February 2006

ECS Newsletter

“Your Source for Document Management”

Vol 4; Issue 2

877.790.1600
www.ecsimaging.com

support@ecsimaging.com
sales@ecsimaging.com

Southern CA

3720 Sunnyside Dr.,

Suite 200
Riverside, CA 92506

Tel: 951.787.8768

Fax: 951.787.0831

Northern CA

4737 Imhoff Pl, Unit 1B

Martinez, CA

Tel: 925.370.2456

Take advantage of these Q1 promotions

Buy WebLink, and get 25 retrieval users free.

The direct link between you and your Laserfiche database. Acess and retreive files securely from virtually any location. With 25 retrieval users, document availability is as easy as a click away.

Buy Web Access, and get 10 full users free.

Have the productivity and security of WebLink with complete acess to manage and change files.

For more information

Contact your ECS Sales Rep Today!

For more information on Agenda Manager,

register for any of these Webinars this month:

Monday Feburary 20, 2006	9:00 a.m. Pacific Time Click here to register
Wednesday Feburary 22, 2006	8:00 a.m. Pacific Time Click here to register
Monday Feburary 27, 2006	8:00 a.m. Pacific Time Click here to register

Upcoming Events

Event Schedule

ECS Imaging Quarterly User Group

and Agenda Manager Workshop

ECS Invites you to our first quarter users group. Come for…

Basic Laserfiche 7 Training

Equip yourself with the basic fundamentals of Laserfiche 7.0.

Informative Agenda Manager Workshop

Learn how electronic agenda processing will help you save time and money by simplifying the process.

Meet and socialize with others in your industry

The best way to see how well Laserfiche improves work efficiency is by meeting and socializing with Laserfiche end users.

A FREE full day of Laserfiche information and training!

Register Today! Space is limited.

To register, please send your contact information to

Sales@ecsimaging.com

Please indicate if you are attending the workshop, user group, or both.

Every attendee walks away with a special gift!

ECS Services

Digital Recorder Importer
ECS Map Measuring Tool
ECS Search Tool
Mug Shot Capture Six-Pack Creator
ESRI 2-way Integrations
Custom Integrations
Conversions
Scanning Services

Microfiche Conversion
Hosted WebLink

Servers & Scanners

Have a question about your Laserfiche system?

Call or email our ECS Tech Support hotline 877-790-1600 x105

support@ecsimaging.com

Do you have an old Ricoh Scanner? While these scanners have been great, it's time to start budgeting for replacement scanners. We have found it difficult to get parts on the Ricoh scanners and thus maintain them. Additionally, the chance for your scanner to have downtime is increased when these situations occur. Your ECS Account Manager can help you find a great replacement with many enhanced features. Contact your Account Manager to see if your Ricoh scanners qualify for a trade-in value with the purchase of a new scanner from ECS.

As an Elite Partner with Visioneer Scanners, we have a unique opportunity to beat anyone's price on the Xerox or Visioneer line of scanners. Let us help you find the right scanner at the best price! Scanner purchased through ECS Imaging, Inc. will be backed by ECS.

Microfiche Conversion Services offered directly through ECS Imaging, Inc.

Let ECS convert your old Microfiche, Jacketed or COM to Laserfiche images.

Scanning Services offered directly through ECS Imaging, Inc.

We have two locations to serve you from; Riverside and Martinez, CA

GIS Integrations?

ECS offers integrations between Laserfiche 7 and ESRI or AutoDesk products. Client and Web Based solutions are available.

Spotlight

PartnerVision ‘06

St. Petersburg, Florida—To add to the excitement of a new year, Jim Pappas and Debbi Richards were invited to Visioneer's inaugural partner conference, PartnerVision '06, as part of 25 Elite Partners invited.

Visioneer, the former consumer scanner specialist is making great strides in its new life as a provider of business-class document scanners. More of the article click here.

Moreno Valley Unified School District
Risk Management

Nancy Anderson, manager of Moreno Valley USD's Risk Management department needed a fast, efficient way to send out single page documents.  Her day is filled with requests for “that letter” or a picture of  “those stairs.”  Frustrated with the frequent trips to the fax machine which often was busy and always slow, Nancy asked Bruce Adams at ECS Imaging to develop a solution.  Working closely with Bill Kouzi at Visoneer Xerox, they developed a concept that was fast, efficient and low cost (under $200).   The heart of the system is the Visioneer Strobe XP-100 scanner and Paper Port software.  The scanner is small, efficient, and requires only a single USB cable.   The Paper Port software is included with the scanner and has enough options to satisfy most requirements.

