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M-Files is a versatile software that is widely used across various industries and departments. Users have reported significant …
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What is M‑Files?
M-Files is a platform for knowledge work automation, that helps knowledge workers to find information faster. M-Files features a metadata-driven architecture, embedded workflow engine, and advanced artificial intelligence. This helps customers to eliminate information chaos, improve process efficiency, and automate…
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What is M‑Files?
M-Files is a platform for knowledge work automation, that helps knowledge workers to find information faster. M-Files features a metadata-driven architecture, embedded workflow engine, and advanced artificial intelligence. This helps customers to eliminate information chaos, improve process…
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What is M‑Files?
M-Files is a platform for knowledge work automation, that helps knowledge workers to find information faster. M-Files features a metadata-driven architecture, embedded workflow engine, and advanced artificial intelligence. This helps customers to eliminate information chaos, improve process efficiency, and automate security and compliance.
The vendor's value proposition:
- EASE OF USE: M-Files increases productivity and improves work quality by making information easy to find and use.
- WORKFLOW AUTOMATION: M-Files increases consistency of work and reduces errors by automating workflows.
- COLLABORATION: M-Files enables superior customer experiences through a collaborative workspace.
- COMPLIANCE: M-Files reduces business risk by ensuring compliance.
M-Files is designed to improve business performance by helping people find and use information more effectively. Using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, M-Files breaks down silos by delivering an in-context experience for accessing and leveraging information that resides in any system and repository, including network folders, SharePoint, file sharing services, ECM systems, CRM, ERP and other business systems and repositories.
M‑Files Screenshots
M‑Files Integrations
- DocuSign
- AutoCAD
- AutoCAD LT
- ChronoScan
- Microsoft 365
- Google Workspace
- Salesforce CMS
- Microsoft Dynamics 365
- Adobe Sign
- Esri ArcGIS
- SAP
- Open Text eDocs
M‑Files Competitors
M‑Files Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Windows Phone |
| Supported Countries | M-Files is available in 100+ countries through direct support or via the company's partner network. |
| Supported Languages | M-Files is available in 30+ languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified/PRC), Chinese (Traditional/Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Mongolian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic), Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese |
Frequently Asked Questions
Reviewers rate Availability highest, with a score of 9.1.
The most common users of M‑Files are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Recommendations
M-Files is a versatile software that is widely used across various industries and departments. Users have reported significant improvements in document retention, retrieval, and collaboration. The software serves as a central repository for storing business-critical documentation, including customer data and agreements. It has helped organizations achieve a paperless office by archiving financial data and recording invitations to tender. M-Files has been instrumental in streamlining manufacturing operations, quality control systems, and corporate functions. It simplifies access to files and data from different databases and applications, improving search capabilities and facilitating workflow management. Users appreciate the high configurability of M-Files, enabling the creation of sophisticated systems for structured information. It is also utilized by individuals for managing business and personal documents, easily finding and organizing various types of files. M-Files has successfully been implemented in education institutions to organize and manage decades worth of contracts and contractual details. Risk intelligence analysts benefit from M-Files' AI support and metadata-driven properties when developing risk assessments. The software serves as a strategic DevOps platform and a main database for industrial asset management deployments. Additionally, it is relied upon for powerful workflow tools, allowing organizations to manage internal processes and support growth without additional staffing resources. Overall, M-Files provides efficient information and document management solutions across industries such as manufacturing, education, health, and social sectors.
Users commonly recommend M-Files for its security and affordability. They suggest trying it out and learning all its features to transform the way organizations operate. M-Files is recommended to organizations of all sizes and resources. Users appreciate the convenience of file sharing and the high-level security system provided by M-Files. They also recommend creating specific folders for each topic to enhance organization. Additionally, new users are encouraged to try M-Files.
