (see above); also, good file commanders are able to search for such tag combinations, and easy macros will do the “stored searches”, too. Also, good file commanders are able to search over several folders and their respective sub-folders (scope of search).

So, this DMS adds “complexity”, in the way that you must replicate any rename, and any move of a file or folder manually, be it in the DMS or be it in the file system, and this is tremendous work, and will cause de-synch, by typing errors, by simply working on groups of files, then forgetting to replicate the changes here and there… Also, it should be expected that moving a folder, together with its files, will cause very big problems, even for manual synching.

So you see here that any of my considerations above, without really knowing this software, but from a conceptual point of view (meaning I know a little about the problems of such systems in general), have been met by the missing functionality here (and yes, it is not easy to program all this).

But also, let’s note this DMS seems (?) to have some reporting capabilities as for the respective file contents; let’s hope this is not only by your tagging and by the date (which both would be realizeable by a good file commander).

Now a personal word. On bits, most software offered is crap, and I would never give my advice on such, I just let it pass before my eyes. Here, I had really been interested in perhaps buying, and so I thought about its possible shortcomings. And now a respectable developer finds himself (because he didn’t take my questions serious, early up) with a rather not so good (and as we see, justified) review.

So let me say that I would be happy to recommend this software as soon as he works on those points I put into the light when in fact I had hoped that I would get almost all “yes” to my questions - if not, I would not have asked them to begin with.

For the time being, my advice above stands: Buy something expensive and integrated, or do it within a file manager, but don’t try to mix up file system and DMS in a non-synched workflow.