Document Management Software Blog by FileHold Systems

Learn more about document management software and records management, scanning and imaging, paperless office ideas, work flow, and other related topics.


>center> Visit the FileHold Web Site

Monday, February 23, 2009

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

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

Labels: , , ,

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Kodak, Microsoft and FileHold Systems Seminar

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....

Labels: , , , ,

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Review of FileHold Document Management Software in Technolawyer

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:

Labels: ,

Thursday, May 29, 2008

FileHold Document Management: Server Administration Guide

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

Labels: ,

Friday, May 23, 2008

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

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.

Labels: , , ,

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Backing up FileHold Document Management Software

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.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Friday, March 21, 2008

FileHold Training Video: Scanner and Imaging Software Integration - Training

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;

  1. Breaking down each stage of the scanning workflow
  2. Scanning automation and document separation
  3. Scan Image file processing / image retouching and file format output considerations
  4. The differences between full text and zonal Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and when each applies
  5. 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;

  1. QSP Scanning & Job Separation settings
  2. Image Processing Filter settings
  3. Full text OCR & Adobe PDF Output settings
  4. Tagging settings
  5. XML Output settings
  6. Tips on Organizing scanner output files
  7. 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;

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






Labels: , , , , , , ,

Thursday, March 20, 2008

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

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

Labels: , , , , , ,