Document Management Software Blog by FileHold Systems

Prestigious Canadian Engineering Company Finds Solution to Manage Complex Drawings

2009-06-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

Sierra Wireless, a leader in the High Tech space sought out a Document Management Software solution to manage sophisticated product engineering and development processes.

The Business Problem to be Solved

As a world class engineering company Sierra has sophisticated product engineering and development processes. These processes result in engineering documents that are hundreds of pages long and evolved over many years and revisions. These documents are often developed by teams of engineers in most cases working from different business centers. These complex engineering documents need to remain secure and be carefully controlled. As the volume of these engineering documents grew Sierra Wireless needed to find a way to centralize, control and retrieve these documents.

Sierra Wireless determined that a new process and document management tool would benefit the company due to rapid growth and expansion of the company. The review and evaluation process was lead by Sue Parent, Document Control Manager at Sierra Wireless. Under her guidance, a plan was put in place to analyze the business problem in detail, evaluate solutions and locate a vendor that best matched the needs of the organization.

The Solution Process

The first step was to conduct an internal review of current document methods and processes used to manage this engineering documentation. This included an in-depth review of existing tools and methods that might be used or expanded for improved Document Management. It was determined that the existing tools in use were not true Document Management Systems and thus wouldn’t totally address the company needs.

In parallel with the review and inventorying of existing systems, a detailed requirements list for the future/desired system was compiled. There was also an investigation into what other engineering companies; both locally and in other regions, were using for this kind of technical document management.

During the evaluation phase 6 document management software products were evaluated: in depth vendor reviews/meetings and demos were conducted and from this work a short list of 3 products were selected for

further review. The “short listed” vendors were asked to present and demo their systems to Sierra Wireless management and other key stake holders.

Based on the vendors demonstrations a recommendation was made to do a pilot project with the FileHold document management software system. A small team of Sierra Wireless end users (about 20 people) received basic training from FileHold and from Sierra’s internal manager of Document Control. A small internal system was launched for the 4 month pilot program.

The pilot program was successful; Sierra Wireless purchasing the FileHold Software in Oct 2008. Since then FileHold has been widely deployed and adopted within the company. The deployment consisted of employee training (both class room and web meeting) as well as buy-in from key management team members to ensure mass adoption and integration within the company. In the second quarter of 2009 there was additional roll-out of FileHold and expansion of users within the organization.

Sue Parent, Document Control Manager at Sierra Wireless said. “The ease of use and implementation of FileHold’s Document Management Software was key to our decision to move ahead with FileHold. We needed to Pilot the application first and FileHold’s flexible licensing with Registered Users and Concurrent Sessions made the budgeting of this part of the project simple.”

Visit the FileHold.com new product Features area:

Document Management Software: FileHold Document Management Software is the fast track to the Paperless Office. FileHold software is: easy to install, easy to use, feature rich and affordable for small or large organizations. Our software can operate within the Microsoft Office or SharePoint document management environment you already have in your office. For a no obligation public demonstration REGISTER HERE to attend the next Live Demo!

Document Managment Software and MailRoom Workflow Automation

2009-05-07T11:41:00.000-07:00

Today we focus our attention on a specific use of the FileHold Document Management software in the Mailroom.

No longer is an organization’s “Mailroom” a physical place, but a workplace function, as “mail” can be:
-Faxes
-Email
-(good old fashioned) “Snail Mail”

FileHold document management software with its powerful business tools allows organizations to automate the classification, transformation (via integrated scanning and OCR tools), routing and filing (via Scripting and AutoFiling Tools) of daily incoming mail. This is a big first step in theautomation of workflow and the realization of the paperless office.

Achieve higher ROI when your flow of work is:

-Faster,
-Errors are reduced or eliminated,
-Classification of mail adheres to retention and security policies as it enters your corporate Document System.

If you have multiple Full-time Employees in your Mailroom(s) you should investigate a paperless office scanning systems to manage your incoming mail. To learn more about document scanning visit: http://www.filehold.com/product/scanning-overview.htm .

Processing and placing your incoming MAIL into document Workflow creates tracking and auditing of sensitive documents. Gone are the days of hand stamping “Received” mail, your FileHold Mailroom Manager handles all that in an automated process, along with Faxes and Email.

The Mailroom flow of work can be integrated across your enterprise so knowledge workers can be informed of new MAIL or outstanding tasks via Microsoft Office products including – Outlook. They can file their own mail via their most common workplace applications like Microsoft Word , Excel, SharePoint, and the ubiquitous Web Browser, reducing training to almost nothing!

Today’s single CENTRALIZED Mailroom can distribute all your MAIL for your entire organization regardless if your offices are across the street or across the Globe.

FileHold Product Specialists conduct Demonstrations on these and other powerful FileHold business process on a regular basis. To register for a webinar on document management software visit: http://www.filehold.com/business/sign-up.htm .
To talk with a sales consultant about your mailroom workflow contact sales@filehold.com.