Nancy now e-mails one or two page paper documents without having to leave her office.  The Strobe scanner is small and sits on her desk waiting to help. “There's no program to start,” she said.  “All I have to do is insert the paper into the scanner, wait a few seconds for the image to appear on the screen and then e-mail it to a staff member.”  Nothing could be easier.

For archiving the other documents in the Risk Management Department, Nancy gets Doris Howard's help.  She uses the district wide Laserfiche system that is now in six other departments.  Doris uses a desktop scanner and Laserfiche, Version 7.1.1 to quickly scan and index hundreds of Risk Management documents each week.  Once in the LaserFiche system, the images may be quickly recalled by Nancy, Doris or others who have access to the Laserfiche system. This article was featured in the Visioneer VAR news December 2005.

Interested in saving time, space and money?  Call ECS Imaging at (951) 787-8768 or e-mail us as sales@ecsimaging.com

Determining IT's role in the sales process

For ECS Imaging, IT is tuning in more to user needs

For ECS Imaging, the role of IT staff in the Laserfiche sales process has changed recently for both new sales and upgrades.  

“Over the last year or two the basic attitude of IT in local government in California seems to be leaning more toward servicing end users,” says Debbi Richards.  “For the most part, they have been taking more of a back seat, making sure that we conform to industry standards and fit with their environment. 

“They now seem to see Laserfiche as another important system that they support--like their accounting application.  We still include them throughout the sales process, however, so that they are aware of what is needed for Laserfiche to operate at its best.”

According to Ms. Richards and Jim Pappas, cooperation from IT has been instrumental in ECS' ability to successfully convert more than 100 customers to Laserfiche 7.  “They are the one group in the organization that recognizes the value of keeping their servers, workstations, software and equipment up-to-date,” says Pappas.  “At installations where we serve lots of users and departments, IT is likely now to look at their document management solution as a team effort.  They take care of most day-to-day questions from the users while we focus on training and overall system maintenance and development.”

Based in Riverside, CA, ECS Imaging is a seven-time Laserfiche Winners Circle VAR and the 2003 VAR of the Year.

This article was featured in the Laserfiche VAR News February 2006.

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Tips on How to Use Laserfiche

Laserfiche Scanning can scan multiple documents without having to close and restart it. This can be performed after you are finished scanning into the current document by clicking  (New Document). This will store the document currently being scanned in Laserfiche. After your scanned document has been created, the image area will appear blank. This indicates that Laserfiche Scanning is ready to scan a new document. Once you are ready to start scanning, simply click  from the toolbar.

When specifying field data, keep in mind that the ENTER key takes you to the next field, while SHIFT + ENTER takes you to the previous field. If the Fields tab is visible, the ENTER key can also be used to go from the Document name option to the first field.

If you notice an exclamation point icon ( ) when assigning field values, you should hover the mouse cursor over it. A tooltip will appear indicating the reason why the field has been marked as invalid.

Pressing the SPACEBAR on an empty date or date/time field will insert the current date or date/time into that field.

Steps to find words in the OCR'd text window of a document:

1. Show the OCR'd text window by clicking  (view text) button.

2. Click in the OCR'd text window.

3. Use CTRL + F to bring up the Find Dialog box

4. Type the word(s) you are looking for and click next.

Field and Tag Information for New Versions of Documents
In Laserfiche 7.1.2 and later, new versions of documents preserve field and tag information from the parent document.  For instance, you might have a document that has a security tag called "Restricted," and a Title field populated with "John Doe's Application."  If that document was modified and saved as a new version, the security tag "Restricted" and the Title field information "John Doe's Application" would by default be applied to the new version as well.  However, when the Import to Laserfiche dialog displays for the new version, you can modify the field information and add or remove tags manually as well, to customize tag and field information for the new version.  Please note that this only applies to new versions created directly from the original document; fields and tags will not be modified for documents linked to existing documents as new versions.

New versions do not inherit security from their parent documents. Instead, their initial security settings are determined as any new document's security is determined: by default, they inherit security from their parent folder's settings.

