Directum Capture and Transformation Services (DCTS)

Today the most part of documents comes to the organization in paper form. Nevertheless it is practically obvious to any medium-sized and large enterprise that more conveniently, cheaper, more reliable and is more practical to work with electronic images of documents, than with their paper copies and the more so originals. Therefore, problems of reduction of "paper" in document flow of the company, fall forward of entering of information in a system and their operational processing come to the forefront.

For the solution of these problems by specialists of DIRECTUM company it was developed several products facilitating conversion and input of documents to an ECM system irrespective of a source of their emergence.

Technologies

DIRECTUM Capture and Transformation Services (DCTS) is a set of the services facilitating mass input of documents in DIRECTUM from external sources (scanners, the MFP, sender, folders of the file system, faxes, mail servers, etc.) and their further conversion to different formats.

Services of input (DIRECTUM Capture Services)

Services of input include different services for integration into the equipment and capture of images of documents and also implement preprocessing of documents (for example, separation of a flow of pages on different signs – existence and type of a barcode, the monophonic sheet, the number of pages, etc.). Here only some of services:

• Service of input from the fax. The service gets faxes on a faxmodem, receiving images of the entering multipage documents. Sends images to DIRECTUM, providing information on the number of pages, the phone number of the sender, the phone number of the receiver. The service is integrated with Microsoft Fax Service.
• Service of input from the file system. The service accepts the document from the folder of the file system and its subfolders in the set order (by date of creation, on the file name, etc.) and groups separate images of pages in documents. Sends bodies of documents to DIRECTUM, providing information on a full path to document files. The service supports not only graphic images, but also initially electronic documents and can work with network scanners (the decentralized scanning) – through folders of the file system and FTP.
• Service of input from mail servers. The service loads e-mails (the text of the letter and its investment), filters letters on a subject and the addressee. The processed letters can be deleted from a mailbox immediately or later the set period. Services of input closely interact with the DIRECTUM RapID technology allowing to mark documents a unique barcode. The barcode not only helps to find quickly the electronic document on its paper copy, but also allows to correlate an image of the incoming document to its electronic analog.

Services of conversion (DIRECTUM Transformation Services)

Services of conversion transfer documents to other formats and take from them useful information. At the moment services of conversion are presented by service of converting in PDF, the addressing which can be made as directly from the conductor of DIRECTUM, and from the user scenarios. For service it is possible to configure any number of conversions to PDF, each of which is characterized by the security settings and quality of the final document. Also treat services of conversion of documents:

• Service of extraction of a barcode. The service takes barcodes from an image of documents and returns a collection of the recognizable barcodes. Is caused from the scenario of documents acceptance. The functionality of service is used in service of input from the scanner and the file system.
• Service of consolidation of images. Groups images, returning one multipage TIFF document. The functionality of service is used in services of capture from the scanner and the file system. The service is applied, for example, to adding in the document of new pages.

Solutions

DCTS are provided by a set of services which, being integrated with different components from program OCR products to industrial stream scanners, are responsible for promotion of the paper or fax document on the predetermined or dynamically configured stages. The component structure of services of input and conversion allows to adapt easily them to needs of the customer in each specific situation.

The solutions using DCTS technologies adapt under each business process individually that provides their flexibility and maximum efficiency. Standard scenarios which are demanded by most the organizations can be separated into two big groups conditionally:

• Stream input of all incoming documents in a system. Scenarios of this group are used if the enterprise is faced by a problem of complete disposal of paper documentation outside department of office-work. In this case practically all services of capture and conversion of documents are applied. Being automated, such scenarios assume input of any logging-in documentation from scanners, faxes and other sources, postprocessing of documents using services of conversion and further promotion of electronic images of documents along the predetermined routes already in DIRECTUM.
• Automation of separate business process. These scenarios assume automation of separate business processes in the organization. It can be, for example, processing of insurance applications or collecting and the analysis of credit folders. Scenarios of this group very strongly depend on specifics of work of the specific enterprise, but all of them impose additional requirements to capture process: high speed, need of extraction of the structured information from images, accurate business process and, as a rule, the distributed input and processing. Thanks to modular architecture of DCTS there is an opportunity to select a method of entering and document storage (centralized, decentralized); in addition OCR, OMR or ICR of means can be attracted (for example, ABBYY FineReader, FlexiCapture, FormReader or Recognition Server). Thus these solutions cover the most part of the task list of mass input of documents in a system and their conversions from some formats to others.

Qualitative effect

At achievement of goals of implementation of services of capture and conversion of documents it is possible to observe pronounced qualitative effects:

• significant reduction of time of entering of documents in a system regardless of a source and, as a result, significant increase in speed of work with documents (including for * the account of disposal of paper);
• reliability augmentation at the expense of data to zero risk of incorrect entering of the document;
• increase in level of reliability and safety of access to documents due to automatic conversion of some outgoing documents to unchangeable formats.

The target audience of DCTS – the large, medium-sized and small companies which are focused on effective control automation by content or the companies in which electronic document management is already constructed – in this case the entering information as fast as possible will reach the addressee and will be competently processed. In general it should be noted that hardware and software systems of stream input of documents become more and more popular solution among the companies aiming to reduce time which they spend on processing of paper documents and their conversion. Such solutions with all their advantages should and will become more available and simpler both in use, and at implementation – including for the medium-sized companies.

In general Services of input and conversion of documents of DIRECTUM will facilitate transition to full electronic document management in the organizations of different scale, accelerating processes, increasing trust to a system at the management and clerks, reducing time spent for routine processing of the entering documentation.