Another common recommendation is due to M-Files being a next-generation intelligent content management platform. It is highly recommended by users, including business concerns and friends. They find it easy to use and almost bug-free, making it suitable for companies dealing with numerous files and documents. Suggestions include setting up low-hanging fruit in M-Files and utilizing online training materials. Effort should be put into information and document management models and architecture.
Furthermore, users highly recommend M-Files without second thought. They advise allocating sufficient time and resources for training and persuading colleagues for successful implementation. Users suggest trialing the M-Files solution before partnering with another Enterprise Content Management (ECM) vendor as adoption rate is critical for successful implementation. An improvement suggestion is to make the product OS and platform agnostic while implementing optional features into the standard version for a competitive advantage.
Overall, users recommend M-Files for its secure and affordable nature, its convenience in sharing files, its high-level security system, and its next-generation intelligent content management platform capabilities.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 41)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 03, 2023
Strong DMS
M-Files is used as a platform to provide document management solutions for out clients
- The most powerful part of M-Files is workflow automation.
- System has quite a simple interface.
- Good integration with other applications like MS Dynamics.
- Workflow definitions need better graphical interface.
- M-Files API need documentation and complete samples.
- Files upload is very slow.
- Have to have better diagnostics and logging tools
March 01, 2023
Why M-Files
As I have been consultant for M-Files, I implemented M-Files in almost 10 organizations. These organization were Manufacturing, Education, health, Social Sector, Public Sector, Oil and Gas Sector, etc.
There were different problems in different organizations, but the main one was with Oil and Gas Sector, who were using Documentum and they wanted to replace with M-Files. The organization is now using M-Files in Operations Department, Engineering Dept. and 8 other Departments. Due to COVID situation they are not fully dependent on M-Files and also now SAP integration has been done which is also favoring in Organizational Operations from remote. The main difference in Documentum and M-Files was that Documentum they used to implement on 4-5 Server Machines and when they require an other implementation they were to replica these exercise and again need 4-5 serve Machines where in M-Files there is Vault concept which reduce Hardware and Maintenance Cost with Minimum Administrative Support can manage different organization of one company in Single Installation by creating Separate Vaults.
- The import tool is the best tool for data migration from other repositories. It helps a lot in migration from Documentum to M-Files.
- The API enables to add additional customized features which made M-Files different from other solutions where they won't be able to provide solution.
- User License Model with combined vaults makes organization very affordable like if one company has different organization and they are using concurrent licenses, they can they share those licenses within vaults if there is no load on other organization.
- There is need of text editor to be built in as currently MS Word is being used for adding more text and drawing features.
- Some views base reports would be with graphical presentation as to add reporting module, every organization can't always afford that.
- Regional Languages Support.
February 28, 2023
M-files and a small laboratory company
We use M-files across the whole organization. We manage literally everything with it—quotes, purchases, orders, workflow, tasks, etc. We have also tailored it to work as a laboratory information management system in our laboratory, where we manage the samples, analysis data, and quality control.
- Document management
- Workflows
- Easy access and intuitive to use
- More features without coding (for example more options for automatic naming of documents, more functions when changing workflow state, etc.).
- Customizable front page (work example: different kind of page depending the user's task or department).
- Editing notification settings by admin (not only by user).
February 09, 2023
M-Files...Use It Or Lose It
I am a Power Initiator. I create, review, and update Safety Policies, Procedures, and Work Instructions. Train and Re-train employees on the above by Creating and Managing Learning Rules. Troubleshoot and correct user error. Train and Re-train M-Files users. The product helps achieve my work tasks by keeping all our documents organized and in one place.
- Decent document search engine
- Notifies when action is needed
- Recently accessed history
- Search finds retired or superseded documents leading to potential confusion.
- Would like to be notified when employee completes Learning Rule I created.
- Hard to master as a beginner
September 02, 2022
2 thumbs up
We use this for Enterprise Content Management.
