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M-Files
What is M-Files?
M-Files is the leading document management platform for knowledge work automation. It revolutionizes the way knowledge workers handle their processes, from creating and managing documents to automating workflows, collaborating externally, conducting enterprise searches, and ensuring security. M-Files features an innovative metadata-driven architecture, an embedded workflow engine, and advanced artificial intelligence. This enables customers to eliminate information chaos, improve process efficiency, and automate security and compliance. For more information, visit www.m-files.com/schedule-a-demo.
Benefits of using M-Files include:
- 70% improvement in process efficiency and accuracy through the automation of document-centric workflows.
- 65% efficiency in saving documents through automation of document organization and classification.
- 50% faster information retrieval with the help of enterprise search, views, and relationships.
Learn more about M-Files integrations today.
Who Uses M-Files?
M-Files serves a variety of industries and business needs for mid-market to Enterprise global B2B companies.
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M-Files
Reviews of M-Files
50-year-old Archives... digitized!
Comments: M-Files is our repository of choice for all our digital assets. The M-Files server is secure, robust, and easy to manage. Files may be accessed via the main software, via an app, or even via a web browser. Plus, digital workflows have changed the way we work on documents, making it more streamlined, and efficient. We are confident that our archives and new files are safe from theft, loss, and unauthorized access.
Pros:
M-files works seamlessly with Microsoft products (Windows Explorer, MS Office) which makes it easy to incorporate into our daily workflow. Our filing cabinet with 50 years worth of archives/documents have been digitally scanned recently, and M-files is our DMS of choice because of ease of use, integration with MS Office, secure vault features, OCR and powerful metadata tagging. Workflow design and implementation are easy since it is done via an intuitive graphical interface.
Cons:
Licenses do not come cheap. Just make sure to figure out the best possible license type to your use-case (e.g., Concurrent for offices which can share licenses).
The best and online data storage repository
Comments: The M-files tool is more costly. The pricing model must be modified; we're still hoping to secure more funding. What I don't like about the M-Files is how difficult it is to get used to the user interface: it must be improved. Anyone who needs to collaborate with others on documents and provide information should have M-files software on hand. M-files is an excellent tool for consolidating online storage, sharing, and retrieval of papers and digital content.
Pros:
The seamless interaction with Microsoft programs is the best-ever feature. This made incorporating the use of M-files into our office routine a breeze. A simple and intuitive graphical workflow designer is also my favorite which makes creating a workflow a little simpler. We were able to set up procedures for modification management and new data management with M-Files.
Cons:
We experienced some challenges with the rollout because we had to coach all of the customers, especially those who found it not so easy to use and clean at first.
Good Document Management Solution for most businesses
Comments: Learned what we did and did not want in a Document/Content Management Solution. We are currently shopping around for a better option.
Pros:
User Interface is the same no matter the platform. The database residing in the cloud and off local servers is a huge plus, especially for off-site workers. But the structure and speed of the M-Files server is fantastic. Fully customizable to however you want to track your documents and tag your metadata. Tasks and Assignments were a huge plus. Plug-ins for Microsoft Office products all worked very well. Versioning of the documents was awesome. Working on documents locally and then saving incremental changes back to the server dramatically increased speed of working documents for us. (CAD drawings in particular)
Cons:
We had 3 things that prevented us from being able to implement and use M-Files to the full. 1. Does not work with Revit's Central Module! Almost all of our architecture projects are built in Revit and they all utilize the Central Module to be effective. M-Filee's inability to comply with this, made it unusable for us. 2. User Interface was difficult for implementation. Many in the office are used to and prefer the windows folder structure and found that our method of tagging metadata and the general UI experience to be too time-demanding and different from what they were used to. 3. When the files are saved on the m-files server they are not saved in their native format (.dpf .xls. doc) they are saved in M-Files format. M-Files has an export feature that supposedly should allow you to get the files back in their native format. We did not like that option we wanted a way to be able to look through the M-Files vault, distinguish which files are which and then be able to save them back in their original format.
Central Digital Repo
Comments: M-Files has changed the way we move decision papers around in the office. We are slowly in the process of digitizing our workflows and simple business processes like forms approvals and routing of papers through the management team members. M-Files is now our central repository for archived documents and new ones coming into the inbox.
Pros:
1. We scan the majority of our paper documents in the office, and it goes straight to M-Files. I love the seamless integration with Microsoft products (Office, Outlook, File Explorer) as there are quick buttons for upload, and the usual cut&paste, drag&drop also works. 2. The setup for workflows is amazing and easy to do. It uses a graphical interface that is fun to experiment with but at the same time powerful and highly customizable. 3. M-files works best in the Microsoft Windows environment as well as with mobiles devices for easy access to our vaults from anywhere with internet connectivity.
Cons:
We initially had some trouble with integration with our Active Directory for a unified username/password management. We had to go through the documentation (which some are not so up to date), and the vendor we had was not so helpful either.
Best software for managing your electronic documents online.
Comments: By sharing required documents with each other and with US staff helps us to making benefits.
Pros:
We can manage and control of our documents online by this software. Very user friendly and ease of use. We can share our documents with other employees in our company. We can also set permissions that who can view and change to our documents. So it is very secure. It has a feature of back up and restoring of files to avoid data loss. We can also save our scanned documents and photographs in M-Files. We can also connect to different databases to get the required data.
Cons:
M-files provide less customer support. The files saved at M-files store will not save in their existing format like .pdf , .doc etc. it will save the files in their M-files format which is bit annoying.
M-Files Response
6 years ago
Thank you for the review and sharing about your experiences using M-Files. In your review you mention that files saved to M-Files do not store in their existing formats. I'm not certain about your configuration, but a typical installation stores all files in their native formats including .pdf, .doc. xlsx, .png, etc. M-Files can also be configured to automatically convert certain file types to others upon saving if desired. It might be so that your configuration is set-up in the manner you describe to maximize storage capacity. Please consider contacting M-Files support about this and they can help to change your file saving format configuration if you desire.