Our screenshot shows an example: We are looking for all emails in the PIRS database who

• contains the phrase “PIRS Blog” in the subject
• was sent between 1. January and 31. May of 2009

The search folder will display all documents in the PIRS database that match these criteria. This is only an example, feel free to use any combination of fields.
You can also extend the described search to create excel reports. See our video tutorial how to create your own customized reports based on the described search wizard: Open Video Tutorial

• Use the different views in PIRS to get an overview about what’s going on in your project and to find specific documents
• The PIRS search wizard provides an easy way to retrieve only the documents you are looking for from your PIRS database. Specify the required search criteria (e.g. a word or phrase of the subject) and PIRS shows all documents in the search view
• Lotus Notes full text search to search all documents in a view including all information and even inside of attachments (pdf, doc, xls…)

We will give you a guideline about the different best practices how to look for and, even more important, find information and documents in PIRS. Let’s start with the different PIRS views in Info Control today:

Correspondence view
The correspondence view contains all documents categorized by the PIRS reference number (Sender company => Recipient company). You can easily take a look at all documents from or to your customer by choosing the company within the view. Therefore, this view is often used to prepare for round tables, discussions or negotiations with your partners, customers or suppliers. As a result of this sorting, the latest set correspondence number is listed at the top.  The view shows  the creator, title and type of documents as well as the creation date.
Compared to manually managing correspondence numbers, the advantage of managing them in PIRS clearly lies in the possibility to view not only the numbers but to be able to open the document by simply double clicking on it within the view. Using the Correspondence View in PIRS supersedes the preparation of correspondence folders and simplifies the filing. Keeping up an urgent discipline with filing documents in special correspondence folders and also folders for technical documentation and work packages is not necessary anymore.

All Documents view
The all document views display PIRS documents categorized by different information:

• By Date
  All documents categorized by year and moth. Nice view to follow up the actual topics of the project.
• By Author
  All documents categorized by their respective author. You can easily find your documents or documents created by your colleagues.
• By Status
  Check which documents had been sent and which documents are still in “draft” mode
• By Correspondence Code
  All documents categorized by correspondence code and sender or receiver. Please note, every document is shown twice in this view, in the sender and the receiver category.
• By Organization
  All documents categorized by the department of the document author. You can see every document created by the commercial or engineering department.
• By Recipients
  All document categorized by recipients is also your personal inbox in PIRS. Move to your name in the view too see all documents sent to you in the project.

The predefined PIRS views provide an easy overview about the project correspondence and information and allow you to “get the big picture” as well as to find documents by specific criteria as document number or creation date. This is useful if you are looking for a specific document. But what if you are looking for all information to a specific topic (e.g. commercial issues or technical discussions) and you do not know how much information exist? This will be part of my next post.

PIRS Database

The PIRS Archive process is outsourcing defined documents and attachments. This documents are specified by conditions e.g. Archive all documents created before May 2008 with a minimum size of 2 MB.

Archived documents and attachment can be reviewed and restored every time by PIRS users. More information about the maximum Lotus Notes database size are specified in IBM Technote 1093509. To learn more about how to monitor the size of your PIRS database please talk to your SOBIS contact person.

We included our own PIRS Print Preview function in the next release of PIRS InfoControl to make your life easier and to improve the quality of PIRS print outs:

Choose the document content to print using the checkbox of the print preview including:

• Header
• Distribution List
• Company Signature
• Link Files
• Document Edit History

All changes are immediately reflected in the print preview: You will be able to customize your print outs to fulfill your requirements. The Print Preview will be available with the next release, PIRS Version 6.1.4