- Content Management
- Support of Processes
- GUI configuration - Consistency of Architecture between metadata card positions
- Limitations on counts in vaults and associated Non-Doc objects
July 07, 2022
Satisfied user
I use M-Files in my daily work. I save documents, read instructions, create instructions, manage user accounts, and more. The problems are often user-driven.
- Saving and editing documents to the system
- User management
- Training documentation and monitoring
- Appearance of the Client version
- The whole system in Finnish
- The admin tool is a bit complicated to use
M-Files is used to save and find all information that is relevant for more than one employee in the company. The M-Files solution has ensured that risk intelligence analysts have access to all relevant internal information when developing a risk assessment. The M-Files AI support makes it easy to add the relevant metadata to documents. M-Files has been used by all employees since 2019.
- Makes it quite easy to save documents that includes relevant metadata.
- Makes it quite easy to find relevant information and be sure that all relevant information is found.
- Possible to show documents in different views to ensure that it is shown where it is relevant.
- M-Files can be used as the interface for all relevant information in a company using APIs to access information saved in other applications and in folders.
- Improve the user interface.
May 03, 2022
Great Product, Great Team!
We use it to address compliance and workflow issues.
- They have a high level of customer service
- The sales/pilot team was truly a pleasure to work with
- The workflow tool is extremely user friendly
- workflow visibility
- API integrations to other applications is lacking
March 15, 2022
M-FIles as metadata machine and efficiency producer
We use M-Files in multiple use cases from a base document management solution to dedicated build workflow and business automatization in different business processes. M-Files is for us a strategic DevOps platform in addition to its normal DMS capabilities.
- Free metadata is the key
- Capability to integrate to all sorts of solutions
- Agility in implementation
- User experience and user interface - however, now with the web interface we are on the right track
March 14, 2022
MPS: Measurable time savings enabled by document and information management with M-Files
MPS has been working with M-Files since 2012 and has realized significant improvements in information and document management. M-Files' best-in-class document management functionalities have enabled more efficient work, freed up employees' time to serve customers, and increased data security.
- more efficient work
- increased data security
- user interface
We used M-Files as a general backend for multiple completely custom deployments aimed at delivering value to our customers, specifically in the industrial asset management segment. M-Files supports our custom product via its advanced document search and sharing capabilities, and acts as the main database for most of the data that is being handled in our deployments.
- Any and all search across all objects
- Access management capabilities
- Accessibility across multiple device types
- User interface definitely needs improvements
- Speed could be much faster especially with large amounts of objects
- Administrative interface needs improvements
- API documentation needs improvements
March 11, 2022
You are on the right path to a user-friendly product
All our business agreements are in M-files. Problems: Search capabilities within M-files are unclear. There's too much metadata to use it user-friendly.
- Always available (Saas)
- No lost of data (Backups are done)
- Performance (Saas and desktop)
- Search functionalities and complexity
- Tailored datamodel per customer
- Difficulty understanding the product and its functions
- Consideration of customer feedback in product development
March 10, 2022
M-Files - Easy document management, easy life.
M-Files serves as the document hub for our sales and projects. The scope of our use case is fetching data from external cloud apps (sales, forecasting, and CRM).
- Document hub/center
- Views (based on roles)
- Search
- They make it rather painless to re-think and re-do metadata or an information structure
- It is hard to stage changes in a controlled manner (test environment -> production)
- Mostly manual administration of changes
- Competitive offering to onboarding new customers
February 09, 2022
Great product to documentation
In Finnfund, we are using M-files for our business-critical documentation. All of our customer data is stored in M-files. We have connected our CRM solution in M-files to make it easier to use metadata in our documentation. We also have another M-files instance in which we store our agreements. It is pretty useful when it alarms us if the agreement is ending. All company financial data is archived to M-files too.
