How to Best Protect Your Investment in Forms
Some time ago we shared suggestions on how to preserve and protect Word’s forms and templates from loss or corruption. The instructions apply to both the intelligent forms produced by our software and the ordinary templates or examples that we all use, often without a real thought to their safety.
As our larger customers have seen their investments in forms grow into six- and seven-figures assets, we’re reminded of the need to protect those assets from the everyday threats that circulate in every firm.
First, the most basic safeguard is to make certain that routine scheduled backups include forms and templates as well as finished documents. We’ve been surprised by firms that only protect finished outside-facing work product and not the tools needed to produce them.
Second, prevent accidental corruption of forms, which is the most frequent loss vector. We’re big believers in using read only folders, templates, and “Gold Masters.” Read only folders will stop a majority of accidental loss by preventing most accidental over-writes. Filing finished forms as Word templates within a read only folder adds more protection against almost any threat but one: when asked for the format to be used for saving, some truly experienced users will almost automatically click on “template”, at which point the form has been changed. The best safety, a Gold Master, is when a perfect copy is made of the originals, then safely locked away, even from the controlling person; we use a safety deposit box. This make access and potential revision a big deal worthy of real thought.
And, yes, you’re right. It is overkill… until it isn’t.
