Method and system for publishing electronic media to a document management system in various publishing formats independent of the media creation application

• US 7,421,650 B2
• Filed: 05/01/2001
• Issued: 09/02/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/01/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Clayton, Kevin R., Zettel, Ignatius M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hong; Stephen
• Assistant Examiner(s): Stork; Kyle R
• Application Number:
  US09/681,573
• Publication Number:
  US 20020165882A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,681 Days
• Field of Search: 715/530, 715/517, 715/513, 715/523, 715/239
• US Class Current: 715/239
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/10 Text processing natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30; processing or translation of natural language G06F40/40

Abstract

A system and method of publishing an electronic data file to a document management system in various publication formats includes a printer driver that is configured to publish an electronic media to a document management system irrespective of which application or software program the data file was created. The printer driver is activated to facilitate publication of an electronic data file following a file-print command initialized while resident in a specific media creating program. The present invention further allows for user selection of a number of publication formats as well as providing notices to additional personnel indicating that the electronic data file is ready for additional work flow or review. The present invention further contemplates retrieval of media stored in a database managed by a document management system following the aforementioned file print command.

Claims

1. A system for publishing documents to a document management system comprising:

a computerized network

a readable memory electronically linked to the network;

a plurality of computers connected to the network, wherein at least one of the plurality of computers, displays electronic data to a user in the form of a graphical user interface (GUI);

a processing unit programmed to call the GUI on demand and enable a user selection of one or more publication formats, wherein the one or more publication formats conform to document management system parameters and include publication formats non-native to a creation document format; and

wherein the processing unit is further programmed to convert a document to at least one of the publication formats and call the GUI directly from the application used to create the document a user desires to publish.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the processing unit is further programmed to automatically generate a document management system document identifier and assign the document management system document identifier to the document.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the processing unit is further programmed to automatically assign document management system publication parameters, wherein the document management system parameters include at least one of a document category, document format, document approval, and document workflow.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the processing unit is further programmed to display a list of a number of supervisors approving and a list of a number of work flow document recipients upon a user instruction.

5. The system of claim 4 wherein the processing unit is further programmed to route the document to at least one of a supervising approver or a work flow document recipient upon a user instruction.

6. A computer readable storage device having stored thereon a program that when executed by a computer causes the computer to:

identify a command from a media creation application to manage an electronic media;

access the electronic media;

initialize a media publisher independent of the media creation application and configured to control publication of the electronic media to a document management system, wherein the media publisher is further configured to transform the content of the electronic media into at least one publication format;

receive a media control instruction from the media publisher to transform the content of the electronic media into at least one publication format;

publish the content of the electronic media directly into the at least one publication format in accordance with the received media control instruction and storage rules of the document management system; and

wherein the computer is further caused to receive more than one media control instruction and simultaneously transform the content of the electronic media into more than one format.

7. The computer readable storage device of claim 6 wherein the at least one publication format includes media formats foreign to the media creation application.

8. The computer readable storage device of claim 6 wherein the at least one publication format includes at least a portable document format, a hypertext markup language, an x-markup language, a rich text format, a JPEG format, a GIF format, a TIFF format, encryption formats, a bitmap format, compression format and electronic messaging formats.

9. The computer readable storage device of claim 6 wherein the computer is further caused to transmit the content of the electronic media to the document management system to store the content of the electronic media in a readily identifiable data file according to the rules of the document management system.

10. The computer readable storage device of claim 6 wherein the computer is further caused to initialize the media publisher in response to a print command from the media creation application.

11. The computer readable storage device of claim 6 wherein the computer is further caused to retrieve the content of an electronic media from the document management system by using at least one of a plurality of publication parameters associated with the published content of the electronic media.

12. The computer readable storage device of claim 6 wherein the computer is further caused to electronically transmit the content of the electronic media to at least one of a supervising approver and a workflow recipient.

13. A computer readable storage medium having a computer program stored thereon and embodying a sequence of instructions that when executed by a processor causes the processor to:

(A) access an electronic data file in response to at least one of an application print command and application open command;

(B) display a graphical user interface (GUI) configured to facilitate user selection of a number of publication commands;

(C) receive a user selection of at least one publication command;

(D) route the electronic data file to a converter configured to convert the electronic data file directly into at least one of a number of publication formats compatible with a document management system;

(E) transmit the at least one converted data file to at least one publication system capable of publishing the converted data file in the at least one publication format to the document management system; and

(F) in response to user instructions, display a listing of document approving supervisors.

14. The computer readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein the sequence of instructions further causes the processor to display the GUI in response to a document management instruction.

15. The computer readable storage medium of claim 14 wherein the sequence of instructions further causes the processor to execute acts (A) through (E) in response to a user print instruction.

16. The computer readable storage medium of claim 15 wherein the sequence of instructions further causes the processor to recognize a user print instruction from any software application capable of printing the electronic data file.

17. The computer readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein the number of publication commands include a publish command, a compress command, and a number of conversion commands including a convert to PDF command and a convert to HTML command.

18. The computer readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein the number of publication formats include PDF, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, HTML, XML, RTF, TXT, DOC, encryption, PPT and ZIP.

19. The computer readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein the sequence of instructions further causes the processor to retrieve an electronic data file from a document management system capable of storing the electronic data file.

20. The computer readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein the sequence of instructions further causes the processor to route the converted data file to a supervisor and a subsequent document designate.