As scientific researchers, the organization of project documentation and timeliness of intellectual property submission is imperative for Celsis. DMC was asked to architect a solution for transferring Celsis’ organizational structure from manually written and scanned notes to a digital system. The SharePoint solution indicated a time-saving paradigm shift for Celsis’ project process.
In order to enhance organization for the client’s many projects and experiments, DMC introduced a SharePoint projects directory. This enables employees to consolidate experiment documentation, vendor information, and any pertinent communications in a central location specific to an experiment or project. The projects directory also provides the ability to create any number of subsidiary child projects containing any amount of experiments within. In addition, future projects can now reference data from similar experiments rather than having recreate the experiment due to a lack of knowledge to where to find the data.
A significant component of Celsis’ project and intellectual property submission processes includes “witnessing,” the review, sealing, and archival of completed experiment documentation. DMC created a SharePoint workflow to indicate what experiments need witnessing and to update the SharePoint homepage as well as all project contributors in round robin fashion. Once witnessed, the top-level site is updated to indicate project completion and the project is marked as read-only. DMC obtained the API from Surety to utilize its AbsoluteProof product for triggering the sealing of documents automatically through a workflow - the first such use of its kind. The completed project is then sealed using “Absolute Seal,” a digital wax seal, providing assurance of a secure and timely project review process.