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Protect by Workshare - Winner of the Metadata Software Review
Protect by Workshare was the winner of our metadata software review! If you are like most attorneys you want Metadata to disappear without extra hassle or interruption. If that’s the case then Protect from Workshare is the program for you. It’s well designed, easy to use and best of all it works without requiring you to be a techie.
After the program is installed and configured user interaction is pretty much limited to two screens. The first will appear when the user sends an e-mail with a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file attachment to outside parties. The program settings automatically determine what Metadata is removed, as the screen below shows, the user just needs to choose whether Track Changes and Comments should be left in the document (for example, when sending the file to a client). However, even these options can be overridden on the administrative level. The system also includes an easy to use PDF creation option.
Users can also be allowed to set higher restrictions on certain documents to ensure that their distribution is tightly managed . However, everyone in the firm must have Protect installed in order to use this feature.
The manual cleaning screen is most user-friendly of all of the programs that we tested and it allows you to select “Full Clean” or “Partial Clean” options and then select or deselect sub-options. End users only need to use this feature when they plan on distributing a file to outside parties via a non e-mail method.
The person administrating your system will greatly appreciate the user-friendly configuration options. The program includes descriptions about each type of Metadata so you can build your own firm specific metadata policy. Finally, administrators can save different configuration files and upload then for different users. This is important in many firms to ensure that each user has the appropriate control or level of automatic removal required for their specific situation.
Protect works with Word, Excel PowerPoint and Outlook for versions 97, 2000, XP and 2003. It also integrates with Lotus Notes and Groupwise.
The software does not interact or interfere with Document Management Systems (DMS) so you can use Protect with any DMS solution that you may be using.
Protect is available under two licensing models. The imminent release of an annual licensing model with seats costing $30 per seat, per year with no minumum number of seats makes this product cost effective for firms of all sizes. A regular license is also available but has a minimum seat requirement. Maintenance is available (and required for the first year) for regular licenses.
To be notified when the annual licensing model is available or for additional information, including a demo version of Protect by Workshare, please click here.
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