ColumbiaSoft Launches New Breed of Document Management With Document Locator.

Business Editors, Technology Writers

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 17, 2002

Integration With Microsoft Windows and Familiar Productivity Applications Makes Document Locator Easy to Learn, Even Easier to Use

ColumbiaSoft Corp. today announced the immediate availability of Document Locator(TM), a new breed of document management system with features that help businesses of any size keep documents better organized, improve document quality, speed document searches and support tighter collaboration among project teams and divisions.

Document Locator is generally available in three editions to meet a broad array of document management requirements: Document Locator Personal(TM), Document Locator Small Office(TM) and Document Locator Professional(TM).

Ease of Use

Founded in 1998, ColumbiaSoft's vision is to make document management straightforward and affordable. Members of the company's development and design team built on their experience in software engineering, networking, organizational behavior, project management, database administration, workflow management and graphic design to create an entirely new breed of document management system with Document Locator.

"The volume of unstructured data -- Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files and other data -- being generated and stored in companies' IT systems is doubling every three months on average, yet the file server technology being used to manage this data hasn't evolved much in two decades," said Richard Day, founder and chief executive officer of ColumbiaSoft. "We designed Document Locator to provide customers with a more efficient system in which to save, retrieve and update their documents while also allowing users to work in their familiar way. And we did it at a significantly lower price than any other product on the market."

Document Locator's built-in integration with Microsoft Windows Explorer, Word, Excel, Outlook, Autodesk AutoCAD 2000 and other popular applications make Document Locator easy to learn and even easier to use. Document Locator organizes documents and folders without disrupting employees' familiar workflow, and its built-in integration with office productivity applications allows users to take advantage of Document Locator's powerful tools within a familiar working environment.

"As a national professional services firm, we need to be able to draw upon our previous work to ensure that our services are delivered to customers as efficiently as possible," said Gordon Ferlitsch, vice president of Application Development for Step Technology, headquartered in Portland, Ore. "Our employees used to spend hours sifting through archived documents to find a proposal, specification or contract. With Document Locator's profiling and full-text search capabilities, we can now retrieve documents in seconds, so our employees save time, our customers save money, and we can generate more business."

An additional benefit for businesses and personal users, resulting from Document Locator's integration with Microsoft Office, is that it helps manage the exponential growth of e-mail. Document Locator Professional edition enables full-text searches of Microsoft Outlook messages -- including e-mail attachments.

"I have been particularly impressed with ColumbiaSoft's ability to integrate Document Locator with the Microsoft environment," said Greg Drew, former CEO and president of 800.COM Inc. and current CEO of Drew Ventures and member of the board of advisors for ColumbiaSoft. "In particular, Document Locator's extensive search capabilities give ColumbiaSoft a huge competitive advantage and provide businesses of all sizes with a valuable document management system."

Document Locator Available in Three Editions

Document Locator Personal edition is ideal for self-employed professionals and consultants who need to manage many documents. Custom profiles make it easy to organize documents, while version control automatically tracks changes to a document and allows meaningful, fully searchable comments to accompany each version. Document Locator's powerful search tool finds documents in seconds and allows searches to be saved for quick reuse. Because the product is built into Windows and fully integrated with Microsoft Word and Excel, new users can get started quickly.

Document Locator Small Office edition provides the same core functionality as Document Locator Personal but in a networked environment, which makes it an easy-to-use, cost-effective alternative to a business's shared file server. Because Document Locator Small Office is a networked document management system, the check-out/check-in feature prevents accidental overwriting of documents. Managers can use folder properties to ensure that the correct template is being used and that the document is profiled properly before being stored in Document Locator. The templates repository provides a central storehouse from which to manage and control the versions of a company's valuable templates.

Document Locator Professional edition can scale to meet an organization's most challenging document management needs. Enhanced features of this edition include full-text searches of any document, including e-mail attachments, a notification service to update subscribers on changes to documents, and a simple approval system that allows users to efficiently review and approve documents. Document Locator Professional also supports future Document Locator add-on products, such as Web Locator(TM), a product available later this fall, which will allow businesses to consistently and securely share documents using a Web browser through an intranet and/or the Internet.

Availability and Pricing

Document Locator Personal is offered at an introductory price of $95; it is normally priced at $149. All three versions of Document Locator can be purchased and downloaded from the ColumbiaSoft Web site at http://www.columbiasoft.com/.

About ColumbiaSoft Corp.

ColumbiaSoft Corp. makes document and content management applications that are straightforward and affordable for businesses of any size in the engineering and architecture, information technology, human resource, legal, accounting and finance, and manufacturing industries. ColumbiaSoft's engineering and design teams built on their own experience in software engineering, networking, organizational behavior, project management, database administration, workflow management and graphic design to create the architecture, business rules and user interface for an entirely new breed of document management systems, which are fully integrated with the Microsoft Windows operating system. More information can be found at http://www.columbiasoft.com/ or by calling 503/274-0504.

ColumbiaSoft, Document Locator, Document Locator Personal, Document Locator Small Office and Document Locator Professional are trademarks of ColumbiaSoft Corp. in the United States and other countries. Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.