Tier 2 ARENA is an advanced, web-based document control application, providing instant security, control and document distribution with unrivalled levels of performance, scalability and resilience.

ARENA uses a familiar folder & subfolder structure to visually organise electronic documents, thus minimising staff training requirements.

In addition, ARENA implements and advanced role-based security model to ensure that only users with sufficient privileges have access to a document at each stage of its lifecycle.

ARENA provide a comprehensive role-based security model ensuring that only specific users, or groups of users, can perform certain functions (authorship, review, approval, view once published etc) in the document lifecycle.

All access to ARENA is by unique username / password. To comply with many regulatory requirements, ARENA provides time-based password expiry, account locking if an incorrect password is entered too many times, and prevents recently used passwords to be reused.

ARENA provides its own internal user directory (users, groups, passwords), but can access existing directory services (eg LDAP, Active Directory) if required.

ARENA ensures that the process of document creation / authorship starts with the correct template. ARENA can be configured to allow the source document to be a centrally managed template (for example, an MS Word document), a file currently stored on a file system, or optionally via a completely web-based interview process.

In addition, ARENA allows provides controls to ensure that only specified users can create documents of a particular type.

ARENA allows document authors/creators to manually enter the document reference, or have it automatically generated based on a user defined pattern.

For MS Word and Excel documents, ARENA can automatically create watermarks depending upon the status of the document - for example, 'draft', 'historic document', 'information only'.

For MS Word and Excel documents, ARENA can automatically inject meta-data into the document. This meta-data can either be user-created (for example, document title, document description, document reference), or meta-data which is automatically created by ARENA (such as an electronic signature stamps and other approval details).

ARENA provides advanced handling of local documents (for example, draft MS Word documents which have been saved to your local disk for editing) - by essentially providing tighter integration between ARENA and office tools.

All current 'document activity' for a particular user (for example, documents in draft, review requests, approval requests) are listed in that user's ARENA workbox. If the workbox contains any such documents, it is automatically displayed as soon as that user has logged in.

In addition, ARENA's target date feature ensures that the default workbox order is based on the priority of that document, and not simply on the date at which the request was made.

ARENA's workflow capability supports the distribution of a draft document to any number of users with review privileges, in any location, for review and feedback purposes. Users can be notified of a review request via an automatic e-mail, which can include a custom message (which is also stored within ARENA).

ARENA's workflow capability supports the distribution of a draft document to any number of users with approval privileges, in any location, for approval purposes. Users can be notified of an approval request via an automatic e-mail, which can include a custom message (which is also stored within ARENA).

Such 'approver' users have the opportunity to either reject the document - in which case they must provide reasons - or approve it. Formal approval in ARENA is handled by way of the process of electronic signature, in which the approver is asked to re-enter their username/password.

ARENA contains a 'reminder engine', which automatically sends reminder e-mails to those review and/or approver users who have not yet dealt with the request to review and/or approve.

There are many controlled documents - such as Standard Operating Procedures - which must be reviewed and potentially revised on a regular basis.

Using ARENA's revision reminder capability, nominated users can be automatically notified when each document becomes due for revision.

ARENA allows users with the correct privileges to create new versions of a document. By default, the latest published version is used as the 'template' for the new draft version, but ARENA's version branching capability allows users to choose any previously published version as the template.

Users with viewing rights to that document only have rights to see the latest published version, but are told by ARENA that a new document version is currently being drafted - and they will be automatically notified once the new version becomes available.

ARENA also allows authors/creators of new versions to specify an effective date for that version - meaning that it can be authored and approved in advance of its effective date, with ARENA automatically 'publishing' it on that date.

Users with administrative privileges can re-assign documents to other users - for example, to reassign approvers in the event that one of the originally nominated approvers is unavailable.

ARENA allows users to create links, or associations, between any documents that are managed by ARENA. This allows users to quickly locate and navigate relevant documents.

ARENA can be configured to automatically notify all users with the appropriate privileges once a document has been published.

ARENA provides an online electronic signature facility to allow users to confirm that they have 'read and understood' a document.

ARENA allows all users who can view a completed document to record comments, to be considered when the next document revision is due.

Every ARENA activity is automatically audited, with the audit trail being viewable by document, document location (folder), or user. However, as ARENA stores its audit trail in a RDBMS, customers can create their own enquiries (for example, through a Business Intelligence Tool such as Cognos), allowing them to analyse the data as they see fit.

ARENA also provides controls for who can view the audit trail for each document - for example, it is possible to allow only audit access by users with approval privilege.

Once an MS Word or MS Excel document has been through the necessary review/approval process and has been published, ARENA can automatically lock (protect) that document when being viewed.

ARENA can automatically stamp, for example, 'The printed version of this document expires on....', any or all pages of a published document.

ARENA allows users with administrative privileges to 'complete' (lock) folders to ensure that no more documents, or document versions, can be created in that folder.

As completed folders are not display in the default ARENA view, this gives the effect of an online archive facility.

ARENA provides a facility to allow documents to be 'exported' on to another file system, in the folder structure equivalent to the way they are stored in ARENA. ARENA stores the fact that the export has taken place in the audit trail, and continues to make those documents available to ARENA users (with, if required, their watermark having been changed to denote the fact that the export has taken place).

It is also possible to export documents in a different file format - for example, MS Word documents can automatically be converted to PDF files on export.

In addition, the document meta-data (including all signature information), and the audit trail, can be exported in XML format along with the document itself.

In addition to allowing users to locate documents by navigating folders and subfolders, ARENA provides an advanced document search capability.

Users can choose to create a query based on structured document data - for example, author, type of document, effective date - or simply choose to full text search the body of stored documents.