UNFORM 7 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
INCLUDING ARCHIVING, RETRIEVAL AND SCANNING
SUPPORT
The most awaited feature in SDSI's new UnForm 7.0 release is the Document
Archiving and Management component. With this component enabled, the systematic
electronic archiving of a company's trade-oriented documents, such
as invoices, purchase orders, and checks, is literally within one command-line
keyword from implementation on an existing UnForm-enabled system.
WHY ARCHIVE ?
Organizations have many reasons for wanting to
electronically archive documents.
Ultimately they all boil down to EFFICIENCY.
- In the here-and-now for an enterprise,
lowering paper usage lowers supplies cost, and eliminates physical
handling steps which can translate into increased efficiency.
- Enhanced security over document resources
can be a factor addressed by electronic archiving, as archive libraries are
able to be secured from non-authorized access in an environment familiar to
system administrators, and paper copies of documents, if retained, can be
stored with more security because access to them is only needed on a rare or
exception basis.
- Many companies long for the streamlined
organizational "cleanliness" of either a fully paper-less environment or at
least a logical minimization of clutter associated with storing paper
files and archives.
- Filing systems to handle paper resources can
themselves become costly and can occupy valuable commercial office space
better used for more productive assets.
- Many acknowledge or believe that fully
paper-less is impossible, but envision being able to relegate paper to a
back-up position in the scheme of retention and accessibility.
- Other organizations key-in on the
document-matching capabilities that electronic archiving provides. Many
key accounting and business work-flow functions revolve around matching up
related documents. To the extent that a computer system itself can perform
this function, instead of a human resource, can increase efficiency and
reliability.
- Ease, speed and flexibility of ACCESS
is one of the key demands that comes front-and-center when considering
archiving solutions.
- An electronic archiving solution with
logical and flexible indexing capability, especially when custom-tailored
to the user's business model or specifications, can add such efficiency
to the document retrieval process that employees' time can be much better
utilized in higher-level aspects of their job description, or flat-out
reduce or eliminate the need for clerical support-staff in some areas, reducing
costly overhead.
- Pre-defined custom-indexing and linking
when initially writing archived documents to the library, and batch-mode
barcode and optical-character-recognition (OCR) scanning capability
enable automated document matching.
- Even environmental reasons related to saving
earth resources through lowering paper usage boil down to efficiency, albeit
in a longer-term ecological sense.
The entry-cost to these benefits and technologies,
especially with the release of UnForm 7.0's document archiving, retrieval
and scanning components, is down at a level where they can make sense for
even the smallest of organizations.
HOW SIMPLE IS IT?
Simply add the argument pair "-arclib
library_name" to your UnForm 7.0 client invocation command and archiving is
enabled using default settings. No additions to form rulesets are required for
default-based archiving. The existing ruleset name becomes the archive document
type, and a sequential document ID is assigned. The library to store documents
is automatically created in UnForm's server/arc directory when the first
document comes through the pipeline. The theoretical capacity of each library is
4 billion documents. With security access, any browser can be used to list,
search for and display documents. Any function supported by the browser, like
printing and emailing from a pdf viewer, can be used to extract and deliver the
document out of the library.
HOW ROBUST IS IT?
Switch from default archiving to
custom-controlled archiving. A simple set of document property fields can be
controlled from within an UnForm ruleset, providing primary and custom secondary
indexing, and linking capabilities.
- Document Type, Document ID, and Document
Sub-ID as primary indexes.
- Document Categories, as user-definable
multi-segment secondary indexes.
- Document Keywords, as a search-filter
resource.
- Document Links, providing unlimited dynamic
linking between documents.
The browser interface will automatically
structure browse-mode drill-down lists based on primary index and category
properties. A document can have any number of category strings. And a single
category string can have up to 10 segments. The segments are what control the
browse drill-down. Simply separate category segment data with the pipe symbol
| between segments and UnForm does the rest. Category segments would
normally be assigned based on dynamic document data read from the text input
stream using the UnForm get( ) command in a prepage code-block of a ruleset.
DEFINE TRADE-ORIENTED DOCUMENTS
The term "trade-oriented" refers to documents
used to conduct trade between different entities. Entities include things like
customers, vendors, and employees. The accounting terms "trade accounts
receivable" and "trade accounts payable" gives a sense of the meaning.
Enterprises generally "trade" products and services for money, and specific
legal documents like purchase orders, packing slips, delivery slips, invoices,
statements and timecards are used to control the process of trade.
WHY IS THERE A DISTINCTION BEING MADE BETWEEN
"TRADE" AND OTHER DOCUMENTS?
Because trade documents are usually ALREADY being
handled by UnForm for laser or pdf enhancement and document delivery. Other
"non-trade" documents, such as word processing and spreadsheet files, and
scanned document files, are usually NOT already being processed by UnForm.
UnForm and TRADE Documents
UnForm is normally used to enhance, print and
deliver trade-oriented documents. This can include trade-oriented reports and
registers from the accounting system which list and summarize the results of
trade activity. Accounting reports and registers are often legal documents
themselves which need to be archived.
UnForm is uniquely suited to perform the
archiving function for trade-oriented documents, reports and registers, because
it is already "intercepting" the document or report text stream from the
application, enhancing it, and routing it to output devices. The archive library
is, in essence, just one of many document delivery options for the forms and
reports already being processed by UnForm.
NON-TRADE Documents
As mentioned above, "non-trade" documents refers
to files NOT usually processed through UnForm for enhancement or document
delivery.
Archiving of "non-trade" documents is handled
differently than trade documents. One way is to use UnForm's Scanning
Workstation for Windows to scan and/or import a file or files into an archive
library. Another way is to invoke UnForm using its command-line syntax, and
using the "-arc" series of arguments to specify the document properties.
Archiving with the UnForm Scanning
Workstation for Windows
Any type of file can be imported into an archive
library using the many features of UnForm's Scanning Workstation for Windows
software. An intuitively standard Windows visual interface provides access to
multiple features and activities which, among other things, make sure that
imported documents carry the right document properties for easy identification
in the archive.
An example is scanned images of trade documents
like signed delivery slips which need to associate or "match-up" with
corresponding documents previously archived. This ability to associate and
match-up discrete documents is key to an efficient archiving system because it
saves time. And you know what they say about time.
Barcoding and optical character recognition (OCR)
can be employed to automate the capture of document identification properties,
if desired. Batch scanning jobs can be defined to process multiple scanned
images in an unattended process.
Besides scanned documents, ANY other file or set
of files can be imported to an archive library with access to the same features
for properly identifying the document, and associating it, if necessary, with
other documents already in the archive.
Archiving with the UnForm Command Line
To round out the available ways of archiving
documents there is the access to UnForm via the operating system command line.
Developers can write scripts to automate specialized archive-oriented functions
with this capability. Over 20 new archiving-oriented command line arguments have
been added to the uf70c client providing full access to all major archiving
functions. These arguments can be used to customize processes for listing,
creating, retrieving, deleting, and changing document properties.
Visit
the UnForm 7.0 Document Archiving Main Page
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