Version 4.4 May 2009 Edition of Server Preparation Guide Released

2009-05-04T04:04:00.000-07:00

The FileHold technical support team has updated the FileHold server preparation guide, and has excerpted a new summary checklist page from this guide to show a simple overview of preparing a Windows 2003/R2 Server and SQL 2005 environment that will allow for an approximately 5 minute install of FileHold Server once completed. This blog post title is linked back to the new FileHold Server and End-User client technical requirements page for your convenience.

The following section is excerpted from May 2009 version 4.4 of FileHold 8.5 Server Preparation Guide.

Both a graphic screen shot of the original PDF document and an extracted simple text list from the table within the original document have been provided.

SERVER PREPARATION: Prepare a dedicated, freshly installed hardware or virtual machine system with at least 2.0 GB of Ram with 4.0 GB being recommended. Use 32 bit version of Windows 2003 / R2 with SP2 and all patches / updates (except .NET if you can avoid 2.0 and 3.0 installation) – also avoid .NET 3.5 for now
DATABASE: Install and prepare SQL 2005 Standard, Enterprise or SQL Express with SP2 or SP3.
For FileHold Enterprise you can use a 64 bit version of SQL Standard or Enterprise on a separate server or virtual machine. This can also be an existing server or server instance that runs other Enteprise databases if sufficiently powerful enough.

MANAGEMENT STUDIO Installation: Ensure SQL 2005 Management Studio is installed for SQL 2005 or SQL 2005 Express and can be launched successfully to configure FH_Service security login a few steps from now during Service Account setup.

IIS 6.0 Installation and Configuration: Install IIS 6.0 components on Windows 2003 Server

.NET 2.0 SP1: Install .NET 2.0 SP1 – optionally update to SP 2

.NET 3.0 SP1: Install .NET 3.0 SP1 – optionally update to SP 2

.NET 2.0 Web Service Extension in IIS Administrator: Ensure that .NET 2.0 Web Service Extension is configured properly and ALLOWED in IIS Administrator Web Service Extensions List

FH_Service Account Setup: SQL 2005 Login Setup: Create service account (network or local) that FileHold will install and run under. Pick a secure password that complies with domain or local IT security polices. Passwords that are in a dictionary and that do not use special characters, numbers and upper case and lower case alpha characters are not recommended.
Ensure that SQL 2005 security login membership is completed for FH_Service
IIS_WPG Membership: Adding FH_Service account to domain or local IIS_WPG Group

Security Policy change: Adding FH_Service to domain or local security policy so that it can login as a service. This will allow FileHold to run without someone being logged into log the system.

Document Repository and FullTextSearch Collection Options:
These two folder systems can be on same server as web server or other server. Consider creating a FileHoldData folder and giving FH_Service account full control of this folder and sub folders and placing both folder structures inside this to simplify data backup and recovery procedures. Use this path in the installation and place before existing path.

Example 1: the default choice of C:\ DocumentRepository would become C:\FileHoldData\DocumentRepository during the installer configuration portion.

Example 2: the default choice of C:\ FullTextSearch\DTSIndex would become C:\FileHoldData\FullTextSearch\DTSIndex during the installer configuration portion.

You may use other drives or UNC paths of course – as long as FH_Service has full control of the entire folder structure. We recommend you give this full control to FileHold data folder and child folder(s) if following this recommendation.

Microsoft ADAM Install: Install MS ADAM component using the correct procedure for Standard vs R2 Standard versions of Windows 2003

Windows 2003 Admin Tools Pack SP2 Install: Install Windows 2003 Service Pack 2 Administration Tools Pack

Check ASP Version on Default Web Site (2.0) in IIS Admin:

Ensure default web site / ASP tab is set to 2.0 instead of 1.1

Restart IIS and Server

Read Server Installation Guide (Optional Step) unless you plan to self install or simply wish to know what to expect when FileHold installs with you

Document Management Software: FileHold Document Management Software is the fast track to the Paperless Office. FileHold software is: easy to install, easy to use, feature rich and affordable for small or large organizations. Our software can also operate within the Microsoft Office or SharePoint document management environment you already have in your office.

For a no obligation public demonstration REGISTER HERE to attend the next Live Demo!

Updated FileHold System Requirements Page - Client and Server

2009-04-26T07:24:00.000-07:00

As part of FileHold's never-ending quest to improve the FileHold web site, our web team recently consolidated two individual web site pages for server and client PC requirements into one convenient and well organized page. As many customers and potential customers always ask what our requirements are I wanted to mention this page which you can visit directly by clicking hereHERE

This new page layout works very well, and helps us achieve our goal of having a very informative site. Too many sites want you to contact their sales team for even the most basic information. We believe that potential customers should be able to contact our great sales team when they are informed, or when they are ready to do know even more. This approach works very well for FileHold and we have received a lot of positive feedback on this topic over the years.

We recently implemented a new internal FileHold server system using a nice Dell 2950 server that I plan to discuss in an upcoming blog post. We used Windows 2008 Terminal Services 64 bit, 64 bit version of SQL Server, and a 32 bit Windows 2003 server running the FileHold .NET web application.

Visit FileHold.com New Features area:

Document Management Software: FileHold Document Management Software is the fast track to the Paperless Office. FileHold software is: easy to install, easy to use, feature rich and affordable for small or large organizations. Our software can operate within the Microsoft Office or SharePoint document management environment you already have in your office. For a no obligation public demonstration REGISTER HERE to attend the next Live Demo!

