Shared documents and UCM

Question

We are in the process of replacing our shared network drives with UCM in my organization, and during our information audits we have discovered that many folks throughout the organization make rampant use of shared Excel files. We are now being asked how UCM can support these documents, and we have no answers.
Does anyone know of a UCM feature or component that would allow a shared document to be opened and edited by multiple users in realtime? I'm thinking like Google Docs type functionality.
Thanks,
Phil
Edited by: Phil on Jul 20, 2011 12:04 PM

Answer 1

Phil,
UCM itself is a document management system, so it has almost no control about what desktop application can or cannot do with a document.
However, UCM controls check-out and check-in of a document, and there the rule says that a document can be checked-out (-in) by a single user only. The exception is so-called folio which is an XML construct able to reference multiple documents - thus, a single user can have a single document checked-out, but the folio is kind of checked out by multiple users (a good use case is a book consisting of chapters written by many authors).
Nevertheless, even the standard mechanism, that is, a file (Excel sheet in your case) checked-out by a single user will not prevent editing by multiple users. Only the design will be lame - the file while being edited will have to be stored outside UCM and it will be checked-in by the single user when done.