Patent ID: 7664825

Claim:
A method of managing documents from within a shared peripheral, network-based document management system, comprising the steps of: selecting an electronic document from a plurality thereof, in accordance with document storage parameters of a document management system inclusive of an integrated electronic document repository and associated with at least one data storage system that is outside of the document management system; determining if a selected electronic document is stored in the electronic document repository such that operations are performable thereon by the document management system in its current format, or if it is stored in a non-integrated data storage system outside of the electronic document repository such that operations are not performable thereon by the document management system in its current format; accessing document data representative of a selected electronic document via a thin client interface of a network client; receiving link data representative of a link that is associated with a location of the document data from within the thin client interface when the selected electronic document is not stored in the electronic document repository; receiving document import instruction for the selected electronic document when it is not stored in the electronic document repository; importing the electronic document when it is not stored in the electronic document repository in accordance with a received document import instruction communicating image data representative of the link data to the thin client interface such that the associated document data is selectively retrieved from the document management system at a later time; displaying the image data representative of the link data on the thin client interface; receiving, via the thin client interface, data representative of a selected operation to be performed on link data associated therewith, which operation includes at least one of creation, deletion, renaming, copying and moving the link data; receiving an instruction from the thin client interface in accordance with a displayed image of link data so as to commence a communication of the associated electronic document to at least one shared peripheral; receiving, via the thin client interface, at least one document processing instruction associated with the associated electronic document; and commencing operation of the at least one shared peripheral in accordance with a received document processing instruction; wherein the at least one shared peripheral is from a set comprising a printer, facsimile, e-mail server, archival storage and copier.