Document Imaging was the more commonly used term in the early days of document scanning and OCR and refers to any system used to replicate documents used in business. It evolved from the microfilm days where it was referred to as Document Image Management.

The process of digitizing paper documents using high speed scanners and OCR indexing software.

What is Document Imaging?

Document Imaging was the more commonly used term in the early days of document scanning and OCR and refers to any system used to replicate documents used in business. It evolved from the microfilm days where it was referred to as Document Image Management.

Document Imaging allows for the scanning of paper documents, as well as the processing of files saved electronically. These files are then named and saved for later searching.

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Is there a way to just use part of a bar code or OCR value? For example, extract “50” from the value “124450”

To do this example, create a barcode field (Field 1 for example) and a 2nd field with type “Fixed”. In the template for the 2nd field, enter %FIELD1[5,2]% to get “50” from “124450”.

%FIELD1% would get the entire value for Field #1, the barcode field. By adding the [5,2] you tell SimpleIndex to start at the 5th character (5) and take 2 characters from the value (50).

Find out more about barcode scanning on our Barcode Scanning Guide and read up on Optical Character Recognition on the SimpleOCR scanning solutions guide.

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Ensures All Required Documents are Scanned

Some applications have a set of standard documents that are required to be present in each batch. SimpleIndex has the ability to specify a list of required values for a field then audit each batch at the end to ensure all are present. Any missing pages may be scanned and indexed automatically from this screen as well. This feature may also be configured to allow exceptions and log a valid justification for the absent document.

This feature makes SimpleIndex the perfect front desk scanning application For example, a health care chain may have a list of documents they must collect from each patient in order to bill the insurance company With SimpleIndex they can image these documents at the front desk, and audit the batch automatically to ensure all the required pages are there.

Doing this not only eliminates the need for a dedicated, central scanning department to image these files, it also greatly decreases the error rate and improves collections turnaround for our example company.

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Reduce Click Charges for Data Capture

If you operate a high-volume scanning department or service bureau, chances are you use software like Kofax to scan and index documents for your clients. If you do then you are well aware of the high cost of click charges and the inevitable mad rushes to purchase additional clicks at the end of a peak volume month.

There are some scanning jobs that need the multi-user batching and indexing features of these systems, but many do not. SimpleIndex® can help you save big on click charges by supplementing your primary scanning infrastructure, letting you perform smaller, less complex jobs in a separate workflow.

Many data capture and forms processing applications charge for every page you process, even if all the data being read is only on the first page. Starting SimpleIndex 9, you can automatically send a copy of the first page from each exported file to a separate folder for data processing, helping you avoid unnecessary processing time and license costs.

Jobs like these can be easily processed with SimpleIndex:

  • Simple scan-to-file with no indexing
  • All indexing is done via bar codes or database lookup
  • No custom export or API integration is required

The following scenarios usually require a more robust solution:

  • Multi-user workflows
  • Complex data extraction and forms processing
  • Direct application integration with APIs

Basically, SimpleIndex is great for 1-2 user workflows where a single user performs the whole scanning and indexing process, or where one person scans and another indexes on a separate workstation. When more than 2 users are required to keep up with indexing volume then it makes more sense to use a system designed for multiple users.

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Your All-In-One Scanning & Sorting Tool

SimpleIndex® has the ability to perform a wide variety of scanning and document organization tasks quickly and automatically. This makes it a must-have tool for IT departments and consultants who often need to:

The wide variety of scanning and indexing tasks you can do with SimpleIndex make it an incredibly useful tool to have in your arsenal. Even if your company already has an enterprise document scanning system, the low cost, fast setup and automated processing features of SimpleIndex can be put to use in many places where your existing system either doesn’t work, is too complex for the task or costs too much in click charges to be feasible.

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Instant Integration With Any Application

SimpleIndex® provides a great alternative to “reinventing the wheel” using a document imaging SDK to implement scanning in your custom application. SimpleIndex uses a command line interface to enable developers to execute customized scanning workflows from another application. This lets you take advantage of SimpleIndex‘s TWAIN/ISIS scanning, zone OCR, barcode recognition and database export features without having to re-code them all yourself.

