Monthly Newsletter

September 2005

Volume 3; Issue 9

ECS Imaging, Inc.
877.790.1600
www.ecsimaging.com

support@ecsimaging.com
sales@ecsimaging.com

Southern CA

3720 Sunnyside Dr. Ste. 200
Riverside, CA 92506

Tel: 951.787.8768

Fax: 951.787.0831

Northern CA

4737 Imhoff Unit 1B

Martinez, CA

925.370.2456

Join us for a Free, All Day Customer Conference!

Final Week to Sign up

Click here for the flyer

Register Today by sending email to sales@ecsimaging.com

This years Industry Partners Attending include:

Upcoming Events

ECS 3^rd Annual Customer Conference

September 29, 2005

Free All Day Customer Conference being held in Lakewood, CA.

8:00 am – 5:00 pm

Topics Covered in 4 Tracks Track 1: Track 2: Techies Scanning Best Practices Admin Console Fujitsu Scanners Weblink Admin Visioneer/Xerox Scanners Audit Trail Kofax VRS Toolkit 7 Case Studies ECS Integrations Scantron's Cognition Site Recommendations & E-Listen for Laserfiche 7 Track 3: Track 4: Agenda Preparers Laserfiche 7 Training & Records Managers Agenda Manger Advanced Training LF 7 Workflow Tips & Tricks LF 7 Records Manager Quick Fields Granicus Everyone Group Roundtable Discussions Kiosks Mock City Council Meeting in Chambers Stump Answer Lady - Win a prize Sponsor Tables Awesome Prizes and Giveaways!

Agenda Manager 7.1 – This is a new version of Agenda Manager that introduces substantial changes. The focus of this product is the agenda management process from the time of submission by a department to final addition to the agenda. See it in action and use it yourself at our Kiosks on September 29^th Several significant architectural changes are being implemented to enhance dependability and functionality. Agenda Manager X will not depend on the Laserfiche Client/Server system – in fact it will be completely independent. Further, final formatting of the agenda will take place in Word, allowing all the formatting functionality of Word. Also planned is additional routing capability, such as the ability to provide comments when approving or rejecting an item.

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
Hosted WebLink

Servers & Scanners

Have a question about your Laserfiche system? Call or email our ECS Tech Support hotline 877-790-1600 or email support@ecsimaging.com

New ECS Integration Library - (Discussion at ECS Customer Conference)

One feature of this library enables ECS to integrate just about any application with Laserfiche. The general concept is the user will not need to leave one application and go to Laserfiche to look up documents. The user will just click a button in the application and the document retrieval will happen instantly by displaying the search results or a specific document via Laserfiche WebAccess and/or Laserfiche WebLink. Example Application uses include: Permits Plus, ESRI, AutoDesk, Navision, RMS systems, SIS systems, Accounting Packages….

Microfiche Conversion Services now being offered.

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

Call ECS today for your scanning, hardware and integration needs! We are offer competitive pricing and speedy service.

Spotlight

Team ECS!

Laserfiche

Product Center

Tech Tips

Laserfiche Support Site

Free for all Laserfiche users with current LSAP.

Current Versions:

Client-Server 7.1.1

Quick Fields 7.1

Scan Connect 7.1

Email (Mapi) 7.1

Plus 7.1

Audit Trail 7.1

Agenda Manager 7.1

WebAccess 7.1

Workflow 7.0

Snapshot 7.0

Import Agent 7.0

WebLink 7.0

Integration Express-HTE

BarCode 6.2

Toolkit 6.0

Integration Express 6.0

ECS Partners

ECS is an Elite Charter Member, 1 of 25 in USA

ECS is Premier Partner

Working with thumbnails

Rotating Thumbnails from the Thumbnail View

In Laserfiche Client version 7.1 and higher, you can rotate multiple thumbnails directly from the thumbnail view. Select one or more thumbnails, then either go to View > Rotate Selected Images or right-click and select Rotate Selected Images. You can choose to rotate the thumbnail or thumbnails clockwise or counterclockwise 90 degrees, or to turn them upside-down.

The new page rotation will only be saved when you close the document if you have Modify Contents rights for that document. However, if you do not have Modify Contents rights, you can still rotate the image in order to better view it - the orientation will simply not be saved when you close the document.