How Small and Medium sized Business can adapt to control Paper and information costs

2009-02-23T13:09:00.000-08:00

Today we feature a short article written by Andrew Reiman, the President of McLean, Virginia based Modern Image USA. Modern Image USA is a FileHold VAR partner.

How Small and Medium sized Business can adapt to control Paper and information costs

Today's economic tribulations have created an environment that requires small and medium business (SMB), as well as the Government, physician practices, and associations to adopt a document management system. For SMB's, gaining control of their documents and streamlining paper-based business activity equals higher efficiency and profit from every dollar earned. For the Government, the massive bailouts and stimulus package requires the transparency provided by proper record management. SMB's and the Government also desperately need a way to store documents, including email, scanned paper, files that were born electronic, and paper archives in a single, browsable and searchable system.

As part of the current US Federal government stimulus package, physician practices and hospitals will be moving more rapidly to the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). The purpose of the EMR is to give physicians and everyone involved in patient care the ability to rapidly access and assess patient records, including the current data captured electronically and the historical paper files, captured with a scanner into the same system. Associations have taken a huge hit economically, but the need to provide high levels of service to their members remains the same. This is forcing associations to take a look at their document-based processes and look for places to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

An affordable Cutting Edge Solution
Document Management Software from FileHold is the solution for the past, present, and future. Modern Image selected FileHold document and record lifecycle because the software addresses all the key business drivers for document and record management, with cutting-edge technology at and affordable price.

Each of our clients has an archive of paper-based files and records that must be safeguarded. By implementing FileHold, we provide our clients with the ability operate continuously in the event of disaster, preserve the organizational treasures, and archive vital records.

All organizations must reduce expenses and be compliant to their industry regulations today. Immediately upon implementation of FileHold, our clients will be eliminating costs associated with storing documents onsite, as well as costs associated with search and retrieval. While difficult to quantify, customer service will also be enhanced because one can respond quickly and accurately to customer needs. FileHold certainly plays a big role in required record management, EMR, SOX, and E-Discovery.

The future belongs to those who are most efficient and innovative. All knowledge of an organization will be contained within the FileHold repository, complete with automated workflow, and integration to the Microsoft suite of Office products. Since FileHold was designed to work well with other products and applications, the ability to tune the FileHold system to any organization is both easy due to the open architecture and API's. Lastly, freeing an organization from worrying about documents will free both the human and financial capital to be directed towards innovation.

Modern Image - your world without paper

Andrew Reiman
President
Modern Image USA
1913 Barbee Street
McLean, VA 22101
703.286.7735 office
www.modernimageusa.com

Kodak, Microsoft and FileHold Systems Seminar

2009-01-21T12:42:00.000-08:00

January 21st, 2009

This all day showcase event held at the MICROSOFT CANADA OFFICES at 1600 West Georgia St, Vancouver, BC will focus on the key elements necessary to convert your business to a paperless office.

We hope you will enjoy learning more about the Paperless Office...

Document Control Software

FileHold Systems Inc is the designer and developer of affordable electronic document management software for medium sized companies or departments of large organizations. FileHold electronic document management software allows companies to smoothly implement a complete document organization and file management solution.

Version Control Software
Document Scan and Management Software
Document Archives Software
Document Search
Microsoft SharePoint and Office Integration
Document Workflow
Features for Every Stage of the Document & Record Lifecycle

Kodak Document Imaging Solutions

Kodak, the industry leader and digital innovator committed to helping companies - small, medium, and large-capture, manage, archive and deliver business information will lead a discussion and demonstrate a full complement of document scanner products, software, capture-based solutions to meet the needs of customers.

Today Kodak scanners-from the smallest desktop model to the largest production
workhorse-are valued for their paper handling excellence, high image quality
and scanning speed performance.

Microsoft Technology Focus
SharePoint originated as Microsoft's portal platform to provide their customers integration with the Microsoft IT infrastructure and the information workers desktop. As portals and collaboration evolved the need to support content as part of the platform became required. In fact, SharePoint is a great access point in to the world of real Enterprise Content Management (ECM).

Learn how SharePoint is the premium solution for the following elements of your Paperless Office:

- Wikis
- Portals
- More collaboration
- InfoPath Forms capabilities
- WebDav on line editing
- Complex workflows that can kick off secondary workflows

Microsoft .NET 3.0 framework Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) model provides tremendous benefits to customers, product developers and professional services teams.
The Web services are implemented in a highly secure way and require full users authentication. Microsoft provides an ideal technology platform to implement web services and to deliver modern Service Oriented Architecture.

How do SharePoint and FileHold work together? Click here are the answers....

SharePoint Reviews Site reviews FileHold's integration with MOSS / WSS 3.0

2008-12-29T10:16:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, on December 28, 2008, FileHold was reviewed on SharePointReviews.com which published a detailed review covering how FileHold integrates with MS SharePoint 2007 / WSS 3.0

Happy New Year to all from FileHold Systems!

FileHold 8.5 Released

2008-11-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

FileHold 8.5 was released yesterday afternoon. We are getting onto the upgrades and new installations.