Managing Redactions on Exported Documents

When exporting an image, text document or briefcase from Laserfiche, you can configure the way in which redacted text will be handled.  If the user who is exporting the document does not have the right to see through a redaction, the redacted text will remain redacted in the exported file regardless of Client settings.  However, if a user does have the rights to see through redactions, they will be able to determine whether redacted text will be visible or redacted in the exported document.

All redaction settings can be configured through the Export Options dialog in the Laserfiche Client.

Images
In the Images tab of the Export Options dialog, you can select "Include redactions on exported images" to maintain redactions.  This will permanently 'burn' the redaction on the image, keeping the redacted information hidden.  Unlike redactions in the Laserfiche Client, this does not apply the redaction over the image; it incorporates the redaction as a permanent part of the image.  If this box is cleared, the image will be exported with no redaction – in other words, the portion of the document that was redacted in Laserfiche will be visible.

Note: If an image is exported as a PDF, and there is OCRed text associated with that image, both the redaction of the image and text portions of the PDF are controlled by the Images setting.  No aspect of PDF creation is controlled by the Text setting.  Both the text and the image of the Laserfiche document must be redacted to redact both the image and text layers of the PDF; you can do this by applying a linked redaction to the text of the Laserfiche document, which will also redact the associated portion of the image.

Text
In the Text tab of the Export Options dialog, you can select "Replace redacted text."  This will replace redacted text with a particular character, which can be configured in the same dialog.  By default, the redaction character is 'X'.  For instance, if a section of text read "Social Security Number 123-45-6789" and the number was redacted, the exported text would read "Social Security Number XXXXXXXXXXX."  If this option is cleared, redacted text will not be replaced in this manner.

Briefcase
In the Briefcase tab of the Export Options dialog, you can select "Make image redactions permanent."  In a similar fashion to the option in the Images tab, this will permanently incorporate redactions on the images to be exported to a briefcase.  If this setting is cleared, the redaction information will be included in the repository when it is imported; the redaction, however, will not be permanently burned onto the image.

Template Security

You can limit access to certain templates by changing the security on the template through the Administration Console. By default, all templates can be viewed and used by the Everyone group.

To change these settings, start the Administration Console, expand the desired repository, and click the Templates item. Then, right-click the template you want to modify and select Security... (a new window will open). Under the Assign Rights tab, remove the Everyone group from the template, and then add the users/groups that will have access to it.  If you remove a user or group from the entire template, then it will no longer be visible to that trustee.

You can remove all or part of a template from view from certain users.  By changing security on individual fields, you can make a template with 20 fields appear to have 5 fields to a certain group.  Additionally, you can restrict individual rights, so that users can read but not write to a set of fields, etc.  For more in-depth information about Laserfiche Security, see the Administrator's Guide and the Laserfiche 7 Security Best Practices white paper.

Microsoft Outlook import options

You can customize the way the Laserfiche Client handles new e-mail messages imported from Microsoft Outlook.  To do so, open the New Document dialog of the Laserfiche Client Options menu.  From here, you can customize the default handling of attachments and the distribution list, and configure template field associations for e-mail messages.  The ability to configure template field associations is particularly important; the other options can be determined at the time of document import, but template field associations can only be configured in the Outlook Import Options dialog.

To can determine how attachments are handled when an email is imported, select one of the items in the "Attachments" list. "Leave in e-mail document" will keep the attachment in the electronic document created from the email message. "File separately" will import the attachments as separate electronic documents and remove it from the email message document. "Leave in and file a copy" will create a separate electronic document and also leave a copy of the document in the email message document.

If you choose to import the attachments as new electronic documents, you can select "Apply e-mail fields to attachments" to apply the same template fields to the attachment as to the email message. By default, the attachment will be imported to the same location as the email message.

Selecting "File distribution list" will create an additional file containing all of the names and email addresses listed in the TO, CC and BCC fields.  This is useful for tracking the distribution information for filed email messages.

The "Field associations" option allows you to customize the template field information for an email message.  For instance, you could create a specific template for e-mail messages with Sender and Recipient fields, and then automatically populate those fields with the Sender and Recipient information from the e-mail itself.  Or you could create a "Contact Information" field that would specifically capture the sender's e-mail address itself, or a "Time sent" or "Time received" field that would retrieve that information from the email.

