Features
Web Viewer
Take hold of the power of mobility, flexibility, and security anywhere in the world. There are endless reasons and uses for accessing your information when away from the office, and by using our IMS web viewer, your office will have no limitations.
Security Manager
Security Manager allows for levels of confidentiality from a single department to corporate-wide LAN & WAN networks. The first step to preventing a user from viewing information is to disable all profiles irrelevant to the particular user’s department and/or departments’ profiles. Security Manager takes security one step further by preventing a user from actually viewing particular information within one profile. For instance, one of our clients’ HR departments maintains close to 100 types of forms and documents. About 35% of these files are accessible to management. This office previously kept two separate filing cabinets under lock and key, allowing management to only access one of the filing cabinets; the other filing cabinet included information from the management file and confidential information to only be viewed by the HR department. There would be two ways to control security in this scenario: (1) either two separate profiles can be created, one for HR and the other for both HR & management, or (2) one profile can be made accessible by both HR and management with specific files requiring password authentication.
Redaction is another method of security. Permission may be given to specific individuals to have the right to add redactions or remove them. Redaction (blocking out information in black) allows for either black or white-out over information on a document, or to completely white-out an entire page.
Audit
In organizations that require extra levels of security for confidential documents that are potentially viewable by many different users, audit allows for the who, what, when, where, and how. Audit tracks every user’s actions being performed on the documents and when these actions are being performed. Audit keeps total control and accountability within a user group and organization, and provides authentication of all information stored within IMS for internal and legal matters.
Import
Large and small amounts of digital files or images may be imported. This feature becomes most helpful when large amounts of digital files have been accumulating on the server or have become an overwhelming web of information. If the naming convention is repetitive, it is possible to have the index fields within IMS automatically populated to prevent human error and manual data input.
Another value to the import feature is that processes are automated using Zone OCR, Bar Codes, and other data extracted from data streams. Information at any time, without the need of human intervention, can be automatically imported into IMS, and the index fields can be automatically populated.
Archive
Disasters can strike at any time and damage or destroy an organization’s documents. To help recover from a disaster, it may be worth keeping secure backups of documents with the aid of a document imaging system. This feature allows for a complete database or sections to be backed up to multiple forms of media, including CD, DVD, TAPE or WORM, and hard drive.
Annotations
Highlighting, sticky notes, arrows, and redaction (blocking out information in black) all can become helpful when there is a need to apply information to a document without compromising its integrity. These annotations are simply layers of information laid onto a document, so that the document may be viewed, printed, or emailed without the annotations. Different security rights can be given to each user as to whether annotations can be applied or removed.
Zone OCR Recognition
Zone OCR Recognition works similarly to the bar code feature by allowing index fields to automatically be populated with information extracted from the document. IMS can look for up to five areas (within a document) to be OCR’ed and then extract data for populating it into the index fields automatically. These documents or forms are typically standardized, so the information being extracted is placed on the document almost in the exact location every time. If data is unrecognizable or questionable, the field(s) will be marked and will require manual attention. This feature also saves a tremendous amount of time and money, especially in a high-volume scanning operation.
Bar Code Recognition
Bar codes can be used to index documents by extracting fields from an external database, by filling in fields with pre-assigned values, or by associating certain documents with a particular index template. Automatically separating and indexing documents using bar codes can save a tremendous amount of time and money, especially in a high-volume scanning operation.
Email-Print-Fax
IMS allows for any document viewed to also be printed, faxed, or emailed. IMS is compatible with any MAPI
(Mail Application Program Interface)-compliant email system. Send information within its native format.
Batch Scanning
To productively scan large amounts of paper during a day or week, they may be scanned all together at one time. This prevents individually scanning each document during the day, while experiencing interruptions and the potential for mistakes. Once all the documents have been scanned, they may be easily grouped appropriately before assigning index fields and moving them to their appropriate profile locations. Pages can be removed or added to a document to correct any mistakes that may have occurred in the organization of a file.
Convenient Access via CD and Hard Disc
For convenient access to sections or a special query of information when away from the office/network, this information can be either burned to CD or saved to the hard disc of the computer/laptop. This may prevent the need to travel with many pages or boxes full of paper. Once information is burned to CD or saved to a hard disc on a laptop, all features for search and view function just as they do on the network, other than not being real time. If real time access to information is needed, review the IMS Web Viewer feature. Another example of backing up or duplicating data is if an office simply needs to transfer or ship information. Instead of shipping paper documents or even boxes of information, simply burn them to a CD. The courier expense is much less and allows the recipient to view information digitally with intelligent searches, without the need of paper.
When paper documents have been obtained for review, searching for specific information within thousands of documents could take hours, days, or weeks of an individual’s time by manually reading page after page. IMS allows for scanning in thousands of documents at speeds of 500 pages per minute and faster; then running a full text OCR search to detect any pages relevant to the case. This information can be sent back to the office without the need of transporting boxes of paper.
Distribution Archive
An organization may purchase IMS and have a service bureau import all scanned and indexed files directly into IMS, or they may receive their information on CD. It puts a redistributable viewer on the archive disk so the contents can be searched and viewed in IMS on a computer without IMS installed on it. Some organizations may choose to purchase IMS, but they may use a service bureau for outsourcing the scanning and index labor. Some companies upgrade to new software packages that require minimal printing needs and handle very little paper, but they still need all the previous years of documents to be scanned; they, too, may choose to use a service bureau to scan all documents instead of having to purchase scanners and IMS to save money.
See also