This is the first of a series of short tips and tricks relating to Newforma Project Center. These will obviously be most relevant to existing users but hopefully will also give insight to others of some of the less obvious benefits of the software.
The title of this post "Why do we have so many copies of this presentation on the server?" comes from a question asked by a senior partner at one of our UK customers to his IS Manager in the days before they had Newforma Project Center. We all know the situation - you've got to do a presentation to a new firm but rather than start from scratch you copy all the files from a previous presentation into a new folder. You then update the copy of the original presentation and save it with a new filename. However the first copy you made just sits there - an exact duplicate of the original. And so it carries on - not just with presentation files but with spreadsheets, CAD drawings, etc.
This results in two basic problems. Firstly you've taken up unnecessary space on your file server with all this duplicate information. Secondly, and more critical, is that you risk causing confusion and doubt as to which file on the server is the latest version - and which files are really exact duplicates and can be removed.
Enter Newforma Project Center.
If you have Newforma Project Center managing your projects then a simple right click can run a utility to list all the exact duplicate files within a project folder structure, how much additional disk space they are taking up and where they are located.
Click on the screenshot above for a full size image.
This facility was mentioned at the Newforma UK User Community meeting last week where it was also described as a useful tool to ensure that project archive processes are as efficient as possible.
And by the way, the UK customer in question now uses the Document Sets facility within Newforma Project Center to avoid the file duplication problem in the first place!
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