Visual Quality At a glance

Runs on Windows XP and all later versions of Windows

Visual Quality is a Windows program which is primarily for the users who are responsible building and maintining the company's quality-, management- or environmental system.
Visual Quality contains a series of modules of which the modules for creating and maintaining documents and registrations as well as electronic handbooks make up the central parts.

Below are listed some of the highlights of Visual Quality.

Documents Each document (and registration folder) is automatically managed through a lifecycle in which each version of the document or registration folder is created as a draft, in the module Drafts. It eventually ends up in the module Historic which contains the archived documents and registrations. Between these two states, the document or registration folder is approved and the approved version is shown in the module Approved. One approved version will always be valid. This version appears in the module Valid. You can of course attach any type of file (for instance an Office document, a pdf file or an image) to a document, link documents to other objects in VQ (for instance to other documents and to requirements), add comments and actions to documents, open and print attachments, perform full-text search and much more.
	Registrations In Visual Quality a registration workflow is represented by a registration folder, which contains a form and a data structure. The data structure represents the data fields and table which contains all the registration data, whereas the form represents the registration form itself. VQ has an advanced built-in HTML editor which lets you add fields from the data structure and design the registration form any way you like. The registration folder also allows you attach a workflow and define the steps needed, add approvers/moderators, write texts for the confirmation pages on the web site and in notification emails and more. The module Data Analysis shows all registration data for each registration folder and this module offers you the tools needed to analyse the data: filtering, sorting, grouping, generate reports, export to Excel for further analysis and data visualisation, etc.
Handbooks Documents and registration forms can be organized in electronic handbooks. Within a handbook you can create a hierarchy of sub folders (or chapters) of your choice. By assigning users or user groups to a handbook folder you can let Visual Quality automate the distribution and administration of Required reading documents. As soon as a new version of a document becomes valid, the users automatically receive an email saying that a new version of the document must be read. The user can read and sign off for reading using both Visual Quality and Visual Quality Web Access. The module Required Reading provides a complete overview of which documents that have been read and which haven’t.
	User Management As is the case with all other modules in Visual Quality, in the Users module, users can be organised in a user-defined folder hierarchy. Further, the Access Rights module allows you to define user access folders (or groups) to which you can a) assign users and b) specify the access level (None, Read, Add, Edit, Approve or Delete) for each individual object folder like for instance document Draft folders, Handbook folders, etc. in the entire system. Since a user can be part of multiple access groups, you have the full flexibility in customising both Visual Quality and Visual Quality Web Access to each user's needs or group of users' needs.
More features... Simple or Advanced Approval? The approval process can either be simple or advanced. In the first case a user with the appropriate access rights approves the document or the registration folder directly. In case the approval process is configured to be advanced, multiple users are involved in the approval process. The process is initiated by one of the document approvers who sends the document to approval. Visual Quality automatically notifies all document approvers about this, and each of these can either approve or reject the document. Once all document approvers have approved it, the document (or the registration folder) is finally approved. An Active System. Visual Quality Enterprise is an active system. It is not required for its users to remember date and time for events which they need to take action on. Visual Quality Alert Service is a Windows service running on the server which continuously monitors the system state and notifices its users when required. For instance an email is automatically sent to: - approvers of a document or registration folder when it has been sent to approval - the system approver for a document when it is ready for system approval - readers of a document when a new version of the document becomes valid (Required reading) - the author of a document when a user adds a comment to the document - the approver at a workflow step when a registration is submitted and sent to approval - the responsible user for a document action at the reminder date and time specified for the action. Standard software. Visual Quality Enterprise is developed using Microsofts development tools and is based on the latest Microsoft technologies, which both ensures a high level of security in the investment, but also ensures that your company buys a product which is constantly on the edge of the latest technologies. As an example, all the business logic in Visual Quality Enterprise is separated from the UI (represented by Visual Quality and Visual Quality Web Access) in modules which can be accessed and used by other Windows programs. Examples are the Microsoft Office family (Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.), Microsoft SharePoint Services or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, just as it is possible to integrate with and exchange data with the company's existing ERP systems (like Microsoft NAV, Microsoft AX or SAP). Also at the database level Visual Quality Enterprise can be integrated with your company's other products as Visual Quality Enterprise works with both Microsoft SQL server and Microsoft Access. Easy to use. The Visual Quality Enterprise UI is built in exactly the same way as most Microsoft client products (like Microsoft Outlook) and the commands and keyboard shortcuts are similar to the ones you know from other Windows products. This similarity makes very quickly the users familiar with the product and enables them to navigate around and solve the various tasks at hand from the very first day. Easy to install and to upgrade. Visual Quality Enterprise can be installed as a single-user solution on one machine, in a client/server solution or in a Citrix environment. In all cases it is very easy to install the product and more importantly: it is just as easy to upgrade from one version to another. The upgrade installation program ensures that there is always full backward compatibility with earlier versions. Runs on all versions of Windows. Visual Quality Enterprise can be installed and runs on all Windows operating systems later than Windows XP. In a multi-user solution it is recommended that the server machine is running Win2003 Server or later.