You can take a look at the new features here:

Features include:

MS SharePoint 2007 / WSS 3.0 Integration
An optional feature that is very cool to use is FileHold Fast Find for 3rd party application integration with various Windows Desktop applications.
Folder based "Auto Tagging"
Document Control Numbering (DCN) that ensures unique DCN's are assigned to each document
SQL 2005 Reporting Services Integration to allow customers to write their own reports against FileHold metadata, usage, and other system metrics

In addition to these new features FileHold 8.5 document management software also comes with a number of other improvements including:

Improved performance in the FileHold web client to help VPN users and other users spread across large enterprise networks with performance
Support for Microsoft Vista with full Vista installer support coming in early December 2008
Integration support for the FileHold Desktop Client with Microsoft Office 2007
Improved auto positioning by the Brava viewer to make metadata capture even easier
Enhanced search capabilities with the ability to highlight the words being searched as they are found.
New update to FileHold's integrated DTSearch full text search engine using Version 2.0
Improved System Administration License Usage Reporting in Web Client > System Administration
Improvements in the FileHold Desktop Application for Cabinet >Folder hierarchy display performance
Implement Library Level Statistics reporting: Cabinets# -> Drawer# -> Folder# -> Document counts with totals per system, for both: Active and Archive Library.
Implementation of repetitive markup burnings into CSF files.
IT department friendly (silent) FDA install / uninstall support to help IT departments deploy the desktop client using Active Directory deployment scripts or system management software like Kaseya or Microsoft System Management Server (SMS). Please note that FileHold does not test these various systems directly but has customers who are running these systems that kindly provide us with real world feedback during our quality assurance process. If you are a FileHold customer interested in helping FileHold with our next release around this area, please contact me for further information.

An Open Letter to anonymous FileHold Blog reader "Digital Racer"

2008-11-10T18:42:00.001-08:00

Blogger.com anonymous user "Digital Racer" had some feedback about this blog article - I am quoting 100% of the comment. I added the brackets to clarify the post it was referring to, and am also linking this post to the original article that prompted this feedback from Digital Racer.

Digital Racer said: "This (code snippet blog post) would be more useful if you had actual working code instead of a bunch of half a** comments"

Dear Digital Racer: Thank you for the comment! The short blog article with the code snippet was actually posted by request as it is a very popular topic with our customers. It was posted to help other FileHold customers who might have the same question when they first start using the FileHold product and has helped many developers.

It is just a code snippet, yes, that is certainly true. Code snippets are samples to get ideas flowing, but you would need to check the full API's to get the specifics and ask us questions to fill in the gaps of what you are trying to do. It would be nice to have a book about the API, but that will come too. We are a small, hardworking company that believes in honesty and enjoys helping customers solve complex document and record management problems.

I am not a developer anymore, but manage our support, engineering and implementation team(s) and when I see something useful exchanged between my engineers and our many customer's IT departments and developers then I try to post it here, although we are always so very busy helping customers around the world that I am reminded that I should post more on this blog. This is why I took your comment and made a blog post about it.

Our customers take a bit of time to look through our online documentation, the source code of our sample C# application and then asked us specific questions to get information on how to do things. This is a common process when new customers come on board. Every few days this happens.

Your comment lacks specifics about what might be "half-a**ed", and I am sorry you feel that way.

The FileHold.com web site is very large, and filled with a rich array of information about the FileHold Document Management product. Many software companies lack any specifics of any kind other than a way to contact their sales department and usually have a lot of links to various PDF articles. There are nearly 700 pages on the FileHold.com web site with our always improving online documentation. Right now we are in a big push to update the documentation for our new release, FileHold 8.5. By the end of the year we should have a lot more information on our already information rich site, as we strongly believe in being open about what FileHold can do for organizations and companies around the world.

Many customers comment on what a resource of information we provide and how easy we are to work with. Our feeling is that people should be free to learn as much as they can about the product before they contact our friendly and knowledgeable sales team for a demo, quotation or answers to implementation questions.

If you could take the time to actually say what you are trying to do with the FileHold API - I would be more than happy to post your questions and answer with specifics. That way we could help other people as well by helping you. I would truly appreciate that.

I should also mention that the FileHold API is what we use to build the FileHold document management product, it was not added to an afterthought. It comes free with every server product.

Here are some online resources to get you started:

There is the online help documentation:

A brief overview of the 5 web services that comprise the FileHold API.

An overview of the security model:

Then there is our sample C# application with source code.

An overview of FileHold auto-filing with sample code

Hopefully this will give you a bit more information and I will feedback to the team that you would like to see more details. Thanks again for taking the time to comment - it is appreciated.

Sincerely,

Cameron Siguenza
V.P Services, FileHold Systems
http://www.filehold.com

Microsoft SharePoint and Integration with ECM

2008-11-07T14:54:00.000-08:00

Advanced ECM
Until now, Enterprise Content Management products, such as FileHold, have been deployed primarily as a point solution or as a component of a line-of-business application. The trend is that many organizations are seeing their environments evolve into shared services frameworks and the
centralization of content management is one of the driving factors. It is important to point out that Microsoft typically does not develop vertical or point solutions; they develop applications, platforms and tools.

