Back in January I discussed Timestamping and Tracking SharePoint Documents. Organizations want to track what happens to their SharePoint documents when they are downloaded or opened because a lot of people are dealing with sensitive documents. In the first release of our Document Marking for SharePoint product we could help organizations watermark or timestamp SharePoint documents when they were first saved to SharePoint. But this didn’t help organizations that wanted to apply labels, watermarks or timestamps when a document was opened or downloaded.
I’m happy to say that we have added this feature in R2 of our Document Marking product which is now available. In this release you can specify that you want to add a header, footer or watermark when a document is opened (checked-out, downloaded) from a SharePoint document library. The policy is applied at the library level and is applied to all PDF documents in the library. Here is an example of an administrator defined policy for a library. In this example we will be inserting the current user’s name into the header and footer of the PDF, and we will be inserting a timestamp in the watermark. This policy will be applied to all PDF documents in this Document Library:
(Click to get larger view)
Here is an example of what a PDF document would look like once the policy has been applied. In this case we are signed on as the Administrator, so that is the current user displayed in the header. One thing to note is that the PDF copy the viewer sees contains the labels, but the original version in the SharePoint Document Library is not modified. So if the organization ever decides to change the labels in the future, there will be no issues.
If you want to apply these types of labels to Microsoft Office documents rather than PDFs, you can use the Doucment Marking product in conjunction with our PDF Control solution to automatically convert Office documents to PDF in SharePoint. This solution will allow you to retain all the Office documents in their original source, but SharePoint users will see the PDF version of the document.
A numberof our customers want to track what happens to their SharePoint documents when they are downloaded or opened. This is usually because the SharePoint documentscontain some sensitive information and they want to make sure their users are handling this information correctly. If documents are being distributed to people who shouldn't have them, or are being printed and distributed inadvertently, organizationswould like to know the source of the document. We can support some timestamping and tracking in our current release of Document Marking for SharePoint, and we will do even more in our new release which is scheduled for lateFebruary 2010.
Timestamping can track when the document was added to SharePoint, when it was last modified, or when it was opened / downloaded from SharePoint. In the current release of our product we support the first two, when it wasadded and when it was modified. The next release will also support when it was opened / downloaded. In the example below we have timestamped when the document was added or last changed inSharePoint. The timestamp has been applied to the top left header area of the document. (click image to get alarger view)
Another way of tracking documents is by inserting the author, or the name of the user that has downloaded / viewed the document into the document header / footer / or watermark. Currently we support adding the author, or Modified By name into the document. In the next release we will support adding the current user's name into the document. In the example below we have watermarked the name of the user that last modified the document. In this case it was the administrator as I was signed in as the administrator.
These documents can also be converted to PDF formatin the SharePoint library and users can be limited to viewing of the PDF version instead of the original Word version.In this case, the original Word document would not be modified and only the PDF would be marked with the header and watermark. Thiswill be supported in our next release with the addition of our PDF Control product.
If you have any other requirements for timestamping or tracking documents in SharePoint, let us know. We would be happy to consider them for future releases of our products.
