SimpleIndex gives you an affordable, automated way to populate custom metadata tags when migrating documents to SharePoint. SimpleIndex uses a variety of methods to extract data, including zone OCR, barcode recognition, mark recognition (OMR) and text pattern matching. The data is assigned to index fields that correspond to the custom columns in your SharePoint document library. The extracted values can be reviewed and corrected if necessary before uploading.
Uploading individual documents to SharePoint is easy. The hard part is migrating thousands of files and tagging them with custom metadata that can be used for fast, precise searching and sorting.
Without metadata, only the filename is used for searching scanned documents. OCR can be used to enable text searching of images, but there are several limitations to text searches:
- OCR cannot recognize any handwritten data
- Low quality scans or documents with complex layouts often OCR poorly
- OCR errors mean that you won’t always find all the files you are searching for
- Cannot perform date range or number range searches
- Cannot sort results by anything other than title and create/modified date
Advantages of the SimpleIndex SharePoint migration solution include:
- Complete document imaging solution as well as electronic document migration
- Advanced text pattern matching finds precise data in unstructured text
- Parse folder and file paths to find metadata values
- Unattended server processing mode available
- Easy yet powerful alternative to managed metadata services
- Far more features for the price than other SharePoint migration tools
SimpleIndex SharePoint Migration tool automatically identifies relevant metadata from document text and uploads processed documents to SharePoint with all custom field and column values populated. Works with all file types and SharePoint document libraries.
Troubleshooting SharePoint Permissions Issues
The problem was being caused by the fact that the root site on the server did not grant the users read access.
For example, imagine they are trying to upload to:
” http://server/sites/mysite/test.pdf ”
The user has full permissions on mysite, but if they try to access http://server/ they get permission denied. Even though the user can upload to mysite, they cannot upload with SimpleIndex because the client objects require permission on the root site.
Granting the users at least read access to the root site at http://server/ resolves the issue.
SharePoint Managed Metadata
If a SharePoint user has a Managed Metadata column that they need to set the value for in SimpleIndex, the value they must use is the unique ID for that metadata value, not the value itself.
SharePoint 2010
To find the unique ID, go to a document library that uses the managed metadata column and view the documents in Datasheet view. The unique ID is the part before the semicolon in that column. In the example below, the ERM Classification of “Electric Deal Tickets” has an actual value of “1”.
You will need to have a document with each possible value in order to get all the values this way. If there are a great number of possible values, it is possible to use a script to download them or to pull them directly from the SharePoint database.
SharePoint 2013 & Office365
For SharePoint 2013 and Office365 you need to use the GUID identifier for the taxonomy term.To get the actual value for a managed metadata term, you can use the Unique Identifier that is displayed when you edit the terms in Term Store Management.
In order to get the full list of unique ID values, follow the steps on this here. Use this list to create an autofill table that will replace the text value with the unique ID and map that field to your column in the database.
Users may have access to other tables and views that aren’t in their schema. When connecting to the database these tables will show up in the list, but when you try to get the list of fields you get an “Invalid object reference” error.
To reference these tables, use [Schema].[Table] for the table name to explicitly reference the table.
You can also change the user’s default schema on the server to the one matching the table.
A third option is to create a view under the user’s default schema that selects the necessary records.
At the present time you cannot enter [Schema].[Table] in the wizard, so if you need to use this workaround configure the job in the wizard and modify the table name in the old job options screen.
Can SimpleIndex integrate with Microsoft SharePoint?
Any document processed with SimpleIndex can be uploaded directly to your SharePoint document library, and any custom columns or metadata tags can be set automatically using the SimpleIndex index field values.
Find out more at our SharePoint Document Scanning page.
Integrated custom metadata is only supported in SharePoint 2010 and above, including SharePoint Online / Office 365. Microsoft .NET 3.5 and the SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model are required and must be installed separately in version 7. Version 8 includes a download option in the Global Settings Wizard. Version 8.4 and above include them automatically. Version 7 users can Download the SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model here.
To configure SharePoint export, go to the Advanced Options screen in your Job Options and enter the URL of your document library in the SharePoint Document Library URL setting.
The easiest way to integrate with SimpleIndex is to simply map a network drive to the SharePoint document library and set your Output folder to use this drive. SimpleIndex will create folders and name files automatically using your job settings.
In this configuration, only the Title tag is set. You can also use SimpleIndex‘s file property feature to set EXIF tags (images) or PDF file properties for the Title, Subject, Author and Keywords tags.
One thing to remember when configuring SimpleIndex jobs for SharePoint is the extra restrictions on filenames in SharePoint. For a detailed list please visit SharePoint File Name Restrictions. When using the integrated SharePoint feature with SharePoint 2010 these invalid characters are automatically replaced when exporting.
There are also several inexpensive or free applications that allow you to upload documents processed with SimpleIndex to SharePoint. These can be useful when you have a slow connection and need the files to upload in the background without slowing down production. Here are two of them:
SharePoint 2010 Bulk Document Importer
If your SharePoint integration has requirements not met by these solutions, our Professional Services department will be able to design a SharePoint interface to meet your specifications.
