I dig the latest version of Arena ChMS and the new Document Types feature is great.  In a nutshell it allows you to attach documents (pdf, images, .doc, etc.) to a person, tag or group.  It's the feature that enables you to move to a paperless office and it's super easy to setup.

Last click to watch demoweek a super admin, Kim came to me and said something like, 'I want to throw out this huge book of completed paper forms before I drop it on my foot and break my toe.'  I said "let's do it."  We quickly setup a new Document Type and a Person Attribute to hold the document. Now she just scans the document, attaches it to the person's record and then shreds the original.

In Kim's case she was maintaining the paper copies of our driving insurance form -- some paperwork that our insurance company gives us when someone has permission to drive the church vans.  The document is slightly sensitive so we also locked it down so that only few people have access to edit or view it.

We've lined up several more documents we'll be moving to Arena including our:

  • 4 page application to serve (currently a fillable PDF)click to watch
  • applicant background check (pdf)
  • applicant's reference response documents (typically emailed .doc or paper)
  • and several other paper forms people are physically signing

With Arena you can literally set these up in just a few minutes.  Watch this video to see how it is done.