At first glance, Microsoft SharePoint appears to have functionality of an advanced ECM system. In many cases there are redundant functions with Commercial off the Shelf Electronic Document Management Software. However, extensive work is typically required to create an ECM solution from scratch on top of the SharePoint platform to obtain the functionality of an "out of the box" ECM solution.

FileHold Adds Value to a Deployment of SharePoint
FileHold's deep integration into Microsoft architecture means you already know how to use it. FileHold uses the familiar Explorer view paradigm and mimics your current office filing structure of Cabinets, Folder Groups, Folders and Documents. FileHold's "ease of use" results in a broader base of users using advanced content management functions with greater control and management of content.

FileHold "OUT OF THE BOX" provides:
Image Capture and Indexing
Library Services
Document Workflow
Security and Compliance

Things to Consider
FileHold recognizes the power of SharePoint but also realizes that more robust record management requirements are likely going to require a more mature tool for the foreseeable future. It isn't likely that Microsoft will grow SharePoint into a true enterprise content management system. ECM vendors will continue to dominate in the areas that SharePoint is not prepared to address.

Review of FileHold Document Management Software in Technolawyer

2008-08-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

Peter R. Olsen wrote a review of FileHold Document Management Software for the Technolawyer newswire a few days ago. You can find a link to the PDF article at the bottom of the FileHold web page in the below link.

Link to FileHold Document Management Software web site where the review is located:

FileHold Document Management: Server Administration Guide

2008-05-29T08:41:00.000-07:00

Today's FileHold technical support blog post provides an overview of the various components of the FileHold Document Management software from an IT administration perspective. This is an extract from a larger guide that is included with the FileHold installation materials.

The following list includes FileHold specific Windows 2003 services, FileHold's .NET Application Pool, scheduled tasks, and other configuration settings.

You can click on the screen shots to see a larger view of them - this will open a new browser window in a pop up window.

1. FileHold Related Services (found in Services (Start Menu / All Programs / Administrative Tools / Services )

1.1. FHURM (FileHold User Role Manager) – Status must be STARTED

The FileHold User Role Manager is for the web service that manages users, roles and access to the system. This integrates with MS ADAM and also with Microsoft Active Directory if the optional Active Directory module is purchased. You can learn more about Active Directory by clicking this link:

1.2. (Optional – FileHold WorkFlow Host Service)
– This must be STARTED if you are using the optional FileHold workflow module
– If you are not using the advanced workflow module, then leave it disabled.

2. Web Server Related Services

2.1. IIS Admin Service - Status Must Be Started

3. World Wide Web Publishing Service – Status Must be Started

4. MS SQL Server Related Services: SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) and SQL Server Agent (MSSSQLSERVER) must both be started (2 services)

4.1 Note: However, some FileHold customers run MS SQL Server 2000 or 2005 on a separate server so this may not be present on the web server.

IIS Administration (Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager)

5. Is the FH App Pool running?

6. Is the NET 2.0 Server Extension allowed? This should be set to Allowed.

7. FileHold Scheduled Tasks:

7.1. Are any the FileHold Scheduled Tasks Running? (Start Menu / Accessories / System Tools / Scheduled Tasks)

7.1.1. NOTE: FH Synchronization with domains should only be running if you are using the optional FileHold Active Directory Synchronization feature.
7.1.2. Please make sure these tasks are running and test this by running any of the tasks that are set to run every 1 minute under the schedule column by Right Clicking on a single task and selecting RUN.
7.1.3. If the task will not run, then the FH_Service account may not be allowed to run the task by server or domain security policy settings. This service account is responsible for system functionality for both FileHold web services and database access.

8.0 Is Default Web Site running under .NET 2.0?
- You can find out if it is by right clicking on default web site and going to ASP.NET tab

Learning More: Guest User account / security role in FileHold Document Management Software ?

2008-05-23T16:04:00.001-07:00

In FileHold Document Management's overview of system security there are all the standard users. It is also possible to use a guest user account to solve very specific types of business problems.

The functionality available to Guest users are the same as the Read-Only users but more limited. Below are the functionality which Guest users can or cannot perform:

- No ability to add a document as they are a type of read only user - they can only get copies of documents that other people add.
- Can view the Metadata & File Properties of a document in the cabinet / folder where the user has access.
- Can view a document's History of Changes (Edits to Metadata & Usage of File).
- Can perform searches but cannot create smart folders and saved searches.
- Can 'Get a Copy' but cannot check-out document(s).
- Can 'Email' FileHold documents.
- Cannot edit the Metadata of a document.
- Cannot create links between documents but can view the linked documents made by other users.
- Cannot move or copy document(s) to another library location.
- Cannot delete document(s).
- Cannot add documents to Document Tray.
- Cannot create or add Virtual folder.
- Can view the Properties of the Library objects in read-only mode.
- No access to My FileHold and its sub nodes including My Favorites, Checked Out Documents, Document Alerts, Document Reminders, Recently Accessed and Recently Added.
- No access to View Preferences including My Alert Preferences and My User Preferences.
- Cannot be a participant or an observer of a Workflow activity.
- Does not have access to Reviews & Approvals and its subnodes including My Workflow Tasks and Status Report generated by the FileHold Workflow engine.
- Can be assigned a Brava Viewer License.

