The small government office I work in had a personally designed program done on MS Access. It works more or less but was an expensive undertaking and required a significant downtime as files were uploaded to the system (easier way)

?how does one keep | align | file correspondence leaving & arriving in their own shops?

does anyone use Archi-Office?

nope - excel and word - im not to sure bout the receptionists

office management? what's that?

have you heard of Newforma?

I looked at Archi-Office and seriously considered it, but passed. I felt that it is fairly expensive and everyone in the office would have to a) be trained to use it effectively and b) use it effectively.

Although the shared databases would be nice, we simply use Word, Exel, Entourage and a cheap ($30) gantt chart program.

a small firm i worked at attempted to use filemaker but never got around to designing it. they wanted to use it more for contract management and administrative purposes though.

i just got some manilla folders out of the cabinet.

I did wonder the effectiveness of a program as expensive as say CAD software or photoshop. I could see how use it could be, but training became a biatch