Email is Not Document Management

Posted on 2019-08-01 in opinion • 3 min read

Email is for communication, not for document collaboration. Sure, the path of least resistance for sharing docs is to send an email attachment. However, when you find yourself focusing too intently on paperclips your email client, that’s probably a good sign that a different approach is needed. When possible, a better route is to send a link to a shared version of a document. Solutions such as Google Docs or Microsoft OneDrive go one better by allowing multiple users to concurrently access and edit a shared document.

The problem

Modern knowledge work often involves collaboration across a remote, geographically disbursed team. Even with a co-located team, other external users such as clients and subconsultants will typically be working in a separate system. Within the traditional design firm, low bandwidth performance across the WAN usually precludes a traditional network share pattern for a remote team. Above a certain threshold, more heavyweight solutions such as ProjectWise provide a great environment for collaboration, change management, archiving, and all manner of other business processes and data workflows. However, that threshold is fairly high and makes the most sense when the work is centered around a CADD platform.

Email is electronic mail, which is the digital equivalent to interpersonal letter writing in the past. Therefore, it’s difficult to keep the right people in the loop, especially as a thread grows over time in length and audience. Discussions are often ‘forked’, causing side conversations and splintered resolutions. Another pain point with email-centric collaboration is the fact that forwarding an email typically doesn’t maintain any attachments from the original sender.

The symptoms

Document management via email is most likely to germinate in remote teams where the primary means of communication is via email, versus some other tool such as Slack or Teams. Symptoms may also present in conversations along the lines of It was attached to the kickoff meeting invite and Did you get that attachment?

The cure

Luckily, this is a common malady with a well-known treatment. There are abundant options for modern document collaboration using tools such as OneDrive / SharePoint Online, DropBox, box, ProjectWise, BIM360, Newforma, Aconex, Procore, and many others. Most of these utilize a client-server pattern with local caching of files that is comfortable for users that are accustomed to traditional desktop and local network share workflows. Specifically for our team, SharePoint Online ticks most of the boxes for our needs. It’s a modern re-factoring of a system that people love to hate. The current version is reflective of the Satya era at Microsoft and is a much more pleasant experience than the SharePoint of the past. Another benefit of utilizing this tool internally is that it allows us to “eat our own dogfood” by using the same environment that we often propose in our solution patterns.

Conclusion

Document collaboration in Outlook is a common malady, but it is easily treatable with a few key principles:

  • share links, not documents (or in software terms, pass by reference, not by value)
  • make use of change management tools such as check in/out
  • everyone works from a single data store

A parting wish

Having spent a fair amount of time utilizing git for source code management, I get sparkly eyes thinking of a future where Word and Excel are fully integrated with git. Indeed, the past few years have seen more and more online documentation using git and Github for managing updates and corrections. I also recently heard of an internal trend at Microsoft where Project Managers are using git for day to day task management. That sounds very appealing, but may also be a case of seeing every problem as a nail best suited to the hammer I’m currently swinging.