Document Management API Code Snippet - Add Documents with Metadata

2008-05-11T19:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes customers will integrate the FileHold document management software system with other systems, databases and applications in their network or enterprise. While the majority of our wide ranging customer base use FileHold Document Management Software out of the box, there are customer examples who require an API for integration into other systems. For example, we have customers that have integrated with SAP, GlobalShop ERP, Java based systems via SOAP, Oracle E-Business Suite Financials, MS SharePoint, and custom intranet applications as well as various types of corporate enterprise information portals.

FileHold is a .NET 2.0 / 3.0 C# based system designed around a scalable, highly configurable web services oriented architecture.

This blog post features a useful code snippet that shows how you can add a document to the FileHold document management software system via the FileHold web services based API.

For those who do not understand what a code snippet is - this is an example of how to use code - not an entirely self contained piece of software.

============================
The Document Manager class has a method AddDocument and one of the
parameters is a array of FieldWithValues structure.

// ----------- code snippet

// get the fields definition for the schema

FieldDefinition[] fielddefinitions =
DocumentSchemaManager.GetDocumentSchemaFields( SchemaId );

//create the new schema values for the document

List fieldsWithValues = new List();

//for each schema field

foreach ( FieldDefinition field in fielddefinitions )

{

// only do for NON system fields

if ( !field.IsSystem )

{

FieldWithValue newFieldValue = = new
FieldWithValue();

//global field id

newFieldValue.FieldId = field.MetadataFieldId;

// define variable ob type object

object value = null;

// and now based on the field type assign the value

// if you want to assign default value

// value = field.InitialValue;

// if it is string

// value = "text of the metadata"

// if it is date

// DateTime dt = new DateTime( 2008, 4, 12 );

// value = dt;

// in case of dropdown menu

// get the menu items into array

// DropdownFieldChoice[] menuchoices =
DocumentSchemaManager.GetDropDownMenuItems(field.MetadataFieldId);

// // set the default null value

// value = new int[] { };

// foreach (DocumentSchemaManagerService.DropdownFieldChoice menu in
menuchoices )

// {

// if (menu.Value == YOU_MENU_FIELD_VALUE )

// {

// value = new int[] { menu.Id };

// break;

// }

// }

// set the value

newFieldValue.FieldValue = value;

// add the field value to the list

fieldsWithValues.Add( newFieldValue );

}

}

// now you can use the fieldsWithValues variable in the AddDocument method

// ----------- end of code snippet

Backing up FileHold Document Management Software

2008-04-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

It has been a very busy last few weeks here at FileHold. We keep busy helping customers configure FileHold software and get the most out of their document management systems / software. We welcome questions about document management, document imaging and scanning or other IT, security or implementation questions you might have that are related to FileHold and document management in general.

In today's post I wanted to put some focus on the FileHold backup procedures PDF document that is available to any customer and is provided with our product materials and installation applications. Today's blog post is only to highlight the scope of backing up FileHold. It is not meant to replace the document itself. As always, test your backups and simulate disaster on a regular basis. The sales team at FileHold can sell a backup/test server license of FileHold to help you with your disaster planning efforts.

Items to back up in FileHold:

1) Document Repository storage folder structure
- Daily is recommended
Example: D:\DocumentRepository

2) Full Text Search folder structure
Example: D:\FullTextSearch\DTSIndex
- Daily backup is recommended

3) Backing up ADAM Repository
- Using the NTBackup/backup tool supplied in Windows Server 2003 you will want to backup the entire Microsoft ADAM folder structure - typically at C:\Program Files\Microsoft ADAM\FHURM\data
- Daily backup is recommended
- ADAM contains the users and group objects of your system
- ADAM can also contain Active Directory information if you are using Active Directory user/group synchronization which is optional.
- Microsoft wrote an interesting case study of our implementation of MS ADAM in FileHoldThis link opens up a Word document from the Microsoft site.

4) Backing up FileHold web application folder structure:
- A periodic backup of the ...inetpub/wwwroot/FH/FileHold web folder structure
- backing this up a few times a year is suggested.

5) FileHold Databases
- Finally - we recommend nightly backups of the 5 FileHold databases that start with ch_

ch_fulltextsearch
ch_documentrepository
ch_librarymanager
ch_userrolemanager
ch_workflowpersistencestore

Summary:
- We recommend that you do these backups at the same time - usually scheduling on a Saturday night or something is the best idea.
- We recommend that you stop the FH App Pool or web server services - this can all be done with Scheduler on the server to automate this. More on this topic is covered in the FileHold backup and recovery procedures document we provide.
- Obviously, there are more advanced ways of backing up a document management system like FileHold.
- There are server imaging products like Acronis True Image.
- Many of our customers use virtualization products like VMWare Corporation's virtual server technology to run FileHold and to simplify disaster recovery.

Let us know if you have any questions by commenting on this blog post or logging into the support system if you are a FileHold customer and opening up a help ticket.

Thanks.

Cameron Siguenza
VP Services
FileHold Systems Inc.

