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HomeMy WebLinkAboutGetting Started With Standard Scanning - White PaperGetting Started With Standard Scanning in Laserfiche 8 White Paper February 2009 The information contained in this document represents the current view of Compulink Management Center, Inc on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Compulink must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Compulink, and Compulink cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. This chapteris for informational purposes only. COMPULINK MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT. 1 Table of Contents About Standard Scanning .........................................................................................3 Setting Up Standard Scanning ..................................................................................4 Selecting and Configuring a Scanning Source .....................................................4 Choosing a Scan Source ....................................................................................4 Scanner Options ................................................................................................5 Adding a Custom Sample Image ...........................................................................5 Configuring Default Settings .................................................................................b Configuring Document Metadata ......................................................................6 Configuring Enhancements and Processes .........................................................7 Descriptions of Enhancements and Processes ................................................8 Scanning Documents ..............................................................................................10 Scanning a New Document .................................................................................10 Scanning Into an Existing Document ..................................................................10 Double-Sided Scanning .......................................................................................10 Stopping Scanning ...............................................................................................11 Reviewing Documents .........................................................................................11 Viewing a Scanned Image ................................................................................11 Reviewing Text .................................................................................................11 Navigating and Modifying Scanned Documents ..............................................12 Splitting Documents ........................................................................................12 Combining Documents ....................................................................................13 Deleting Pages .................................................................................................13 Deleting Scanned Documents .........................................................................13 Rescanning Pages ...........................................................................................13 Scanning Additional Pages ..............................................................................13 Modifying Metadata .........................................................................................14 Modifying the Destination of Scanned Documents .........................................14 Storing Documents ..........................................................................................14 2 ■ This white paper will discuss the process of configuring Standard Scanning as well as how to scan. Standard Scanning retains your last settings, so once you have configured it, you can continue to scan with those settings or change them to suit a new purpose. Laserfiche 8 Standard Scanning helps you scan documents into Laserfiche with customizable features and flexibility. In Standard Mode, you can perform advanced image enhancements and processes, scan multiple documents, specify how and where documents are organized and stored, and configure default properties that will be applied to future documents. r~ r,~ ~:nrrm r. ~{.x:~~,~n.•,r. a..•~~fi r*.Jy y.~.~°C+;p?,:°~"L,■=~. ~~:.~5.~ ■ I'!IC ~~,.-.5 ~ ~r T ~,d]~°~C~!! ~ `~l :.W+ ~ '4 } ~ _ s 4 •r+Tlp~l~ll 4 IL r# `fr~5 ~ :~ti ~3~ r r arr~^r E ~ ~a _ ~ R,r.~l",a~~~.t GU`IAQI~#~I ~a~■i ` ~ Mill ~i'F ~ ¢■t ~ ~ 6~1 E~~r~r .d . J ~r:•:~. i~ I _ 1~i~ ~1~ t - '~,F'~I ~4lit ~L~ FIM# fl~~ ~a ~ ~ ~~~~~~~~I } G ~~t~~t L~~ ~ II ~ ~ ud ear i ~ L: ~~-i~r A, ,rvf.~.~ .F{1 _ ~i}dI ,N~Yfii~ I} 9!F41 4ti5 I .4, AYE ~ r' v J~ * ~ 7~yyl~Iy1~{urL.r ~rir■ ~~a ~7~s~ I'A'.Y'~~I,~IL7~i '.r~ ~L?Ndrflile ~fl7fl SSRIl7kI ~ C-. i! Ilryh •.y !Idl 3 ■ ■ Your Laserfiche Administrator may have configured Scanning for you. If not, or if you want to change the settings, you can do so. To launch scannin ,click the Scan button on the toolbar, or select g Scan... from the File menu. You maybe prompted to select a scanning ~ ~ = °9. mode. For standard scanning, select Standard mode. If you are not prompted to select a scan t~~~~ f~ mode and want to switch from Basic to Standard mode, in the Laserfiche Client, ~~:f~x~ go to the Tools menu, select Options, ~r-~~. click the Prom is node, and select Scan p Mode. If ou have not reviousl s ecified our ~ I e ~ Y A Yp Y settings for Laserfiche Scanning, you will be prompted to do so when you open Scanning. If you have specified settings, Laserfiche Scanning defaults to the last scanning session you used. To change the settings, follow the steps detailed in this white paper. Selecting and Configuring a Scanning Source Once you have connected a scanner and installed its drivers according to the manufacturer's instructions, you can configure scanning in Laserfiche. Choosing a Scan Source To select a type of scanning: 1. Select Choose Engine under the File . ~ a menu. L~S~ ~ s{~ ° 2. In the Choose Scan Type dialog box, a~ choose a scan engine. Only engines you ~ H ~~I have purchased and/or Installed well be available to choose from. If you are not sure which to choose, contact your Laserfiche Administrator. 