By Dennis Williams
Network World, 7/27/98

A wealth of knowledge resides in your company's network. Now if only your users knew how to share it across the intranet.

Net-It Software Corp.'s Net-It Central server software gives average users the means to distribute information without complication or delay. Users don't have to worry about converting the document from its regular format or learning Web publishing.

Users can post visually appealing documents while avoiding the hassles associated with HTML and Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Publishing a file on an intranet is as simple as saving it. And, once a document is published on the intranet, anyone with sufficient security access and a Web browser can view it.

Net-It makes this magic using its jDoc file format. Net-It Central converts your document files from their original format to the jDoc format, which compresses them and makes them viewable on the Web. It doesn't matter whether you created the documents using Microsoft Corp.'s Office applications, Corel Corp.'s CorelDraw or even custom applications - jDoc can replicate them so the applications look exactly the way you created them.

Net-It works by taking all the documents from a specified directory structure, converting them to jDoc format and publishing them on an intranet or the Internet using a special printer driver, in a manner similar to sending a fax from your PC.

Viewing jDoc files, which are displayed with the detail and quality of PDF files, is as easy and fast as viewing HTML documents.

It takes only a few minutes to install Net-It Central and not many more to create a document-sharing site. You simply tell Net-It Central the location of documents that you want published. You can drag and drop your existing documents into a directory, create new documents and edit existing documents. To build a document-sharing site, we created a directory and a few subdirectories on our Windows NT Server. (The name of the parent directory doesn't matter, but the subdirectory names become the category titles on the Web site.)

We copied a few Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents into each directory. All the files with extensions associated with an application converted fine.

Next, we designated a path to the directory structure where the original documents resided. In one test, we simply entered c:\My Documents and had it turn our entire document directory structure - which is quite large with many nested subdirectories - into a document-sharing site. It took several hours to convert all of our documents, even on our 266-MHz Pentium II server; however, it would have taken days or weeks to do it all manually.

Original documents can be stored anywhere on the network and on any platform, including Windows 95 clients, Windows NT clients and servers, and NetWare, Unix and Macintosh servers, as long as those files are accessible to the client using Net-It to publish them.

Documents can then be published to any Web server. If users want to publish files whose sources are on another computer, they can create a Windows shortcut in their directory structure that points to the files. This allows you to keep original files in their existing location and have them appear on your site. You can customize your Web site by using any of the templates included with Net-It Central or you can create your own layout using HTML.

You also can define which options are available to users. An Option Bar controls users' ability to print, copy and download documents from an intranet site. Disabling these options makes it difficult for users to reproduce the content.

Once a site is created, you're done. No ongoing management is required. Users manage their own documents and Net-It Central manages the rest. Because information and documents are changing constantly, you can schedule Net-It Central to update the Web site when additions, deletions and changes are made to the documents in its directory or you can establish a set time for updates.

The best way to understand how Net-It Central looks and feels is to visit the company's Web site at www.net-it.com. In particular, take a look at the white papers and press releases. Traditionally, such documents are viewed in HTML or downloaded as PDF files, but Net-It used its product to build the site.

We can't imagine any company, big or small, not being able to benefit from Net-It Central. It helps put information in front of the people - your employees - who need it most.

Williams is a freelance writer and network and product consultant in Alpine, Utah. He can be reached via e-mail at Dennis@ProductReviews.com.