PleaseReview
PleaseReview compared
PleaseReview is a unique software product specifically designed for collaborative document review and authoring. It is designed to work ‘stand alone’ as a complete solution or to be integrated into other solutions. It has a unique document review paradigm and includes review management, comment consolidation, comment threading, audit trails and MS Word document ‘round-tripping’.
We are unaware of any direct competitors. However, there are, of course other ways to facilitate the review of documents.
This page summarises our "PleaseReview in Context" document which considers how it compares with the other various options for document review. To obtain a copy of the document which includes a more detailed analysis please contact us.
PleaseReview positioning
PleaseReview was designed specifically as a document review solution which may be used stand alone or as an integrated solution with, typically, a document or content management system.
As a stand alone solution PleaseReview brings order to the document review process. As a pure web application with no requirements on the client machine other than a browser, PleaseReview is ideal for review ‘through the firewall’ and for distributed teams.
As an integrated solution, PleaseTech believe that most organisations which have implemented electronic document management systems (“EDMS”), are satisfied with the native revisioning features and, if implemented, are satisfied with the formal document approval process/workflow. However, most commercial EDMS fail to provide a document review solution which gains wide spread user acceptance. The inbuilt solutions are typically PDF based, inherently limit the review to a non-revisable document format, inflexible and subject to user workarounds.
PleaseReview is designed to seamlessly replace the inbuilt document review solution. PleaseReview currently provides ‘off-the-shelf’ integration with Documentum, Open Text Livelink and Qumas.
Architectural Considerations
PleaseReview is a sever-based solution requiring only an up-to-date Browser. There are client based options but these are designed to enhance PleaseReview and are not necessary for its basic operation around MS Word, PowerPoint and images.
Server based architectures have inherent advantages over client-based architectures. Tools which adopt a client based approach suffer from typical client based issues such as:
- Version incompatibility
- Platform incompatibility
- The imposition of a significant maintenance overhead
- Limited or no collaboration features
- Often require extensive training due to the manual steps required
- Client maintenance and deployment overheads making them expensive to roll out
Email attachments
The email attachment process is extremely error prone, is not transparent and is inefficient. Some basic issues include:
- Reviewers can and frequently do comment on different versions of the document
- Reviewers often work on a temporary copy of the document (by opening it directly from email) and can ‘lose’ their comments if they forget to "save as"
- There is no collaboration, no reporting and the author is left with a comment consolidation problem
Although PleaseReview uses email as a mechanism to notify the participants of the status of the review, it only ever includes a hyperlink to access the document from the PleaseReview server. So all participants are always commenting on the same document, and they can see any existing comments and replies as soon as they are made.
Generic collaborative portals
Collaborative portals differ from PleaseReview in that they treat the document as an ‘object’ in the portal. This means that the document is inserted in the portal at document level and the portal itself does not ‘understand’ the document contents.
Thus such portals do not provide a way to review a document collaboratively and granularly. Also any discussion threads (if they can be associated with the document at all) are at document level and not at the granular paragraph level;
PleaseReview allows multiple people to comment on exactly the same document simultaneously and provides a consolidated view of all comments and changes and automatically incorporates selected comments and changes into the master document. PleaseReview adds value to such portals and PleaseTech regards them as integration opportunities.
PDF based solutions
PDF based solutions suffer from the fact that the review is undertaken on a PDF rendition of the document.
PleaseTech believes that PDF based systems are generally not liked by users, are inherently limited by the need to render everything as PDF and cause major consolidation issues for the author.
Client machine-based ‘Word specific’ solutions
Client machine based ‘Word specific’ solutions differ fundamentally from PleaseReview which is a server based solution. Each reviewer is working in parallel but in isolation on their own copy of the document.
Some drawbacks:
- Such solutions are inherently limited to the review of MS Word documents by reviewers whom have the necessary software installed on a Windows PC
- The review is not collaborative as the different reviewers can rarely see each other’s comments
- The review environment is not controlled (it may be monitored) which provides scope for confusion and can descend into chaos
- The tools suffer from typical client based issues already identified
PleaseReview supports multiple document formats, does not require any client software and supports truly collaborative review.
MS word and SharePoint
PleaseTech believes that the MS Word and SharePoint offering is basically a set of manual tools which are complex to use, suffer from the standard client based issues and are very difficult to administer in any controlled way, if the user does not follow a precise set of prescribed steps the process breaks down.
In respect of architecture, people need access to the SharePoint server. This can be problematical for partners and customers who exist outside the corporate firewall due to permissions and licensing issues with SharePoint
Thus, whilst a MS Word and SharePoint solution may be suitable for a small team of confident and advanced users, it is not suitable for corporate deployment.
Microsoft Groove
Groove offers a peer-to-peer paradigm - a fundamental architectural difference from PleaseReview. However, as with MS word and SharePoint, PleaseTech believes that the Groove is basically a set of manual tools which are complex to use, suffer from the standard client based issues and are very difficult to administer in any controlled way, if the user does not follow a precise set of prescribed steps the process breaks down. Again, whilst Groove be suitable for a small team of confident and advanced users, it is not suitable for corporate deployment.
Groove is promoted as ideal for those regularly work offline or who do not share the same network security clearance. Clearly the latter point relies on the firewall being configured not to block peer-to-peer technology.
PleaseReview addresses offline working with the Offline Review Client and can be easily configured for ‘review through the firewall’ or provided as a secure ssl hosted portal.
Adobe Acrobat inbuilt collaboration
Adobe Acrobat offers two approaches to collaboration. As for MS Word/SharePoint and Groove, PleaseTech believes that the inbuilt Acrobat collaboration solutions are a set of manual tools which are complex to use, suffer from the standard client based issues and are very difficult to administer in any controlled way. If the user does not follow a precise set of prescribed steps the process breaks down. Whilst they may be suitable for a small team of confident and advanced users, they are not suitable for corporate deployment.
Collaborative authoring solutions
Collaborative document authoring solutions are currently emerging led by Google Docs and Breeze from Adobe. The market is dynamic with several other solutions offering options. Such solutions are currently in their infancy and not (yet) considered serious contenders to replace MS Word – except for the simplest of documents.
PleaseTech believes that these collaborative document authoring solutions are useful for very simple documents but not for any serious document development or for the review of MS Word documents. They provide no facilities for other document formats, such as PDF, PowerPoint, etc.
Online meeting technology
Online meeting technology differs from PleaseReview fundamentally in that everyone must be online at exactly the same time to be involved in the meeting. Online meeting technology has no asynchronous capability.
Online meeting technology is designed to minimise the need for face-to-face meetings and associated travel. The technology suffers from the same issues as ordinary face-to-face meetings in that it can be difficult to organise a suitable time, meetings suffer from non-attendance of key reviewers and it is not suitable for the general ongoing document review process.
Please contact us to obtain a copy of the complete document.
What next?
Please request an evaluation, contact us or view a product tour.