Hi DEVONthink community, my team is thinking about getting DEVONthink to organize our documents. Some of us are currently using DEVONthink 3, but we don’t have experiences with DEVONthink Server and some other colleagues does not have a Mac.
We are curious about some features DEVONthink Server provide.
Our questions would be:
Thank you for your answers.
Welcome @alexzh
The Server edition has a built-in web server allowing you to broadcast a database on a network. This allows you to access specific databases in a web browser, including on other platforms. (See the Help referenced below regarding access over the Internet.) It has per-database, per-user permissions you can set to control access to the databases you have open.
More discussion of web sharing is covered in Help > Documentation > In & Out > Web sharing , Windows > Web Sharing , and Preferences > Server .
- Is it possible to open DEVONthink online link on Windows?
Yes.
- How functions such as tagging, highlights and comments function in online browser?
You can tag and add comments to documents in the websharing interface. There may be PDF annotation tools available, depending on the browser. However, those annotations aren’t being saved to the document, despite the appearance.
Thank you very much for the answer.
Just some follow up questions:
Best Regards.
You’re welcome!
Actually, no. Assuming you have given someone at least Read permissions for a database, they will see exactly what you see.
PS: You can test out the functionality of the Server edition on your Mac. Do this…
When you’re finished testing, you can quit DEVONthink, put the Registration file back in place and it should again be licensed on relaunch.
Note: If you previously ran the trial of DEVONthink, the time will not reset. You can only run the trial for the duration of the remaining time.
Is there a way to upgrade existing licences to the server edition (and benefit from the current summerfest discounts)?
Yes, you can upgrade from a lower edition to a higher one for the difference in price. Combined with a promotion like Summerfest? No.
We are really impressed by what DEVONthink Server could offer and decide to give it a go. We will get one Mac for launching DEVONthink Server and share the database with other teammates who decide to stick to Windows system.
Just a few questions that still needed to be clarified:
As my colleagues might work in different time zones, should we keep the Mac (the host user) open and DEVONthink running 24 hours to ensure stable web sharing?
Should we get additional seats for teammates who are only going to read the databases through web sharing? Or is web sharing not limited?
Thank you for the help.
Best Regards,
Alex
Glad to hear it and you’re welcome 
- As my colleagues might work in different time zones, should we keep the Mac (the host user) open and DEVONthink running 24 hours to ensure stable web sharing?
The Mac should be on, connected, and running DEVONthink with the shared databases open as long as users need access to them. That being said, I would also strongly consider a scheduled reboot when no user access is required. Once a week would be nice for the machine, but DEVONthink would need to be relaunched after the reboot. Enable Preferences > Server > General > Start on launch to make this an easier process.
- Should we get additional seats for teammates who are only going to read the databases through web sharing? Or is web sharing not limited?
Websharing clients don’t require seats of DEVONthink, regardless of their level of access (read-only, etc.)
The challenges I face with the server edition is the lack of “sorter” and Safari extensions. I also feel there are contention/locking/multi-threading issues in some circumstances but this is much harder to quantify.
As @BLUEFROG suggested, enable server mode on trial and see if it meets your requirements.
In my use, the fact I can launch the server is worth more than actually running it.
I keep books for a non-profit corporation. My fellow board members know they can rummage through the “file cabinet” remotely any time they want.
If someone ever wondered if I were hiding anything in the shadows, my response would be “Shadows? What shadows? Here, have a look for yourself.”
I’ve been using the DT web server for years. I’ve had some significant problems along the way with it just ceasing to respond, though in the end it’s hard to say if the problem is with my version of macOS or the DT web server. The team who are corresponding with you here supported me with a lot of troubleshooting and made some bug fixes as well in light of the things I reported. I thought I’d post a link to an Apple Script I’ve found helpful for restarting the web server from time to time. I had that running every so often, and I found it made a huge difference. Good luck!
I have read the available documentation on DT Server in “Take control of DEVONthink 3” by Joe Kissel but cannot find a good description of how to tag new files. Our installation is as follows:
DT V3.9 runs on our last Mac after a company-wide migration to Windows.
My hope was that I could keep DT running on the Mac and that my colleagues could use the Web Interface of DT Server to archive relevant content.
We permit only company-standard tags for tagging files. These are in fact visible in the Web Interface under Tags::Rytec_WissensDB_Pro:
While I can use the Web Interface to select a file to upload, I can enter any random text as tags, but am unable to select from our company-standard tags:
Question: does DT Server permit users to select our company-standard tags in order to tag new files?
There is no connection with the database’s Tags in the websharing interface, so you will not get any autocompletion suggestions or validation.
How many tags are you using in your database?
Thank you for your prompt reply!
I estimate the number of company-standard tags to be on the order of 100-150 for our current level of roughly 2500 archived documents.
If we cannot somehow maintain discipline with tag definitions (for example year of archival, responsible person, site location, relevant technology, document language etc.), our current knowledge-management concept sort of falls apart. In the worst case, our company would have to fall back on the rudimentary search capabilities of our Sharepoint-based file system 
SharePoint may well be a better enterprise solution to your situation as you describe it.
Edit: I have not use SharePoint in a corporate environment since pre-COVID days, but as it was then seems better fit as you, I infer, need more structure than DEVONthink designed to provide. I presume SharePoint is basically the same now (but with more complexity, of course).
You’re welcome.
Tagging can still be effectively done in DEVONthink and those tags can be used in a websharing search. But there are indeed technical limitations to the websharing.
At second glance we have many more tags than I thought - more like 500. With most everyone in home office for the past couple years, our company discipline has suffered 
For each document we require a tag for:
Further tags may be added for:
It seems that you use tags to mimic a relational database. Perhaps possible, but probably not good idea.
Something like SharePoint or an ERM software might be more appropriate.
Hmm… is everyone using the websharing expected to apply specific tags to specific documents, i.e., this isn’t handled by one administrator?
All employees are trained on our document tag structure as part of their initial training when hired on. The basic rule is that every document must have 4 mandatory tags when entered into DT. Other existing tags may be added, but entirely new tags should only be defined if a document deals with an entirely new subject matter, site location etc.
Every few months, our DT-admin would attempt to make sense of the new tags and update a master Excel-list of “company-standard tags”. Over time that was unfortunately abandoned - as is evident by the sheer number of tags we now have, many of which are only used by a couple files.
While we were running single user DT-licenses on Macs, existing tags were visible in the sidebar and - more importantly - would auto-complete or auto-validate when associating with a document. This last feature is what I sorely miss in the Web Interface.
