In a way, that’s what I have done and every now and then, when I have something that I don’t know where to put, I put it in DT. Maybe the reason I think I need a workflow is that I already have a workflow (big word, but I’ll stick to it for simplicity’s sake) for a lot of things. Like: I’m saving certain documents in certain places.
So if I want to have those documents available in DT, the first thing I’ll have to decide is whether I just index that folder and otherwise keep my workflow or save them all in the DT database and continue doing so in the future.
To make that decision, I need do understand the pros and cons. For the time being, I’m thinking that I will keep large files (audio, video, images) outside the database. The smaller files can go in, but not if I want to be able to access them from different apps via the file system. All my pdf articles and books fall into that category, but all other files, I’ll have to make the decision on the spot and a lot of the time, it’s just easier to stick to the file-system because it feels more flexible. Maybe that’s not a bad thing but it means that most of my stuff, while being indexed in DT, is readily available without using DT (see my previous post).
But let’s say I get to the point that I decide to store a certain class of documents in the DT database. I will now have to come up with a way of grouping those documents. Even if I don’t need a fully fledged system, I need a way of listing all documents of that class (e.g. all electricity bills). When stored in the file system, all of those are in a specific folder. So I need to make up my mind whether I should create a group or a tag or perhaps two (#bills and #electricty)?
Or to use a better example, where I actually expect some real benefits once I manage to use DT for this: everything that has to do with an association which I’m a member of. Currently, if I want to find the minutes for a specific meeting, I can search my emails, because they’re all in there somewhere. The problem is that in some cases I will get several different versions of those minutes and need to make sure that I use the final version. Or it may happen that “minutes” has been misspelled or the final version has been sent by a different person than usual, so that this is clearly not a good strategy. So I try my best at saving those documents when I received them - in a designated folder in the file system.
Now, if I want to move all of that into DT, I’ll have to figure out whether I would just archive all important emails (including their attachments) or just the attachments (e.g. minutes). Most importantly: there are many important emails without attachments. Do I save those to DT as pdf, or text, or as an email?
Of course you can say that I can just do it some way and change it later, if necessary. But that’s a bit like getting a new chest of drawers and throwing stuff in randomly to get ot out of the way, instead of giving some thought to roughly what kind of things should go in which drawer, wouldn’t you agree?
Just to be clear: what I’m whining about are, of course, not about insurmountable problems. I’m just explaining what is slowing down my adoption of DT. I’m happy to be proven wrong.