Whether you are an IT consultant creating an application for internal company use or a software developer looking to add scanning features to your application, SimpleIndex provides the easiest solution available.

To use SimpleIndex as a scanning front-end for your application, simply:

  • Create a SimpleIndex job file configured to scan, index and save files the way you want
  • (Optional) configure the database export to create/update document records in your DB
  • Use a “Shell” command to execute the job file from your program

When you execute the job file from your program, SimpleIndex will scan, read barcodes, OCR zones, etc. and organize the documents into the folders and filenames your program requires. The database export can be configured to add or update records in your database with information captured from the documents as well as the image file path or binary data. Index values can be passed from your program to SimpleIndex via the command line. The whole process can be configured to run minimized so the user never even sees the SimpleIndex screen.

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Remote Document Capture

SimpleIndex is designed around the idea that it is more efficient to have a scanner in every office, making imaging a part of the daily routine instead of a new company division.

SimpleIndex makes this possible by greatly reducing the cost and complexity of the capture interface and providing unique features that make it easy to implement throughout an organization. Distributed scanning is also made possible by the latest advances in fast, inexpensive desktop scanners.

By moving to distributed scanning, a company with many locations earn huge ROI on shipping costs alone – not to mention the many dedicated employees necessary in a centralized scanning operation. Even with all these savings, turnaround is still greatly improved.

SimpleIndex brings imaging into a whole new era by making it possible for small companies to afford just one and for large companies to afford one in every office.

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Streamlined Interface

The Fastest, Most Accurate Scanning Solution

As with any repetitive task, a few seconds saved scanning and filing a single document quickly adds up to dozens or hundreds of hours over the course of a long project or daily routine. The most import part of planning your imaging project is to find the most efficient way to capture documents and file them correctly. Creating an efficient scanning and indexing process will save you countless hours of labor over the life of your project.

SimpleIndex is faster and easier because it is designed to perform all of the steps necessary to scan, process, verify and export images in one continuous workflow rather than requiring the user to click extra buttons each time to initiate the next step. When taken to the extreme, SimpleIndex is capable of performing all of these tasks automatically just by clicking an icon on your desktop or a link in a browser.

SimpleIndex does this by saving all of the settings for a scanning workflow to a file that can be opened just like an Office document. This file is configured by the administrator so the user doesn’t have to see any of the technical details. Very rarely does the scanning operator need to be able to change, for instance, the export file format and file naming scheme. So why do some applications show you a complicated export settings screen every time you try to save a batch? It is this attention to detail that allows SimpleIndex to process the same batch 35-75% faster than its competitors.

SimpleIndex also has the ability to pre-set index values and run jobs using the Command Line Interface. More on this design feature can be found on our Getting Started page.

Index Automation Features

The two main methods for automating indexing are Barcode Recognition and Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Barcode recognition is faster and more accurate, but your documents must contain a barcode on the document or a cover page for this to work. OCR is able to read printed data directly from the page, which means most documents can be processed as-is.

If your index data already exists in another database, SimpleIndex has features that can make use of this data to automate processing. The Index Autofill feature matches data read from barcodes or OCR to data in your database, verifying the correct value is read and populating additional search fields automatically.

Using Pre-Indexed Batches

The Pre-Index Batch feature of SimpleIndex is what enables 1-click scanning and indexing, as well as command line processing. Pre-indexing lets you set fixed values for index fields and apply them to a whole batch. These can be combined with automatic values from barcode recognition, OCR and Autofill to create fully automated batch processes that can be launched from your custom application, a desktop shortcut, scheduled server task or even linked to the scan button on your scanner.

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Zone OCR and Dynamic OCR

Many document scanning solutions use Zone OCR to obtain index data from the page, while SimpleIndex improves upon this time-tested but ultimately limited model with its unique Dynamic OCR feature. Let’s look at the difference between the two methods:

Zone OCR

Zone OCR is used to read document indexes or tags from text on the page. It is a great way to automate the data entry associated with scanning documents.