FileHold Training Video: Scanner and Imaging Software Integration - Training

2008-03-21T15:33:00.000-07:00

With this blog posting, we conclude our three part overview of the training videos that supplement setup, configuration and administration in FileHold document management software with an overview of how FileHold integrates with EMC Captiva's QuickScan Pro scanning and imaging software. The final video also discusses in detail the integration with Kofax Corporation's Ascent Capture software.

Both QuickScan pro and Kofax Ascent Capture are capable of generating an XML export file for each batch of scanned documents. This XMl file can contain index information as well as file path information to where the scanned TIFF, JPG or PDF document is located. FileHold's import service known as the FileScan Bridge then imports this information to automate as much as possible in the process.

It is also possible to use this XML based approach in a generic fashion for integration with other systems and platforms. This approach has been used by FileHold customers and resellers to integrate with various financial, portal and ERP systems.

Finally, using FileHold's powerful .NET based API you can create auto-filing components that can intelligently file documents and even create Cabinets, Folders and other library objects in an automated fashion. FileHold's consulting team can work with you to provide this advanced functionality for high volume scanning environments or for other solutions that require increased efficiency.

3a) Scanning Integration Overview Video (10:52)

This presentation will show you how FileHold works with EMC Captiva's QuickScan Pro scanning software to provide a comprehensive solution for the scanning, classification, storage and retrieval of paper documents. This video provides background information for the remaining activities you will complete in the remainder of this video series.

3b) Scanning Concepts & Considerations - A Scanning Primer (9:31)

This presentation provides an overview of the key scanning concepts and best practices considerations when designing a scanning solution. This is a great place to start if you are new to scanning or require a refresher on some of the key scanning terms. This video will cover the following topics;

Breaking down each stage of the scanning workflow
Scanning automation and document separation
Scan Image file processing / image retouching and file format output considerations
The differences between full text and zonal Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and when each applies
Techniques for accurate and efficient document tagging

3c) Configuring QuickScan Pro (19:48)

This presentation walks users through the key settings required when configuring QuickScan Pro to work with FileScan Bridge. This video builds on the concepts learned in the Scanning Integration Overview video. This video will walk you through the following QuickScan Pro settings using the QuickScan Pro scanning software batch configuration utility;

QSP Scanning & Job Separation settings
Image Processing Filter settings
Full text OCR & Adobe PDF Output settings
Tagging settings
XML Output settings
Tips on Organizing scanner output files
Tips on how to quickly create Barcodes recognizable by QuickScan Pro

3d) Configuring FileScan Bridge (11:45)

This presentation walks users through the key settings required when configuring FileScan Bridge (a subset of features in the FileHold Desktop application) to work with QuickScan Pro, Kofax Ascent Capture or any other scanning software or third party application. This video builds on the concepts learned in the previous video. This video will walk you through the following settings using the FileScan Bridge features of the FileHold Desktop Application;

How to configure FileScan to watch for scanning output from QuickScan Pro or Kofax Ascent Capture
How to setup field mapping so that index tags captured when scanning are passed to FileHold
How to configure auto-filing for documents
Scanning workflow automation settings of FileScan Bridge

FileHold: Training Video - Library Administration for FileHold Document Management Software

2008-03-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

The previous post covered the training video resources for FileHold System Administration, where various types of user accounts, security groups memberships and access role permissions are assigned and managed.

Today's post will examine four Library Administration videos. Library Administration is where the document management library is given structure in terms of the Library file cabinet and folder hierarchy. In addition, system permissions, roles, and memberships created by the System Administrator(s) are used to safeguard security and provide access to file cabinets, folders and documents, records and files.

These videos supplement the direct training provided by the FileHold support and implementation team as they work directly with customers in the training and configuring of the FileHold document management software library. As always, our goal with each FileHold customer is to make their implementation a simple, pleasant and straightforward process.

Remember: FileHold's online help system is always available:

2) FileHold Library Administration and Configuration: 4 Videos

2a) FileHold Document Tagging Overview (5:13)

This presentation provides an overview of how to create and structure the FileHold library with metadata and index information. This video provides background information for the remaining activities you will complete in the remainder of this video series.

2b) Designing a Document Tagging Standard - A Best Practices Guide (9:31)

This video provides an excellent overview of the following topics.

1. How document tagging or indexing standards influence the Library structure
2. How to identify which Document Types and Metadata fields should be tracked
3. How to select metadata field types for fast and accurate tagging
4. Best practices when preparing to implement your tagging standards

2c) Implementing your Document Tagging Standard (12:35)

This demonstration focuses on how to quickly implement the document tagging standard you have created as a result of the exercises outlined in the “designing a tagging standard best practices video”. At the end of this exercise the FileHold library will be configured to the point where you will be able to test the addition and tagging of documents.

This video will walk you through the following tasks on a live version of FileHold server;

1. The addition and configuration of sample Metadata Fields
2. The addition and configuration of sample Document Types (schemas)
3. The Association of metadata fields with document types

2d) Testing your Document Tagging Standard (7:31)

This demonstration focuses on how to test and verify the tagging standard you have implemented as a result of the exercises outlined in the previous video in 2c) "implementing a tagging standard."