- Connectivity to other solutions
- Data sharing
- Easy to use
- Works pretty well together with Office 365
- The windows client is sometimes quite slow
- On small laptop screen it might be hard to use
- Touchscreen use is not easy
- Search should be easier
November 14, 2020
M-Files did not work for our law firm
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
After a long and exhaustive search, our law firm decided to purchase and use M-Files to manage our case files back in 2017. It was a long three years. Although M-Files is a capable document management system that presumably works well for some industries, it did not work well for our firm. We wound up deciding to eat our investment and abandon the product this month. We did so for several reasons, but the deal-breakers were
- the inability to easily and intuitively store large batches of documents, such as multiple document production sets, in the system
- the total lack of support from M-Files.
- Good integration with Microsoft Office applications
- It is relatively fast
- Metadata structure can be adapted to fit each company's unique environment
- Customer support
- Customer support
- Customer support
June 09, 2020
M-Files is Great and Reliable for Our Hospital System's Policies and Forms. See What They Can Do for You!
M-Files holds the policies and forms for our hospital system. It is used by all associates/manager's/physicians within Catholic Health. Our M-Files account was created and designed for the needs of our hospital system. It is a very reliable system with easy access for our users. The search capability is extremely fast and reliable. When an associate needs immediate access to a policy or form, it is readily available. This is critical since we have surgery consents on this system as well as many other policies and forms and our five hospitals rely on these documents to function.
From an administrator's view, this system was created by working with M-Files so we have everything that is required, such as the documented date and time stamps for pathologists approvals on our policies, easy access to all versions of each policy, more than one version of a policy visible at a time for training purposes, and excellent customer service.
- Reliable: Our M-Files system has only gone down one time (for a very short period of time) at the beginning of the two years that we have been with M-Files. Our previous vendor's system had so many downtimes that our IT Department had to assign an associate to work with me for sending out notifications to associates etc. With our last vendor, one day I came to work and only 60 of the 260 consent for surgery forms were available to our end users although they were visible to me as the Administrator but weren't showing up for the end-users!
- Our M-Files system was created for us. It was created by working with developers to only have on our system what we required, and I must say, there were so many extra features that M-Files offered in our program that weren't available with our previous vendor. As mentioned previously, we can have two policies or forms visible to the end-user so one can be listed as "draft" or "training only" so our end users can read and use for training as we get ready to roll out a new medical record system. I can also preload policies and leave them in the working stage until they are approved and go back and publish them the day they are approved. The list goes on with so many great features.
- Our end users would say the greatest asset of this product is the search function. It's amazing how fast it is. There are many ways to search out a form or policy which makes it a true asset for our associates.
- When our account was first live, shortly after that we had our one and only downtime. When I called for assistance, I was told that I needed to work with Strickland Solutions, who created our vault for M-Files. When I called my contacts there, they told me I needed to contact M-Files. It was frustrating and did get to the bottom of it. There are now account reps that I can work with if I need to but I would recommend (and I had already suggested) that the support team is well aware of what level of support each customer has for their account. My account rep does call to check in with me periodically, but seriously, we aren't having issues and are a very satisfied customer.
We recently implemented M-Files... we have been using it for about 6 months. We started in one department, customer service. That went well and we are expanding M-Files into accounting, procurement and logistics. I expect further growth. M-Files has helped improve document retention and retrieval, customer response times and team collaboration.
- Searching - M-Files can search both the tagged metadata and document content.
- Integration with ChronoScan (auto-indexing software) - many of our files are sent to M-Files directly from our ERP and tagged with metadata with no human intervention.
- Stability - We use the M-Files hosted solutions (our vault is in the M-Files cloud), uptime has not been an issue.
- Previews during the 'create' process do not always work. I cannot preview .msg files until I save those files. Others have this problem too... and others do not.
- It would be nice to have some simple "functions"... maybe in the compliance kit. What I am thinking would be similar to Excel functions allowing me to modify text strings. Sticking with the Excel example, =LEFT, =RIGHT, =MID, etc... maybe that functionality is there - I have only been using M-Files for a short period of time.