Jumping To a Thumbnail

You can jump to a particular thumbnail by selecting the thumbnail pane and typing the number of the thumbnail. This will bring you directly to the thumbnail you input, and the thumbnail will be selected. This can be useful for moving quickly between thumbnails in a large document, where scrolling would take a long time.

Two ways to make electronic documents (Word, Excel, PDF…) searchable:

1. Certain document types support text extraction. Go to the Support Site for a complete list. If you have a document for which text extraction is supported, you will be able to search the document once the text has been extracted. In the Client, while logged in as a user with the Modify Contents right on both the entry and the volume, select the document or documents for which you want to extract text. Either go to Action > OCR/Extract Text/Index… or right-click and select OCR/Extract Text/Index… Once the text extraction process has been completed, you will be able to search that document.

2. If you have Snapshot 6 or 7, you can use it directly within the Client to generate a tiff image of any electronic document that has a print capability in its native application. In the Client, while logged in as a user with the Modify Contents right on both the entry and the volume, select the document or documents on which you want to use Snapshot. Either go to Action > Snapshot or right-click and select Snapshot. This will print a tiff image of the electronic document and associate it with the electronic document. You can also choose to automatically OCR and index the tiff pages produced by the Snapshot process. Note that if you change the electronic document, you will need to redo the Snapshot process to keep the text up-to-date with the electronic document.

Choosing How to View Electronic Documents

There are two ways to view Electronic Documents. You can view them in their native application -in which case you will see the electronic document itself - or you can view them as pages in Laserfiche. If you choose the latter option, you will only have viewable pages if you have either used Snapshot on the electronic document or if you have extracted text from it.

Snapshot documents will contain page images that preserve any images and layout, while documents with extracted text will contain the text only. If there are neither Snapshot images nor extracted text, you will see only the template fields if you choose to view the document as pages.

You can select the default option for viewing electronic documents by navigating to Tools > View Documents. Under “Open electronic documents using:” select the default manner in which you want the documents to open.

To select a specific way to open a particular document, select the document and choose Open either from the File menu or by right-clicking on the document. You can choose to open it as Pages or as an Electronic File. Opening the electronic document with Ctrl-Enter will also open it in the non-default manner.

Using the same groups as in Windows Active Directory with Laserfiche groups You can associate a Laserfiche Group with a Windows Active Directory group so you don't have to manage any connections at the user level in Laserfiche.  If you set it up like this, users who are added to or removed from a Windows group will automatically receive or lose their access rights to the system. To find out how to map Laserfiche groups to Active Directory groups, see the Laserfiche Administrator's Reference.

Associating a Windows User with a Laserfiche User

By setting a Laserfiche user to authenticate using Windows Authentication, you can associate that Laserfiche user with a Windows domain account.  If this has been set, when the user logs in to Windows and opens the Laserfiche Client, they will automatically be logged in to Laserfiche as the user account which is associated with their Windows domain account.  They will not need to input their password to access the Laserfiche repository; Laserfiche will authenticate based on their Windows domain access.

Using Error Log Rotation

You can set a maximum size for Laserfiche 7.1's error logs, or configure Laserfiche to break its error log into multiple logs.  This can be useful for preventing an error log from growing too large, or for easily managing information which would be unmanageable in a single large log.  It can also be useful for keeping an error log archive.

Batch Scanning in version 7

Basic scanning mode in Laserfiche Scanning will allow you to quickly and easily scan a single document and send it to Laserfiche.  When scanning for multiple documents at one time, you would want to use the Standard mode of Laserfiche Scanning.  When pages are scanned with the Standard interface, you will see a ‘Revision' pane that will allow you to sort the pages of the different documents.  You can right-click a page and select ‘Create Document' or utilize shortcut keys to move the page and all subsequent pages into a new document.  You can even drag pages between documents, and of course each document can have its own properties and template values set independent of the other documents. 

With Laserfiche 7, batch scanning is handled in this way at the time of scanning, rather than at a later time as was done in 6.To access the Standard scanning interface, simply select ‘Standard mode' in the Laserfiche Scanning Mode dialogue box when you start Laserfiche Scanning.  If this option window does not open, the ‘Don't ask me again' box was probably checked at some point.  To display the mode window again, open the Options menu in Laserfiche, select ‘Prompts' and make sure the box for ‘Scan Mode' is checked.