However, there are several limitations to zone OCR that must be overcome:

  • Index information must be in the exact same place on every page
  • Documents shift and skew during scanning, causing the zones to not line up
  • If surrounding lines or text on the document are too close, they can encroach on the zone

Dynamic OCR

SimpleIndex overcomes these limitations by using Dynamic OCR technology to locate the desired text even when it moves around on the page. Our simplified version of Dynamic OCR works great for many types of documents at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.

  • Index information can appear anywhere on any page
  • Unwanted characters are automatically ignored
  • Find unique patterns of letters and numbers using Template Matching
    (Social Security #, Date, etc.)
  • Use Dictionary Matching to find a value from a list of possible values
    (Vendor Name, Document Type, etc.)

Download document scanning and OCR software.

Dynamic OCR Examples

In the video we see how SimpleIndex approaches a typical Zone OCR example. With SimpleIndex you can use large zones that give a wide margin for error. Template and Dictionary matching are then used to extract the 7-digit Account Number, 6-digit Order Number and Company Name. SimpleIndex discards the surrounding text and keeps the correct value.

Another common example is finding a unique identifier, for example a social security number, that could appear anywhere on the page. Simply enter the template ###-##-#### and SimpleIndex will search the full OCR text until it finds a match. Since only one social security number is likely to appear on the page, a match on this pattern is almost certainly the required value.

With dictionary matching, you can give SimpleIndex a list of possible values and it will automatically search the zone or page for each possible value until it finds a match.

Many dynamic forms processing applications can be implemented using these simple algorithms. This makes SimpleIndex far more versatile than other zone OCR solutions that require the index value to be in the exact same location on every page. Yet SimpleIndex costs only a fraction of the price!

SimpleIndex‘s dynamic forms processing can greatly speed up data entry by eliminating a good percentage of indexing work. For many this can put the labor cost of scanning within their reach.

MS Office Document OCR Text Parsing Video

Dynamic OCR can also be applied to MS Office and PDF files, creating a fully automated process for intelligently indexing and reorganizing electronic documents.

Support for Regular Expressions

Use Regular Expressions to extract index data from OCR text, PDF and Office documents.

SimpleIndex OCR has a simple built-in template format, as well as support for Regular Expressions. Regular Expressions (RegEx for short) let you define complex search patterns to extract matching values from the text.  This greatly enhances the functionality of the dynamic OCR in SimpleIndex, making it capable of finding variable-length fields with no distinct pattern.

Regular Expressions are a commonly used in text parsing applications. The Perl programming language makes extensive use of RegEx, as do UNIX utilities like “grep”. Many programmers and IT personnel are already familiar with RegEx and can create complex expressions without specific training.

Click here for a reference guide to Regular Expressions

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New OCR Features in Version 9

  • OCR language pack now includes all available Tesseract languages including Hindi, Tamil, Arabic, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Hebrew and many more.

New OCR Features in Version 8

Versions 7 and above include the industry leading ABBYY FineReader® OCR engine for dramatically improved OCR accuracy and speed. Other OCR enhancements in version 8+ include:

  • Point & Click OCR
  • Tesseract OCR Engine now included with all license versions
  • Match OCR index fields against other index fields
  • Skip OCR processing on imported files that already include text, such as PDF + Text files for faster batch times

How to Configure SimpleIndex OCR

Watch this Simple Software University training video to see how to configure and run an OCR job with SimpleIndex.

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Compare Leading Solutions

The best way to see how the SimpleIndex processing workflow compares to other leading desktop scanning solutions is to see the same process performed side-by-side in each program. Below are videos we recorded of the same batch of documents being scanned and indexed in Kofax Express™, Kodak Capture Pro™, PaperVision™ Capture Express and Office Gemini DiamondVision™. In each one we configured the software to perform the same tasks:

  • Scan a batch of 10 pages
  • Capture a 7-digit account number using Zone OCR
  • Correct any fields that fail to recognize
  • Use a database lookup to populate additional index fields
  • Export the batch to PDF files

Using our standard benchmark batch* we recorded the following processing times:

  • SimpleIndex: 0:45
  • Kodak Capture Pro: 1:50
  • Kofax Express: 2:20
  • PaperVision Capture Desktop: 3:00
  • DiamondVision: 3:20

As you will see in the videos below, SimpleIndex provides the most efficient scanning and indexing workflow of any major document capture application.

