Revision Control and Dash DDX

ShieldDid you ever need to track different versions – or revisions – of a document? You are not alone…

This is really common in engineering settings with drawings and work instructions. Its also critical for ISO-certified companies that need to ensure that each revision of a document or work instruction is tracked adequately, and that ONLY the most current version is used by most audiences. But revisions can also be really helpful in tracking the changes made to other transactional documents like Purchase Orders, Quotes, Order Acknowledgements and others.

Luckily, Dash DDX™ Document Management software speaks revision control fluently – and for all documents. Here’s how it works…

When a new doc is added to DDX, the system first puts that new document into its database. Then it uses all of the keywords from that added document to gather all documents (old & new) in the database that share all of those same keywords*. (ie: all the keywords are absolutely identical). Note that the name of the file is not considered when trying to find duplicates: DDX doesn’t care about file names.

DDX then sorts them by its Revision Date/Time field. The most current revision date/time has the “Latest Revision” box checked, and all the rest are unchecked.  This all happens once, when the new document is added.

In a tie: If two or more documents share the same set of keywords in common, and have the same revision date/time, and that date/time is the most current, then both (or multiple) documents are flagged as the latest revision.

revision control

DDX Document Viewer with Revision Control

*What keyword fields are considered: By default, every document type relies on all of the keyword fields to make that match – except the page number. DDX offers flexibility here in determining how revision control works within a document type: The system administrator, can, however, change that to tell the DDX to only match on some subset of those keyword fields, and ignore others. This is all determined by document type.

Manually setting Latest Revision: The LatestRev column can also be changed when editing keywords in the Viewer. And, the administrator has the ability to re-evaluate all documents and reset the latest revision field.

 

So DDX gives you a lot of flexibility with its built-in revision control capabilities.