As we enter the New Year, change comes along with it. Workshare is no exception and for 2017, there are some major changes as well involving EOL and rebranding of software packages.
While many of you have received messages regarding this, we feel that it is necessary to reinforce that Workshare version 7.5 will no longer be supported after February 28th, 2017. Starting from last year, Workshare had been pushing to move users off of Version 7.5 and halted deployment of any security updates and patches. After this February, any technical support issues regarding 7.5 will not be addressed by Workshare Technical Support.
What does this mean for my currently active licenses?
Your Workshare subscription is fine. There is no need to upgrade or convert licenses. Whatever license you currently own covers all versions of Workshare and downloading the new versions are as simple as going to the downloads section of the my.workshare.com portal.
What should I do if I’m still on version 7.5?
Please upgrade to Version 9 immediately. Version 9 is still in active development and will continue to have compatibility patches and security updates in the future. Please be aware that being in “active development” does NOT mean that version 9 is an unfinished product. It means that as Microsoft or other developers provide updates to their software, Workshare will follow suit in making sure that Version 9 does not conflict with any of their updates.
In addition to ceasing support for version 7.5. Workshare’s software packaging has been rebranded and the a al carte products of Workshare (Protect, Compare, and Connect) will no longer be available for purchase.
With Version 9, the new packages for Workshare are Comparison Edition, Sharing Edition, and Integration Edition.
For those who own Professional or any of the older subscription models, there’s no need to worry as those licenses will still be supported, but new licenses will be following the new package format which are as follows:
Comparison Edition – Priced at $175 a year and is most similar to the old Workshare Professional. This edition contains the document comparison feature (Compare), Protect, Connect – User Control with some limitations, and Transact with some limitations:
- Comparison Edition subscriptions will not be able to generate a “send link” option in Outlook.
- Cloud storage will be limited to a total of 50 GB with 100 MB max file size transfers.
- Transact will only allow internal deals and not have any closing binders.
Sharing Edition – Priced at $410 a year. This version is recommended for fully utilizing the cloud services Workshare offers.
- Contains all of Comparison Edition
- Includes Workshare Connect – Data Control and has additional DMS Integration.
- The file storage limit is now removed and file transfer size restrictions are increased to 4 GB.
- Features of Workshare Transact are still limited but now features 10 external deals but still has no closing binders.
Integration Edition – Priced at approximately $610. This is the complete feature set of Workshare.
- Includes all of Sharing Edition
- Includes functionality for SSO & Active Directory features across multiple platforms and using your own storage location for documents.
- Integration also includes the Protect Server and Compare Server API to allow backend implementation.
- Also includes an unlimited file transfer size.
As a final note, please pay very close attention to the difference between Workshare Compare and Workshare Comparison Edition. The former is the document comparison application that is no longer purchasable standalone, and the latter is the basic rebranded package with the release of Workshare 9.
If you have any questions, need consultation regarding Workshare version would be best for your environment, or need us to assist with implementation of Workshare, don’t hesitate to contact the Kraft & Kennedy Workshare team at worksharesales@kraftkennedy.com and we can help with getting Workshare to improve your workflow.