M-Files is used in our organization as our primary document and content management application. Nearly all departments rely on it heavily for organizing documents, as well as materials related to meetings, projects, programs, and committees. The versatility of M-Files means that we've been able to continue to adapt our business needs and processes to have M-Files automate processes and security permissions. Prior to M-Files, our organization, like many others, relied on the typical shared drives and department folder approach with email attachments to share content. Now we are able to collaborate on content across teams and streamline the organization of meeting content without worry of the current version or who last edited the document. We've also standardized how content is accessed while simultaneously providing users with the ability to customize their interface so they can work according to their preferences.
- Version control and history tracking on documents.
- Search ability to filter content for a team, creator, or another property.
- Permission control, limit access to documents to read or edit, or only specific workflow states.
- Administrative control to access all content.
- Administrative control to restore deleted content.
- Administrative control to audit and retag content when needed.
- Robust workflow capabilities.
- Sharing content externally requires organizational efforts involving information governance, risk management, and IT strategies. There are options the administrators need to consider to permit external sharing. External collaboration requires other IT infrastructure solutions to incorporate M-Files. External facing content can be done, but not easily done without first planning workflows and permission configurations.
- Configurations are determined by the customer primarily. The creation of properties and classes are at the discretion of the customer administrator. An organization needs to understand information governance and enlist collaboration with M-Files, IT, Records Management, Risk Management, and Legal. This is not so much a downfall of M-Files, but it is a consideration that embarking in the adoption of an ECM is a significant investment for an organization, both financially and human resources management, but the benefits with best practice configuration will ensure success.
- There are features that are advertised, but further investigation is available with an additional purchase of an add-on. Unfortunately, not entirely unusual in this business
May 13, 2020
Make it easier and safer
M-Files is used in the whole company as the main document handling system. With meta data all contracts are classified and saved.
- Metadata classification helps to find the correct document or all equivalent items.
- Version method of one document helps to get rid of different documents that are hard to recognise ("final. FINAL").
- Documents can be defined by different Permissions and confidentiality level. Well appreciated feature by our customers.
- Interface (API) from our CRM system produces the metadata structure to M-Files.
- Scanning settings from multiprinter directly to M-Files should exist by default.
- The number of documents grow hard to manage. I have not found assisting feature to pack or separate historical data.
March 18, 2020
Flexible tool for document and metadata management
M-Files is used for:
- Metadata management in sales, project deliveries, and services.
- Document management.
- Service task management.
- Combines document and metadata management well in one package.
- Flexible and easy to configure.
- Good support for the use over Internet, no VPN connection needed.
- Good data replication tools over data vaults.
- Opening of a metadata card is a bit too slow on average.
- Offline use features are too limited.
- Mobile phone client user interface needs improvement.
- There are still many things to improve in the everyday use in M-Files client.
December 30, 2019
Superb Document Management System
Today M-Files is being used worldwide inside my company to handle files and another similar kind of documents, like control revision, file storage, and workflow for approvals. It is a very important application for Engineering areas, because this area needs to be conforming to many legal compliances.
- Great workflow.
- Works with metadata, which makes files easy to be found.
- It has excellent versioning control.
- It has integration with other applications, like Office 365.
- It could have more CAD integrations.
- Has the possibility to have online revision, inside the application.
- It could have a better documentation transmitter section.
August 09, 2019
An affordable and underestimated ECM platform
We implemented M-Files for various customers after looking for a more cost-effective ECM platform than OnBase or Perceptive for some of our leaner customers. M-Files was relatively new to us but after evaluating the software and the direction it was headed we decided to implement it and it had the functionality we were looking for at a fraction of the cost of the competitors. As an ECM platform, it helped reduce the number of shared folders, spreadsheets, inconsistent Sharepoint usage, and other things that often come from a company trying to collaborate and share information while making it easy to recall and find that information in the future.
- Very easy to recall, identify, and locate related information.
- The interface is modern and slick, making the learning curve much lower for new users.
- Installation and support are top-notch and administrating the platform will be familiar to regular system administrators.