3. If Show Engine Setup is checked, you will ~ ' be prompted to configure your scanner ~ setup. You can also configure it by ~s~~ ~ selecting Scanner Setup from the File ~ menu. 4 4. Select your scanner from the list, or, if you are using Universal Capture, specify the file source. For more information on configuring each scan engine, see the appropriate section of the Laserfiche Scanning help files. Scanner Options Depending on the scan type you selected, you ~ maybe able to configure additional scanner ~ settings by selecting Scanner Options from the ;r File menu. The dialog box shown will vary depending on your particular scanner. For more information, see the documentation for your scanner. . Adding a Custom Sample Image • r A custom sample image enables you to test ~ r i~.~~,~rt~ image enhancements before scanning many documents. For best results, a sample image should be representative of the pages you plan to scan. To add a sample image: 1. Select the Image Processing node in the Scanning Explorer Pane. 2. If ou want to scan a sam le ima e, re are it for ~1~~ y A g p p scanning. ~,r~ i~~~g~ 3. Select Import Sample Image or Scan Sample Image at the bottom of the Document Properties Pane. 4. If you selected Import Sample Image, browse to and select the image you want to use. If you selected Scan Sample Image, scan a document to serve as the sample image. 5 Configuring Default Settings You can configure default document properties, OCR settings, and image enhancements. The default settings will continue to apply until you change them again. To open Laserfiche Scanning, click the Scan button on the Laserfiche Client toolbar, or select Scan... from the File menu. Configuring Document Metadata To view default document properties, select the Default Properties node in the Scanning Explorer Pane. In the Document Properties Pane, you can set or modify the default document name, template, field values, tags, and volume that will be applied to documents scanned with Laserfiche Scanning. Unless you reset them in Scanning, the document name, template, and volume values are automatically inherited from the New Documents settings in the Laserfiche Client. In the Client, select the Tools menu, Options, and the New Documents node to modify these settings. Name Configure the default name in Laserfiche Scanning under Default Document Name. Using the token button ~L~ you can dynamically generate a name based on a value such as the date or a field value. A token is a placeholder value that is automatically replaced with actual values when a document is scanned or stored in a Laserfiche repository. For more on tokens, see the Laserfiche help files. F~ki~ T~:,°~ ~:La~: Fields In the Fields tab, you can assign a template to the document and populate the fields associated with that template. Use tokens to dynamically generate field values. To clear the data, select Clear Fields from the Edit menu. Ia Tags In the Tags tab, you can apply tags to the document, ~~T as well as comments on the tags. You will only be able to apply security tags that have been assigned to ~l you. E}k~~~~.~~ 6 Settings In the Settings tab, you can define the number of pages per document and select which volume in our Laserfiche ~ f y repository you want to scan into. Lm~ ~ ~ Under Document length, you can specify whether pages ~ ~ ~~f~ should be grouped into several documents, and how many ! pages a document can contain. For example, if you limit a es er document to three and scan twelve a es, the A g p A g ~ result will be four separate documents with three pages ~'L~IU'r~~• each. F~IJ~L Configuring Enhancements and Processes Standard Scanning offers many options for enhancements and processes that can be applied to documents upon scanning. Image enhancements can be used to improve the appearance of images, reduce their file sizes, and prepare them for more accurate results from the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process. U1~hich enhancements to use and how to configure them depend on the image and which modifications it needs. Enhancements and/or processes are performed in the ~ :~~i.u~~~~ vertical order in which they appear in the Scanning { ~c5~~a, Explorer Pane. To rearrange the order of enhancements and processes, click and drag them within the Scanning Explorer Pane. The order in which processes and enhancements are performed greatly affects their results. In almost all cases, OCR should be performed a f ter image enhancements. For more information on the suggested order for enhancements and processes, see the Best Practices for Scanning in Laserfiche 8 white paper. To configure enhancements or processes: 1. Select the Image Processing node in the Scanning Explorer Pane. 2. Select one or more enhancements and/or processes in the Document Properties Pane. 3. Proceed through the associated wizard or select Skip V1~izard to see all the options at once without explanatory text. 4. Vllhen you have finished configuring the enhancement or process, select Finish. 5. Select Test process to see the process applied to a sample image. To test enhancements or processes, you will need to have a sample image 7 configured. when you test a process, all the processes listed before it will also be applied to the sample image. 