Using Entry Access Rights to create a Recycle Bin in Laserfiche

You can set up a folder that acts as a trash can or Recycle Bin that allows users to mark items for deletion without permanently deleting them. A more privileged user can then permanently delete the items after a certain amount of time has passed.

To do this, you will first need to create a folder called Trash or Recycle Bin. (If you want the folder to be at the bottom of your folder listing, you can name it zzzTrash or zzzRecycleBin to force it to the bottom of the alphabetical list.) You will also need to specify a user with which you will empty the Recycle Bin. This user must have the Entry Access right Delete on the Trash folder; you can create a Deleter or TrashCollector user, or simply use the Admin. All other users should have the Entry Access rights Create Document on the Trash folder, which will allow them to move a file into that folder to specify that it should be deleted. If you want to allow them to delete entire folders, they will also need the Entry Access right Create Folder on the Trash folder.

NOTE: It is a good idea to allow only the Deleter and/or Admin users to browse the contents of the Trash folder. This will prevent users from inadvertently modifying a document that is slated for deletion, or viewing a document that they should not have the rights to see. You can utilize Entry Access Scoping to allow all users the Browse rights for 'This entry only' on the Trash folder, while denying them Browse on the Subfolders and Children Entries (also set on the Trash folder itself).This will allow users to see the Trash folder (in order to place documents inside it) but not see the contents.

In order to prevent users from deleting documents directly, you will need to remove the Delete right on all folders for all users. Please note that the Deleter users should retain Delete rights on the Trash folder.  Additionally, you may want the Admin user or other privileged users to retain their Delete rights. The specific configuration will depend on your security settings.

When users wish to delete a document, they can drag it from its original location into the Trash folder.  On some schedule – possibly once a month, or possibly when a certain amount of time has passed since the last modification of that document, depending on policy and/or convenience – the Deleter will log on and permanently delete all documents within the Trash folder. If a document should not be deleted, the Admin and/or Deleter can return it to its original location.

Tracking exporting and printing from the Laserfiche Client with Advanced Audit Trail

In Repositories containing sensitive information, you may wish to keep track of when and why information is reproduced outside the Laserfiche Client interface – either when documents and briefcases are exported from the Client or when documents are printed.  You can use Advanced Audit Trail's Reasons feature to keep track of when and why a document is exported or printed.

NOTE: This feature is only available with Advanced Audit Trail. Starter Audit Trail will allow you to track when items are printed or exported, and Standard Audit Trail will allow the tracking of both successful and failed attempts to print or export items, but only Advanced Audit Trail allows you to track the reasons for printing and exporting items.

When Reasons has been configured for printing or exporting for a particular user, that user will be presented with a dropdown list of possible reasons for exporting or printing the document. They must select a reason before continuing with the process; optionally, they can also add a comment. The reason can then be retrieved and reviewed in an audit report that tracks printing or exporting.

Using Snapshot to convert many documents at once

You can use Snapshot to print a large number of files to TIFF format and import them into your Laserfiche repository at one time.  This can be useful for archiving a large number of documents in Laserfiche; it can also be useful for initially populating a new Laserfiche repository with a large number of existing documents.

You can choose whether you want to be prompted to set properties such as document name, template information, destination folder and volume, and tags for each document, or whether you wish the document to use the default properties.  To do this, open the Laserfiche Snapshot Configuration utility.  In the Document properties option of the General tab, choose whether to assign default properties or to show\modify document properties.  You can also use this utility to set the default properties that will be assigned to documents.

In Windows Explorer, select the documents you wish to process. Right-click and select Print.

Note: You may need to temporarily set Snapshot 7 to your default printer, as in some configurations, Windows will only print multiple documents at once using default settings. To do this, open Control Panel and select Printers and Faxes.  Select the Lf Snapshot 7 printer. From the File menu, select Set as default printer. Once the batch print has completed, the default printer can be set back to whatever you wish.

Depending on your configuration, Snapshot may prompt you to log in to the repository.

If you have configured Snapshot to allow you to modify the properties of the documents before they are sent, you will be prompted to do so for each printed document.  Make any changes you want to the settings and then click OK.  If you have configured Snapshot to use default properties, the documents will be sent to your repository automatically.

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