If you leave the Default box unchecked, the default properties would only be applied if the specific template was chosen when the document was imported.  By checking the Default box, you can make that template the default template for e-mails imported from Outlook.

Archiving finished agendas in Laserfiche or storing

in Agenda Manager

Finished agendas are typically maintained in Agenda Manager. If you want to save a copy in Laserfiche for archival purposes, then you can simply import the published agenda PDF file. This process can be automated using Import Agent.  While publishing the agenda, users have the option to save a local copy.  To automate archival with Import Agent, simply save the local copy to a certain folder, and then configure Import Agent to monitor that folder for agenda PDFs. 

Enhancing OCR quality with image clean-up

The Laserfiche Client gives you the option to apply temporary image enhancements to images at the time of OCRing, to help clean up the image and therefore increase the accuracy of the OCR results.  Note that image clean-up options slow down the time it takes to OCR a document; if you are getting a satisfactory level of accuracy from the OCR process without image enhancements, it is best not to add them.

Image Clean-up settings can be configured from the Client Options menu.  In the Client, select Options from the Tools menu.  Select OCR and then click the Configure button.  This will open the Image Clean-up dialog.  From this dialog you can choose several image enhancements to increase the accuracy of your OCR process.  These enhancements are Deskew, Despeckle, Rotate and Line removal. If you have a document selected in the browser window, you can also use the Preview button to see how the selected enhancements will affect the current document.

Deskew straightens crooked images.  It can be used, for instance, to automatically straighten pages that were printed, copied or scanned slightly off-kilter. Despeckle removes tiny spots and other “noise” from the image. You can specify exactly the size of the speckles you wish to have removed; all larger speckles will be assumed to be part of the image and left.  Rotate can be used to reorient pages prior to OCR so that the text is read in the correct direction. You can either manually rotate all pages by a particular amount, or choose to automatically rotate.  Note that the automatic rotate process takes longer than Rotate by This Amount."  Finally, Line Removal temporarily erases horizontal or vertical lines from an image, and repairs characters that those lines intersect.

Please note that these are temporary image enhancement processes.  They are applied to the image prior to OCR, but the image is restored to its original appearance once the OCR has completed.  Image enhancements that you wish to permanently apply to new images should be configured in Laserfiche Scanning.

Note: Since text extraction receives text from the electronic document's text stream rather than reading it from an image, image enhancements – including Image Clean-Up – have no effect on text extraction of electronic documents.

Quick Fields document processing functions performed

on electronic documents
The amount of processing that can be performed on electronic files is more limited than what can be performed on images. For example, certain processes that are commonly used to extract data directly from the image, such as Zone OCR and Bar Code, cannot be performed on electronic documents. However, there are still methods you can use to process these documents.  

Electronic documents, like any documents in Quick Fields, can be identified by their original Windows document name and/or path.  This information can also be stored as tokens, so if the Windows name contains information about the document, you can use this information to fill out a template.  You could even use Pattern Matching to break up the information contained in a name or path if it contains more than one piece of relevant information, and thus fill out multiple fields.  Alternatively (or additionally), you could gather other information from a third-party database using Real-Time Lookup.

An example:  An organization consistently names Word documents “[creation date]_[type]_[number], “ as in “12-01-05_invoice_1076.doc”.  Quick Fields imports this Word file and, using Pattern Matching, both identifies the document type (invoice) and fills out the template fields “Creation Date” and “Invoice Number” from the name in Windows.    By using Real-Time Lookup to access a third-party database, Quick Fields could lookup invoice #1076 and retrieve other information about it, completing the template.  This organization also might find it useful to rename the file in Laserfiche with something more descriptive, such as the invoice's receiving party, the invoice number, and the date. 

In addition to tokens you can create in Quick Fields, system tokens (such as the current time according to Windows, “$time$”, date “$date$”, or current user, “$user$”) are also available for electronic document processing. In the same fashion, you can utilize system tokens to rename the electronic document, determine a folder location, and populate the fields. For a full list of available system tokens, please refer to the Quick Fields help files under Appendix > Tokens.  For more information about Pattern Matching and Real-Time Lookup, check the help file under Identification/Image Processing Add-Ons > Add-Ons.

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