6. Adjust the process order and properties until you achieve the desired results. Descriptions of Enhancementsand Processes Following are brief descriptions of each image enhancement and process available in Laserfiche Standard Scanning. For more detailed information on each process or enhancement and its uses, see the Laserfiche Scanning Help files. Border Padding: Adds a white border around an image. An example use is to create a wider border so you can place stamps on the image later without covering the text. Border Removal: Removes one or more borders from an image. An example use is to remove dark edges introduced to an image through copying or scanning. Color Smoothing: Averages out the background color of an image, which reduces the overall file size and optimizes the image for Dynamic Thresholding. Crop: Removes a portion from one or more sides of an image. Note that crop is performed regardless of the contents of an image, so it can potentially remove important data. Configure it with care. Deskew: Straightens images that are slightly askew (for instance, pages that were not placed in the scanner exactly straight). Despeckle: Removes small spots and "noise" from the image that might cause poor OCR results. Dynamic Thresholding: Converts color or grayscale images to black and white, which reduces the image's file size and can improve the results of OCR. Invert: Reverses the colors present on an image. If your image contains light text on a dark background, inverting the colors will improve OCR accuracy. Line Removal: Removes horizontal or vertical lines from scanned images, which improves OCR accuracy. Resize: Scales an image to be smaller or larger than its original size. Rotate: Rotates the image, either by a set amount or automatically. Smooth: Adds or removes pixels to even out characters, which can improve legibility. Blank Page Removal: Deletes a page from a document based on the image's size (in bytes). 8 OCR (Optical Character Recognition): OCR is the process of generating text from the characters on an image of a document. The extracted text can be configured to be editable and searchable in Laserfiche. Most of the image enhancements available in Laserfiche Scanning are designed to help improve the results of OCR. 9 ■ Once your Laserfiche Scanning settings are configured, you are ready to scan documents. A scanned document saved in your Laserfiche repository will contain images of the scanned pages and any text that has been generated from those pages. Scanning a New Document 1. Click the Scan button on the toolbar, or select Scan.., from the File menu. 2. Laserfiche Scanning will open. 3. Click the Scan button in the Laserfiche Scanning window. 4. In the event of a paper jam, resolve the jam and select the Resume button to continue scanning from the last page scanned. Scanning Into an Existing Document Instead of using scanned images to create a new document, you may want to scan images into an existing Laserfiche document. 1. In the Laserfiche Client, open the document you want to scan into. 2. Select Scan... from the File menu. 3. In the Insert New Pages dialog Ir~~~rk box, select where the new pages s:r~~~~ should be inserted. If this dialog :Nr`~k~ box does not a ear, from the ~`~~k~ ~ " pA Tools menu, select Options, select Prompts, and click Reset. $I~'' 4. You maybe prompted to select a scanning mode. Select Standard mode. 5. Proceed as described above. Double-Sided Scanning The double-sided scanning feature allows you to scan both sides of a page using anon-duplex scanner. It is designed for multi-page documents and scanners with document feeders. It is not available for the Universal Capture engine. UUhen configuring double-sided scanning, ensure that your scanning session's Document Length setting is equal to or greater than the document's total page count, including front and back pages. 10 To perform double-sided scanning: 1. From the TWAIN/ScanConnect/Kofax Toolbar, select Double Sided from the Paper Source drop down menu. 2. Load the document into the scanner face up. 3. Select the Start Scanning button from the Standard Toolbar. Stopping Scanning To halt the scanning process, click the Stop Scanning button. Reviewing Documents After scanning, you can review images for quality assurance and make some minor modifications or t5 rescan if necessary. - -~ti To review a scanned document, select it from the 1 Revision Tree of the Scannin Ex lorer Pane. ~ g p Viewing a Scanned Image ~ ~ ~ Usethe Image Toolbar at the top of the Display Pane to change your view of an image by zooming, panning, or rotating. n~N ~ Panning Click the Pan button to change the cursor to the Pan tool. Click the document and drag in the direction you want to view. b' Zooming Use the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons to increase or decrease 0 0 the magnification of the image. You can also use the drop-down menu to select a present zoom setting. Select Fit to match the current size of the Laserfiche 1~rf Scanning window. Rotating Pages To rotate a page, use the Rotate Right and Rotate Left buttons or select Rotate Image from the Edit menu. ~krl+t Revi ewi n g Text ~ t~x~ ~r You can review the OCRed text at the same time ~ a [rte ~ft~ ~~trl+t+T you review the images. To open, close, or rearrange a k~Yk ~kr~+~ ~ the text viewer, click the Display Mode button on ~+r the Navigation Toolbar. 