- The workflow engine, while powerful, does not contain many advanced features but they are in the roadmap.
- This is nothing against M-Files, but it is a relatively new ECM platform so adoption and user community is not where more mature platforms are.
- The interface is nice looking and easy to use but could use a bit more polish so it does not feel like too "new" of a product.
July 12, 2019
Happy M-Files Review
M-Files is being using by the whole organization to store, retrieve, revise and approve documentation. The system uses metadata properties allowing users to search and view documents quickly and easily, eliminating chaotic network folders; users are no longer required to remember where a file or folder is stored. Workflow capabilities allow users to route documents for review and sign-off, keeping content in one system vs. multiple databases. Creating assignments in M-Files provides traceability for routing and reviewing of documents, eliminating email attachments and uncontrolled paper files. Permission settings within the system allows only authorized persons to access certain files. The Check In/Check Out system creates automated version control and leaves a history trail, leaving a structured audit trail.
- Metadata drive - searches through metadata and throughout the document itself to retrieve what the user is looking for. Finds documents fast and easily using the search bar. Additional filters can be added if needed to filter further.
- Advanced automated workflows. Assignments are automatically generated once a workflow state is reached and emails notifications are sent to assignees. Automation ensures smooth transitions and eliminates manual triggers.
- Traceability and version control. M-Files tracks each change to the document itself and to the metadata. This is important for audits and having the version history at your fingertips.
- Extremely customizable. Users can create their own views for themselves or common views for the whole company to view a group of documents. These options can be customized based on the metadata properties. Administrators can create the properties and structure in the Admin tool.
- Notifications could be improved. Once an assignment has met the deadline date, it will no longer notify the assignee of an overdue assignment every day after the deadline. The assignee will only see the overdue assignment by opening up M-Files and seeing it on their home screen or referring to the email last received.
- Once an action has been taken within the system, the page needs to be refreshed frequently. Improvements could be made to reduce the refreshing required to see the changes that were made.
- M-Files acts like a library - in order to edit a document it must be checked out by a user. Once changes are made the document should automatically check itself in by default. When exiting out of a document, sometimes it does not automatically check in and requires manual check in. Consistency of automatic actions could be improved.
- The M-Files Admin customization and workflows could be explained or assisted more at initial setup. Since the system is out of the box, trying to setup the system to cater to the company's needs can be time consuming and a confusing process. It took a lot of trial and error to get the metadata properties and values setup properly. It something that we still struggle with at times since M-Files support doesn't know how our company operates and how we want to use the system.
We have implemented M-Files as a service management system for service business and quotation management system for capex projects. This solution covers service agreements, service work management and reporting of service activities for customers and invoicing. Customers' install base of service agreement lines is included. All capex quotations are included with classification information. Already decided further development includes project document management and customer document distribution.
- Defining and implementing data requirements with business people is very flexible
- Defining and implementing business workflows is very flexible
- Document management is efficient
- Creating simple views in M-Files is easy but with increasing data complexity also creation of views becomes complex.
- M-Files has competent people but their support processes can be enhanced.
- User interface could be more user friendly.
April 04, 2019
M-Files review
M-Files is in use in the whole organization. We use it mainly in document management but with the M-Files objects we are able to create relations between documents and objects which are for example imported automatically from our ERP-system. This allows us to for example import customers from our ERP and then when creating a document relate the new document to the customer with metadata. We use it also for orders, quotes and parts just to mention a few. This allows us to access/find documents more effective than before.
- Object & document relations
- Finding documents & objects
- Workflows for classes
- Metadata behind documents & objects (is the key to search & discover documents)
- After sales customerS accounting could be done more professionally.
- There could be more "ready-made" models for different types of usage and these could be included in the main product.
- For example: A company can have more than one Vault and when implementing the customer could choose from a base structure to implement on a vault (HR, Sales, Quality, logistics...). This should all be included in the main product.