Replace Your File Cabinet with Mayan EDMS

James Richey

WiFi Info

SSID:

EastKnowledge

Password:

SharingWhatWeKnow

Demo:

http://192.168.1.200

Overview

• Why use document management software?
• Key concepts
• Installation and setup
• Interactive demo

Why use document management software?

Lots of ways to manage documents

• Paper documents in file cabinets
• Computer file systems
• Providers' websites
• Specialized software, like Mayan

Desired features

• Control over the documents
• Protect from fire, flood, and degradation
• Easily add new documents
• Ability to quickly find documents
• Possible to move to a different system if needed

Why I chose Mayan EDMS

• Open Source
• Free, as in beer
• Automatically organizes documents based on metadata
• Web client run from my personal server

Key Concepts

• Document type
• Metadata
• Indexes

Document type

• Separate documents into classes or buckets
• Examples: invoices, receipts, manuals
• Consider your document types carefully!

Metadata

Metadata

• Metadata has two parts: type and value
• A document type is composed of metadata types
• Values are additional data attached to individual documents

Indexes

Indexes

• Organize related documents based on metadata values
• Documents are automatically placed in one or more indexes
• Provides different views of your documents
• Examples: Chronological, Businesses, Colors

Installing

Architecture

Instructions

• http://mayan.readthedocs.io/en/stable/topics/deploying.html
• apt-get Ubuntu packages
• pip install Python packages, including Mayan
• Configure Mayan to know about the database and nginx to know about Mayan
• If you get stuck search the web for Django + <your_platform>

Configuring

• Configuration is done through the web interface
• Lets take a look: http://192.168.1.200

Metadata and Document Types

• Well defined document types is the most important part of configuring Mayan!
• This is the first thing we configure
• Once configured documents can be uploaded

Indexes

• Django Templates are used to configure indexes and other parts of Mayan
• Examples:

{{ document.metadata_value_of.business }}

{{ document.metadata_value_of.date|slice:":4" }}

Other

• There are many more features I have not used
• If creating PDFs consider the PDF/A format
• Use a second Mayan instance for trying different options
• There is a REST API, useful for things like automatically setting metadata values

Conclusion

• I have found Mayan is useful for managing my documents
• Document types and metadata are very important
• Mayan is a Django application
• I have not used all the features but I am going to investigate smart links and staging folders next

Demo Time

Resources

Mayan EDMS Website:

http://www.mayan-edms.com/

Documentation:

http://mayan.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

Google Groups (great place to ask questions):

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mayan-edms

Source code and bug tracker:

https://gitlab.com/mayan-edms/mayan-edms