This means that we are listed on Microsoft’s Windows 7 Compatibility Centre website –
 http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/default.aspx .

Not all companies’ document management software is accredited for Windows 7, so our customers and prospects will have confidence when they upgrade their systems.

Tim

As well as being deployed in our Enterprise system this module will also be offered via SaaS.

The development team have excelled this time, finally my dream of having one A/P workflow that suits all seems like a reality.

Tim

Infonic Filing Assistant

Filing Assistant is a small utility that runs in the Windows System Tray and monitors a folder for any new files, usually a sub-folder of MyDocuments. When a new document appears in this folder it will pop-up and ask the user to profile the document for Document Manager and then move the document into the Document Manager repository.

This allows any application that has a ‘File / Save As’ menu option to achieve a relatively seamless integration with Document Manager. It can also allow integration with applications that support drag-drop of files into folders, like Software Fax solutions.

Email Signatures

This may sound like a minor feature but is actually very important. Previously when sending a document as an attachment to an email from Document Manager any pre-configured email signature that you had configured in MS-Outlook was not appended to the message.

This was not a failing of Document Manager but a result of the MAPI functionality provided by Outlook, and was the same for any application (including Windows Explorer) that used MAPI to send emails.

In 2.6 we now detect the presence of MS-Outlook and use it directly instead of using MAPI and this allows us to utilise the signature feature, so now all your emails can be sent with the required company disclaimer and signature.

Tim

Microsoft Office Addin

Microsoft are always finding ways to do things differently and MS Office is no exception, particularly with the introduction of MS Office 2007 with its XML based file types and new look and feel.

So we have written a new Office Addin with options for Office 2007 and Office 2003 that allows documents to be saved directly to Document Manager from Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook.

In addition we have enhanced the Outlook functionality to allow attachments to emails to be saved separately or as part of the message.

Infonic Print Driver

The Infonic Print Driver is a windows printer that can be selected as a printer from any application that has a print option. When a document is printed it will create an image of that document (TIF or PDF) and pop-up a profiling window allowing you to index the document in Document Manager.

The print driver can then forward the printed file onto another physical printer so a hard copy is still produced.

The print driver has an API allowing some customisation and automation of its behaviour, for example automatically indexing the images based on the file name of the printed file. We have done this for some Accounting software to automatically file Sales Orders, Invoices etc…

Infonic Print Driver is an optional module so there is a small charge associated.

Tim

It includes features like barcode recognition, database validation, automatic pagination, VRS (Virtual Re Scan) image enhancement, colour reduction and super compressed PDF for super small file sizes with colour documents. Pricing is based on the speed of the scanner, you do not need to be overly technical to make it work and it’s user interface even looks like that of Infonic Document Manager, a perfect combination.

For more details look here http://www.kofax.com/document-scanning-software/

Tim

OCR Assisted Indexing

Different people have different names for this feature, like ‘OCR on the Fly’ or ‘Single Click Entry’ but essentially the functionality is the same, it’s the ability to OCR a part of the document to populate the structure index fields, like ‘Invoice Number’.

Currently when a document is scanned the user has to enter the index information by looking on the document and then typing the information into each field, like Invoice Number, Date, Value etc…

With OCR Assisted Indexing the user simply drags a rectangle around the information on the image and the area inside the rectangle is OCR’d and entered into the index field. The next index field is then selected and the process can repeat, making data entry much quicker and simpler.

This kind of technology is usually found in advanced data capture products with a premium price tag so inclusion in our business edition product is a major benefit.

Obviously this relies on OCR so some documents will perform better than others and it will not OCR hand writing but most documents will give good results, and where they don’t the user can still manually key the information.

OCR Assisted Screen Scrape

Screen scraping is a simple way to document enable other applications by reading their window contents and then searching for related documents. For example looking at a purchase transaction in your accounts software, press a hotkey and view the related documents in Document Manager.

Screen scraping would work for most (about 80%) of windows forms applications, but not web applications, java applications or applications running in environments like Citrix or Terminal Services.

With 2.6 we have now added another method of reading the screen contents using OCR which now allows us to screen scrape such applications where we could not in the past. Key zones on the application window are captured, read and mapped to fields in Document Manager.