11 Navigating and Modifying Scanned Documents Use the Navigation Toolbar at the bottom of the Display Pane to browse through and modify the documents. ~ ~ F v You can navigate using the Previous Page or Next Page buttons, or enter the number of the desired page. ` y Use the Previous Document and Next Document buttons to navigate among the documents in the tree. m Use the Previous Document with Error and Next Document with Error buttons to view and correct errors. Splitting Documents TlVhile reviewing scanned documents, you can split amulti-page document into separate documents by pulling out a single page or a page and all that follow it. Create Document 0 The Create Document feature removes the page you are viewing and moves it to a new, separate document. To use Create Document: 1. Select a document in the Scanning Explorer Pane. 2. Navigate to a page. 3. Click the Create Document button. The new document will appear in the Scanning Explorer Pane. Note: You can also create a document from a page by selecting the page in the Thumbnails Pane, right-clicking, and selecting Create Document. Split Document The Split Document feature removes the page you are viewing and all the pages that follow it and moves them to a new, separate document. Q To use Split Document: 1. Select a document in the Scanning Explorer Pane. 2. Navigate to a page. 3. Click the Split Document button. The new document will appear in the Scanning Explorer Pane. Note: You can also split a document by selecting the first page of the new document in the Thumbnails Pane, right-clicking, and selecting Split Document. 12 Combining Documents To combine documents, drag one on top of the other in the Scanning Explorer Pane. Deleting Pages Pages deleted in Scanning cannot be restored. Consider rescanning pages rather than deleting them. Q To delete a page: 1. Select a document in the Scanning Explorer Pane. 2. Navigate to a page. 3. Click the Delete button. Note: You can also delete a page by selecting it in the Thumbnails Pane, right- clicking, and selecting Delete Page. Deleting Scanned Documents Documents deleted in Scanning cannot be restored. To delete a document: 1. Right-click a document in the Scanning Explorer Pane. 2. Select Delete. Rescanning Pages You can rescan a single page within a document. For example, if one page was fed into the scanner incorrectly, you can rescan just that page rather than scan the entire document again. Rescanning also allows you to customize the scanning for that page. For example, you might want to change the image enhancement settings and rescan just one page using those settings. To rescan a particular page: 1. Navigate to the image of that page, 2. Place the page in the scanner again. 3. Click the Rescan button. Scanning Additional Pages UVhile reviewing scanned documents, you can scan additional pages before storing documents in a Laserfiche repository. T n iinl nw mn 1 h n o sca add t o a pages as a e docu e t, se ect t o Sca button. 13 To scan and append pages to the last document scanned, select the _ Resume Scanning button. aka Modifying Metadata In the Document Properties Pane, make any changes to the default metadata. Specify the name, template, field values, tags, and volume to be associated with the document. Modifying the Destination of Scanned Documents UUhile reviewing scanned documents, you can modify where they will be stored in the Laserfiche repository. Moving a Document to a New Folder The Move to New Folder feature changes a single, currently selected document's destination to a new folder that will be created in the Laserfiche repository when the documents in the scanning session are stored. By default, the new folder will be named New Folder. If a folder by this name already exists, it will be appended with (number); for example, New Folder (2). Once the folder has been created and the document moved, you can modify the folder's destination and rename the document. To use Move to New Folder: 1. Select a document in the Scanning Explorer Pane. 2. Select Move to New Folder. A new folder and document will appear in the Scanning Explorer Pane. Modifying a Folder's Destination ~ ,o. i. To modify the destination of one or more scanned documents modif the ath of the folder containin ~ ~ Y A g them. . ~Ri Select a folder in the Scanning Explorer Pane and modify its path in the Folder Properties Pane. All , ; ..r~,~ ti.~,~h:h documents listed under the folder will be assigned to the destination specified by the folder path. Moving a Document from One Folder to Another To move a document from one folder another, drag it out of its folder in the Scanning Explorer Pane and drop it on top of a different folder. The document's destination will correspond to the settings for the folder it is in. Storing Documents Scanned documents will be stored in a Laserfiche folder determined by the folder properties of their folder in Laserfiche Scanning. 14 You can store documents one at a time, store all documents associated with a particular destination, or store all the documents at once. Storing All Documents in the Laserfiche Scanning Window To store all the documents showing in the scanning window, click • the Store All button in the toolbar. Storing All Documents Associated With a Single Destination To store all the documents in a folder, right-click the folder in the Scanning Explorer Pane and select Store. Storing a Single Document To store a single document, right-click it in the Scanning Explorer Pane and select Store. Storage Errors ~d Errors that occur during storage will be recorded in L ~ the Output Pane. mayy,~ ~ 1 Store Immediately ~ ~ • ~ ! `,w ~ Vljhen enabled, the Store Immediately feature sends scanned images to a Laserfiche repository directly after they are scanned. It is designed for users who do not want to review scanned images before storing them in Laserfiche. To enable or disable Store Immediately: From the Action menu, select or clear Store Immediately. 15 0 • • Getting Started With Basic Scanning in Laserfiche 8 February 2009 Author: Snow Tempest Technical Editor: Miruna Babatie Compulink Management Center, Inc. Global Headquarters 3545 Long Beach Blvd. Long Beach, CA 90807 U.S.A Phone: +1.562.988.1688 www.laserfiche.com Laserfiche is a trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc. Various product and service names references herein may be trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc. All other products and service names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright ©2009 Compulink Management Center, Inc. All rights reserved 16