As far as document management systems go, DocuWare Cloud has long been considered a strong contender in the space, ever since the Microsoft Windows 3.0 days when document management became a thing.
DocuWare Cloud is priced at $300 per month for an instance sized for a small business with up to four users and 20 GB of storage.
The platform has a strong enterprise feature set, including excellent document importing and forms handling capabilities.
Though an industry veteran, it lacks the integration and sharing functionality found in our Editors' Choice winners Ascensio System OnlyOffice and Microsoft SharePoint Online, but it's a solid offering that's still worth considering.
The Basics
Much like Adobe Document Cloud Standard (12.99 Per Month at Adobe) , DocuWare Cloud falls squarely in the enterprise category for document management systems with bells and whistles to spare.
However, it toes the line with its user interface (UI), giving users the tools they need to perform common tasks, while tucking more advanced options away for power users or administrators.
The primary view most users see with DocuWare Cloud is split into two core views.
A navigation pane on the left-hand side gives you access to your inbox, document search, lists that are available to you, and tasks.
On the right-hand side, there are additional options offering a document viewer along with annotation tools.
When a document is selected, the left pane also affords you the option of editing index fields, either by hand or by clicking on text within the document, populating the index field automatically.
Lists are the primary document container visible to users, and are defined by the admin.
The list view provides a useful option for users to create a shortcut directly to the list without having to deconstruct the URL.
Lists not only show the documents available in that particular container, but also allow you to view, export, and share the index fields for to those documents in the form of a CSV file.
The left navigation pane offers a couple of interesting options for linking documents together: staple and clip.
Both staple and clip combine documents for use later, and are reversible.
The staple feature applies only to PDF files, and will either combine multiple PDFs into a single PDF, or break a multi-page PDF document into single pages.
Clipping allows for multiple document types to be linked while still maintaining distinct documents.
Importing Documents
There are several options for getting documents into DocuWare Cloud, across a wide range of use case scenarios.
Documents can be imported through the web client or the DocuWare Cloud Scan App can be installed in order to scan documents directly into DocuWare Cloud.
Alternatively, admins can configure custom printer drivers so users can streamline some import tasks, such as indexing and form handling.
Admins also have the ability to configure an FTP folder so documents are immediately saved into a specific area in DocuWare Cloud, enabling several scenarios such as bulk uploads, programmatic or scheduled imports, or integration with third-party software.
Another area DocuWare Cloud excels in is optical character recognition (OCR).
Most document management systems support OCR, but the ability to customize the engine is a feature not often seen.
DocuWare Cloud lets admins optimize the OCR engine for performance or accuracy based on current business needs.
The OCR engine can also be taught, much like a spell check dictionary, uploading lists of words that may be commonly used in your business in order to optimize the OCR process.
Forms Handling
DocuWare Cloud does a great job of enabling electronic forms for either internal use or for customer-facing scenarios.
The process begins with an admin creating a form template using form designer tools.
There are two form types in DocuWare Cloud.
Web forms are fairly basic, as the end product takes the look and feel of the template designed by the admin.
Merged forms, on the other hand, take the data gathered through the form template, and then overlay that data on an existing document based on the admin's preference.
Both form types are also used to populate index fields, and can be leveraged for other data-related tasks and integrations, too.
Using the DocuWare Cloud forms designer, you can drag various elements onto the form and quickly place them where you want.
You can label fields and mark them as required, and you can quickly place instructions where you need them, too.
Merging forms requires the output template be uploaded, fields from the form template to be integrated into the output template, and the basic text formatting options to be configured for each field.
Both form types ultimately result in the newly populated form being placed in the document store of your choice, as well as index fields being filled with form data or static values.
Finally, you can configure permissions during this process, letting individual users administrate or use the form.
You also have the ability to make forms public, letting external users to populate and submit forms.
Administrative Features
Enterprise admins will be very DocuWare Cloud's security capabilities.
Permissions can be configured at a number of levels, but, similar to Dokmee , are most prevalent in file cabinets.
These can contain multiple dialogs, which are elements that let users access or store documents.
List dialogs are query-based document collections that are configured using a graphical editor or using a SQL statement.
Store dialogs are used to identify the index fields that are used when a document is placed in storage, while result list dialogs specify the fields used for the document list view and index field editing forms.
Finally, folder dialogs are used to identify the folder structure used for document storage and navigation.
The folder structure is built by placing index fields or static values at different folder levels in order to build the hierarchy to your liking.
For admins looking to make life easier on their users, DocuWare Cloud offers some help as well.
Two examples are enforcing index field options and automating business processes.
Fields for various document types can be configured to use value lists for lookup and validation purposes, either from a static list, one generated from data within DocuWare Cloud, or even values from an external data source.
Document relationships can be defined, either within a single cabinet or between two cabinets, by comparing key fields.
Consider the Cost
One downside with DocuWare Cloud is its somewhat nebulous pricing.
Unlike most of its competition, you'll need to contact the company for exact pricing because DocuWare Cloud is priced to the instance size rather than per user.
As mentioned earlier, a DocuWare Cloud instance sized for a small business, with up to four users and 20 GB of storage will run you $300 per month.
A larger instance supporting 40 users and 100 GB of storage costs closer to $1,500 per month.
Regardless of your user and storage needs, you'll want to contact the DocuWare Cloud sales team to discuss your business requirements and how these will impact your monthly rate.
As a whole, DocuWare Cloud offers enough features to make it an enticing option in the document management space.
The capabilities surrounding electronic forms are particularly useful for many businesses, and several of the administrative features are also compelling.
While it lags slightly behind our Editors' Choices Ascensio System OnlyOffice and Microsoft SharePoint Online in terms of integrations and ease of use, the lag isn't by much.
Because of this, DocuWare Cloud remains a document management option well worth investigating.
The Bottom Line
DocuWare Cloud is solid document management system with a strong core feature set.
It's lacking some of the features we've found on competing solutions, however.