 Configuring the screen scrape takes just a few minutes and requires no development skills, we will provide a mini tutorial to assist users with the configuration, and once configured it’s as simple as pressing a function key. 

This makes Infonic Document Manager one of the most integration friendly packages available.

Tim

One of the more exciting ones is the Windows Phone 7 which gives you the ability to access your business documents on the move with an easy to use touch screen interface. Reviewing and approving those documents online is now something you can do on the move. Our Infonic propeller heads already have some proof of concept working code.

More details from http://www.windowsphone7.com/.

Tim

Searching for documents using structured fields like ‘Supplier Name’ or ‘Invoice number’ provides a quick and efficient way of locating specific documents that you know you should have, but what if you want to find documents based on criteria that aren’t in the structured indexes?

Using the new full text search capability you can search on document content as well, so for example if you are writing a proposal for something to do with ‘widgets’ you can now search for existing documents that contain ‘widgets’ AND ‘proposal’. This will list the relevant documents which you can then review with the key words highlighted.

Unlike some other document management products we can combine content with structured index searches, so we can search for things like ‘Customer Name = ACME’ and Content contains ‘widgets AND proposal’ so we can limit the documents to those where we know the Customer Name etc…

The searching works for both application documents like Microsoft Word and scanned images which are OCR’d to provide the searchable text. It will even accommodate OCR errors to a certain degree.

Tim

Now I know we insisted we would not take advantage of the tempting new features that Silverlight 4 brings on the basis that we will never release the product if we don’t put the stake in the ground, but this time we made an exception.  

Any application built with Silverlight 4 (and there are many already) will automatically install Silverlight 4 when it runs, which will also replace the Silverlight 3.5 runtime. This means our Document Manager has to work with Silverlight 4 and that being so, our developers could not resist picking at some of the quick benefits. 

For someone who doesn’t understand the constraints of developing Web applications this is going to sound really lame, but we now have direct printing support for image documents so we have full control of the printing, page selection etc… all within Silverlight. Previously we had to deploy a ‘click once’ application which was not only a little clunky it also excluded us from non Microsoft platforms like the Apple Mac. Another nice feature is we can now drag and drop files from the Windows desktop straight into Document Manager, something which everyone takes for granted in desktop applications, but so nice to have on the Web. And lastly we finally get support for the right-click pop-up context menus.  I actually remember when we wrote version 1 of the product in 1999 and had trouble explaining to users they needed to right click to get a context menu. Now everyone just expects it, so I was dreading launching a product without it.   

See, I said it would sound lame, because these are things a normal end user would just expect to be there, but it’s a big step in terms of giving users the desktop feel to a web based application.

Tim

2.6 addresses a number of issues where we have been wanting in the past, like Active Directory and Windows 7. There are still a couple of restrictions regarding deployment on 64 bit servers but these will be resolved very shortly. There are some nice to demo features in there like OCR assisted indexing and a new full text search which apparently works !

Here are some of the important new features we’ve added:

•             Active Directory integration

•             Enhanced Full Text Search

•             OCR Assisted Indexing

•             Enhanced Screen Scrape Integration

•             Infonic Print Driver ( Print and Store from any application )

•             New MS.Office Addin ( Open/Save from Office Applications )

•             Infonic Filing Assistant ( Monitor folder for new files and Save )

•             Supports Windows 7

•             Email ‘Send’ adds Outlook signatures to emails

•             Speed improvements in searching / displaying result lists

Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll take you through the new features. So I’ll start at the top of the list.

Active Directory Integration.

For larger organisations with more than just a dozen or so users it can be quite an overhead to initially configure and then maintain the lists of users in Document Manager.

With 2.6 we have the ability to integrate with your Active Directory to import selected groups and their members. The group permissions must still be defined in Document Manager but this is a one-off exercise and then membership of the groups can be managed in Active Directory.

It is still possible to have non Active Directory users so you can (for example) have external users defined in Document Manager.

Active Directory also brings the option of Single Sign On making the process of logging on much easier for your users.

For existing installations there is a synchronisation process that allows Active Directory users to be ‘mapped’ to existing Document Manager users, thereby preserving the audit records and permissions and preferences etc that already exist.

 Tim