Customizing Without Cost

by Lowell Rapaport

Reviewing content often breaks down into a mixed bag of phone calls, e-mails and faxes. ReviewNow from Accusoft, Northborough, MA, (www.accusoft.com) offers a tool for collaborative content development and review.

ReviewNow alerts users enrolled on the server-based system to the presence of a new document. Users then use the ReviewNow client, an application object that integrates with Internet Explorer, to load the document and embed comments.

ReviewNow is Web-based product that can be used as a stand-alone system or in conjunction with a Web content management system. The core attraction is the software's ability to embed comments within content in context. That is, if a user makes a comment about a picture, phrase or link contained within an HTML document, ReviewNow preserves the relationship between the comment and the element commented upon. When another user calls up content that has been reviewed, markers appear indicating where the comment is located. Click on a marker and the comment is brought up in a separate window. ReviewNow is one of the few applications designed to annotate HTML documents in this way.

ReviewNow uses Microsoft SQL Server to archive user comments related to the original documents. Even if the original element is deleted, ReviewNow retains the comment associated with its former location. This "comment in context" approach is very different from the object-oriented comment management approach found in content management systems and tools that present comments in a separate directory.

ReviewNow is not application dependent; it can be used with any document as long as it can be presented in HTML format. This includes text, spreadsheets, CAD files and images.

The goal of ReviewNow is not too different from that of other specialized collaboration tools. "We take commentary and discussion of documents out of the e-mail channel, which is undifferentiated and overloaded," says Peter Quirk, Accusoft's vice president of product development. "ReviewNow keeps comments in context so users know intuitively what a comment is referring to. It also simplifies the process of making a comment since the commenter doesn't have to first describe what portion of the document he is referring to."

To embed a comment with ReviewNow, a user highlights an element within an HTML document and clicks on the Comment Dialog button that the application adds to Internet Explorer. Working within the Comment Dialog box, users can post comments, upload alternative HTML elements, ask questions and even post private comments to specific users. Role-based security gives users access to specified portions of an HTML document, and you can also assign view-only (versus view and comment) privileges.

Role-based security is also part of ReviewNow's workflow infrastructure, which can be controlled by business users through a flowchart-like graphical user interface. The workflow can be used to ensure that specific users see and comment on content.

ReviewNow works only with HTML documents, so any user inside or outside of an enterprise can take part in the collaborative process through the Web. The downside, of course, is that all documents have to be in HTML format, but Accusoft offers a ReviewNow FasTrack option that integrates with desktop applications such as Microsoft Office, QuarkXpress and AutoCAD to publish documents to the ReviewNow Server in HTML form.

According to Mark Levitt, a research vice president at Framingham, MA-based IDC, ReviewNow's collaboration, workflow and security features make the product a cross between content management and team collaboration systems. "Accusoft is specifically targeting the need for users to make comments on individual sentences [and elements] within a larger document," says Levitt, but he adds that the question is whether companies need this extra functionality. "The specific functionality of ReviewNow, comments in context, is so fundamental, many users will wonder why it isn't already a part of their content management systems." Indeed, annotation support is a common feature in legacy document management systems, but it's less common in pure Web content management systems and home-grown applications.

Accusoft says it has a mix of customers deploying ReviewNow both as a stand-alone system and in combination with content management. Leapnet, a Chicago marketing technology firm, recently began using ReviewNow to enable internal and external users to comment on "spectrum boards" presenting visual elements conveying the firm's ideas for the look and feel of a brand.

"Before we had ReviewNow, we would put together spectrum boards and hold a live meeting or workshop with employees and clients," says Leapnet president Joe Piekarz. "[Now] we put together an electronic spectrum board with images, text, fonts and colors in HTML form and share it over the Internet. Staff and clients can review the boards and make comments." The system gives the firm a secure approval process that can be accessed anywhere via the Internet.

Another ReviewNow customer is Digital Bungalow, a Beverly, MA-based Web design and hosting firm that uses the tool to gather feedback from customers on proposed site designs.

"[Previously], when a design was ready for the client, we faxed or e-mailed images of the Web site for their approval," says Chris Christoudias, CTO and founder of Digital Bungalow. Christoudias says the approach was inefficient, but faxes and e-mails at least provided a record of customer comments. "[Now] we can give our clients a URL to a secure test site where they can then make comments on the individual HTML components."

In Digital Bungalow's case, ReviewNow provides feedback on Web content that is ultimately published through the company's home-grown content management system. The company doesn't extend access to content management outside the firewall, but ReviewNow lets users get closer to the content creation process.

ReviewNow does have limitations. First, it doesn't integrate with the authoring applications that are ultimately used to act on ReviewNow comments. The system provides the author or editor with a task list of comments left by reviewers. It's up to the editor to copy and paste or otherwise rework the comments back into the original documents. Second, ReviewNow doesn't support searching of user comments, nor are there tools for retrieving comments out of context so they can be reused as original content. Comments can be retrieved only in association with the original document.

Priced at $35,000 (plus $15,000 for the FasTrack option), ReviewNow is about the price of a low-end Web content management system, but it's designed to serve a different purpose. No matter how an organization chooses to publish its final content, ReviewNow provides a way for contributors in any location to place comments in context. This takes the approval process out of the chaos of ad hoc faxes, e-mails and phone calls.