SimpleIndex™

Kodak Capture Pro™

Kofax Express™

PaperVision™ Capture Desktop

Note: This video depicts PaperVision Capture Desktop, a now discontinued software that has since been replaced by the similarly functioning updated version of PaperFlow.

Office Gemini DiamondVision™

Testing Methods

The benchmark times were recorded using all available software shortcuts, and by performing data entry and user interactions as fast as possible. The same scanner and computer hardware was used for each test. Much care was taken to ensure that each application yielded the most accurate OCR results possible given the sample documents. Unfortunately none our competitors could accurately capture the account number on all 10 pages. The extra time to correct these errors accounts for 15-30% of the difference in processing times. The difference in accuracy is due in large part to SimpleIndex‘s pattern matching OCR feature, which the other programs lack.

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Document Management

Designing Your Document Management Solution

If you have not yet decided on a plan for how to organize your scanned images for later retrieval, you should take some time to consider the possible options. There are several ways to search and view documents scanned with SimpleIndex®:

  • Use SimpleSearch to use keyword searches to find and view indexed documents
  • Use SimpleView to browse folders, search files, view, edit and annotate scanned documents without a database
  • Use a third-party document management system for integrated searching, viewing, workflow, HIPAA compliance and other document-centric functions
  • Use SharePoint to share documents online, create custom document workflows and employ records management standards
  • Use the Windows Search Bar to search the names AND contents of files stored on Windows Server 2008 or later.
  • Integrate SimpleIndex directly with your custom application using the Command Line Interface
  • Work with our professional services team or an Authorized Dealer to create a customized solution or direct integration with virtually any application
  • Use a custom database or spreadsheet such as MS Access, SQL Server or Excel to store the index data and provide links to the stored document images

 

Use SimpleSearch

SimpleSearch is included with all versions of SimpleIndex and can also be licensed by itself. SimpleSearch implements the same SimpleIndex interface in “Retrieval” mode, hiding all the menus and toolbars used for scanning. Index fields normally used to assign values are used for searching instead.

SimpleSearch can use SimpleIndex‘s built-in database to perform searches, or connect to any other database, even those for existing business applications. Users simply type index values they want to find and SimpleIndex displays the matches. Partial matching and full text searches are also supported. Displayed documents can be printed, e-mailed or opened in their associated application (Word, Adobe Reader, Excel, etc.). SimpleSearch can view several common image formats, PDF files and can preview files for any OLE-enabled application installed on your computer (MS Office, Adobe applications, AutoCad, etc.)

Using a Document Management System

There are a wide variety of small business and enterprise document management systems available on the market today. They manage stored images and index data, and provide users an interface to search for and view these images. Many perform advanced functions like workflow management, revision tracking and access auditing for HIPAA compliance. SimpleIndex has the ability to interface with these systems, making it an ideal scanning front-end for use with most document management systems on the market.

Integration with document management software is done via the Index Log Files that SimpleIndex creates. Documents are scanned and indexed with SimpleIndex, and a log file is created that lists each image scanned and the index information associated with it. Virtually all document management systems come with standard or optional components that allow you to automatically import images and index information in the format SimpleIndex provides.

Many document management systems have a scanning module that is sold separately, at significantly greater cost than SimpleIndex. With a single scanner, SimpleIndex can provide an easier and more cost-effective scanning interface than the default module. With multiple scanners, the low cost of SimpleIndex makes it possible to implement Distributed Document Capture for a fraction of what it would cost otherwise.

Use the Windows Search Bar

On Windows Server 2008 or later you can enable Windows Search Service and the indexing options that come with it to quickly find your files using the search in the top corner of your Explorer window. Once Windows Search is setup on the server, on your local PC simply pick any shared drive or folder that you would like to rapidly search and add it to a library. When you type a word or phrase in the search bar Windows will search not only all the file names but the content of the files as well. More information on setting up the search capability on Windows Server can be found here.

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