Offline Availability of Files on Local Computing Devices

How many times have we wished if we could access our project documents/drawings etc that were there in the web-based centralized document control software of the organisation while we are in flight or when not connected to internet?

tBits CollabWrite document control software offers utilities using which you can perform the following:

1. Check-Out the documents on your local machine (note – this is different from download), modify the documents when you are not connected to the network and commit the document back to the repository from your local machine with using your internet browser.
2. Automatically sync the checked-out documents in your local machine your machine with those in central repository – say – if you are a lead engineer of mechanical associated with a particular package – then whenever there are changes in the mechanical documents of your packages – weather the same is a submission by vendor, or decision by EPCM, automatically the said documents are available in your local machine with you having to download or upload the documents.
3. Ease Document Handovers during Project Close-out Phase - At the end of the project – when you want to handover a DVD or an ISO image files – you can simply checkout the complete package on your local machine in a folder structure as per your requirements and prepare for the handover.

Benefits of offline documents:

1. No dependency on internet/local network connection to perform operations as reviews of documents etc.
2. Certainty that documents of your interest are always with you.
3. Drastic reduction in the network bandwidth usage. If you have checked out or checked in an earlier version of the document – then next time when there is a version change – only the difference of files is what is sent from the sever to the client – leading to a drastic reduction in network traffic and bandwidth optimization. Say – if there is a DWG File of a Plot Plan of about 100 MB and there are 20 kb changes that has happened during the version change – from the server to your machine – only about 30kb is what is transferred (difference and some checksums) and NOT the full 100 MB again.
4. Ability to view the difference between the files – this feature us available for the scalar file formats(Microsoft based file formats etc)  and NOT the vector file formats (dgn, dwg etc).
5. Bulk Data upload into the system – for Brownfield projects – there is a lot of data that come from the legacy systems – using which the new project documents needs to be designed. The utility can be used for the bulk upload of data from client to server.