At the end of the exercises outlined in this video you will have tested the FileHold tagging standards by adding and searching for documents.

This video will walk you through the following tasks on a live version of FileHold server;

1. The addition of a test cabinet, drawer, category and folder to the Library
2. Testing the addition and tagging of documents using the tagging standard
3. Testing the searching for documents using the tagging standard

FileHold: Training Video - System Administration for FileHold Document Management Software

2008-03-19T16:39:00.001-07:00

Today's post will showcase the System Administration portion of our online video training titles that are available for FileHold document management software customers around the world. These videos supplement the human touch provided by the FileHold support and implementation team when they work directly with customers in the training and configuring of the FileHold document management library. Our goal with each customer is to make document management implementation a simple and straightforward process.

Remember: FileHold's online help system is always available:

1) System Administration Series: 3 Videos
1a)FileHold User & Document Security Overview (15:06)

This tutorial video series is designed to help you to understand FileHold security and setup of the System Administration area of FileHold.

This presentation provides an overview of FileHold’s user and content security model and provides best practices guidance when planning your FileHold implementation.

This video covers the following topics;

1. FileHold Groups & roles bases security model
2. Locally Managed & Active Directory Domain managed user accounts
3. How documents are secured (content authentication)
4. Best practices when preparing to add users / documents

1b) Implementing your User & Document Security Standards (12:25)

This video provides step-by-step instruction on how to implement your user and document security standards in FileHold.Once the exercises in this video are complete you should be ready to test the security standards you have implemented prior to rolling it out to end users in the next video.

This video covers the following topics;

1. Create FileHold Groups & Assign roles to each group
2. Add users (or Import Synchronized Users from Active Directory)
3. Assign Users to FileHold Groups
4. Setup Document Type Memberships
5. Setup Cabinet memberships, drawers & sample folders

1c) Testing your User & Document Security Standards (5:06)

In this final video title of the System Administration series, this presentation focuses on how to test the security model you have implemented as a result of the exercises outlined in the implementing your security model video.

This video covers the following topics;

1. Test user / system security (authorization to File Cabinets and Folders)
2. Test document security (document permissions and authentication)
3. Test search security (Users can only search within Cabinets, Folders and File types that they are authorized to access)

FileHold Document Management Software Blog Topics

2008-03-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

We will cover a variety of blog topics:

1) Spotlight on FileHold web site and FileHold help system content
- There are hundreds of pages in the FileHold web site and help system, on a frequent basis we will look at various topics that are frequently asked about.

2) Best Practices in Document Management
- In this we will look at various FileHold customer case studies, generally with customer names removed to protect confidentiality. We will examine how the FileHold library was setup, what challenges were overcome, and showcase the results. I always enjoy reading and learning about how people do things, usually this helps me with thinking of new ways to organize and structure document library's, metadata and a variety of documents.

3) Backup and Recovery of FileHold Application Data
- Far too often we read and hear about companies and organizations around the world that do not backup their various IT systems often enough, or not at all. Losing critical business or customer data is a serious risk. We provide detailed documentation covering a variety of backup and recovery scenarios. It is also a good idea to regularly schedule the testing of these upgrades, as well as patches and updates from Microsoft on a test FileHold server. Many of our customers elect to purchase a special backup and recovery license of FileHold to perform these tasks. Some customers use virtual machine technology from VMWare and other vendors that allow them to roll back after applying a patch or update from Microsoft. We will cover a variety of topics in this area.

4) Document management related technology news
- Occasionally, we may refer to interesting articles, news items or other external web sites that relate to the fields of imaging, document and record management.

This is a work in progress. We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions.

Welcome to the FileHold Document Management Software Blog

2008-02-27T09:32:00.001-08:00

The FileHold Document Management blog is another way FileHold Systems is trying to communicate with customers and potential customers.

I am your host, Cameron Siguenza, and I manage global support and implementation here at FileHold. I am happy to work with a great team comprised of developers, engineers, quality assurance, and sales personnel. We care about quality, and about making our customer's lives easier when it comes to simplifying document scanning, imaging, document and record management implementations. Ultimately, it is my responsibility to ensure that FileHold is installed, configured, and successfully deployed by working with customer IT and business/end-user representatives. We are lucky to work with a great group of customers around the world.

You may find it useful to subscribe to this blog via XML web feed to your XML RSS or Atom based Newsreader, iGoogle home page, My Yahoo, Microsoft Live home page, or via Internet Explorer 7 or the FireFox browser's built in XML news reader systems. There are many other ways to subscribe and read blogs that make it easier to stay involved. Many of these methods are more efficient than using browser bookmarks and going through them manually.

I have an iGoogle home page with 9 tabs arranging news feeds from current events, IT news, blogs, IT security alerts, hobbies, and various friends and family blogs. It makes knowing what is new and interesting across hundreds of web sites and blogs a highly efficient 10 minute process.

You can read more the links above, or in this explanation from google about ATOM and RSS feeds if you are interested in using these handy and time saving technologies.
Google News Reader - ATOM and RSS Feeds Explanation

We have a variety of topics to cover that will range from IT to scanning to library administration and configuration to end user questions. We are open to feedback and welcome commentary and questions.