- Published in SharePoint Integration
SharePoint Document Scanning
SimpleIndex gives you an affordable, automated way to populate custom metadata tags when migrating documents to SharePoint. SimpleIndex uses a variety of methods to extract data, including zone OCR, barcode recognition, mark recognition (OMR) and text pattern matching. The data is assigned to index fields that correspond to the custom columns in your SharePoint document library. The extracted values can be reviewed and corrected if necessary before uploading.
Uploading individual documents to SharePoint is easy. The hard part is migrating thousands of files and tagging them with custom metadata that can be used for fast, precise searching and sorting.
Without metadata, only the filename is used for searching scanned documents. OCR can be used to enable text searching of images, but there are several limitations to text searches:
- OCR cannot recognize any handwritten data
- Low quality scans or documents with complex layouts often OCR poorly
- OCR errors mean that you won’t always find all the files you are searching for
- Cannot perform date range or number range searches
- Cannot sort results by anything other than title and create/modified date
Advantages of the SimpleIndex SharePoint migration solution include:
- Complete document imaging solution as well as electronic document migration
- Advanced text pattern matching finds precise data in unstructured text
- Parse folder and file paths to find metadata values
- Unattended server processing mode available
- Easy yet powerful alternative to managed metadata services
- Far more features for the price than other SharePoint migration tools
KB Articles for SharePoint Document Scanning
Features
SimpleIndex is the perfect solution for small business and departments looking to manage their files from a single interface, developers who don’t want to reinvent the wheel and large companies with many locations looking to decentralize their scanning.
SimpleIndex organizes scanned images and electronic documents into a single document management database your employees can access on their desktops.
SimpleIndex takes the labor out of document imaging by providing powerful barcode recognition and OCR search algorithms that can find index values no matter where they are on the page. By providing these essential automations for a reasonable price, we make document management affordable for anyone.
The most unique automation is our OCR template and dictionary matching search algorithms. This lets you find information like date, customer name, invoice number and other information on documents with different layouts. These can even be applied to the text in Office documents and PDF files to organize these files automatically and attach them to a database.
The SimpleCoversheet barcode printing application lets anyone in your company print bar-coded coversheets with all the information needed to identify a document. This is perfect for scanning with a centralized scanner or networked digital copier. SimpleIndex can then be configured to process these documents automatically without any user intervention whatsoever!
This level of automation is provided by SimpleIndex‘s command line interface. All the settings related to scanning or searching documents can be saved to “Job Files”, which can be saved to an icon and launched with a click of the mouse or a single line of code. These jobs can be configured to scan documents, read barcodes and OCR, generate folders and filenames and upload the index information to a database in a single step.
It is simply not possible to find an easier, faster way to process your documents!
Key Features and Recent Enhancements
- SimpleIndex Standard has Tesseract OCR and DTK Barcode engines. These provide good recognition on clean originals.
- SimpleIndex Professional adds FineReader OCR and Accusoft Barcode. These are able to recognize hard-to-read text and bar codes, and improve overall speed and accuracy.
- Process existing text in PDF files and MS Office documents in all versions.
- OCR
- Pro version includes ABBYY® FineReader Engine for faster, more accurate OCR
- Searchable PDF output
- Clipboard / Screen Shot OCR
- Point-Click OCR – Click on text to send it to an index field
- Enhanced OCR Options – match against other indexes, skip OCR on files with existing text
- Support for international character sets using Unicode
- Bar Code Recognition
- Multi-engine Barcode voting to boost accuracy (Professional version)
- Support for most 2D barcodes in all versions
- User-defined Barcode delimiter – no longer restricted to “|” for parsing multi-index barcodes
- Pro version includes Accusoft barcode engine for better barcode recognition
- Find/Replace characters in barcodes for matching or autofill
- TWAIN and ISIS Scanning
- TWAIN support in all versions. ISIS support available as an add-on or in Pro version.
- Improved real-time image processing
- Multiple scan windows when using ISIS
- Scan directly to a network folder (processing occurs during scan)
- Desktop Processing
- Selectively reprocess files
- Run multiple copies of SimpleIndex simultaneously
- Save any image region to a separate file for signature capture, etc.
- Server Processing
- Run multiple jobs on different schedules
- Run multiple copies of the same job for parallel processing and increased throughput
- Server licenses can be purchased in 1 Million Page per Year increments as an add-on to any workstation license
- Unlimited page barcode processing license available with Advanced Barcode Server
- Server processing compatible with Windows 7 or above and all Windows Server versions
- PDF Handling
- Support for reading and writing password protected PDF files
- Convert MS Office, HTML, XML and images to PDF before processing
- Searchable PDF output
- Native PDF Viewer – no dependence on 3rd party software
- PDF Auto-repair – attempts correction of bad PDF files
- Indexing
- Return MD5 hash values
- Configure default values for empty fields
- Export to XML
- Edit Fixed Fields – make changes to auto-generated indexes
- SharePoint Integration
- Compatible with all versions of SharePoint and SharePoint Online
- Append to or replace existing files in SharePoint
- Automatically match index fields to SharePoint columns to populate data
Website Resources
SimpleIndex.com is full of information and interactive content to help you learn what you need to know to implement SimpleIndex in your organization.
- Design Philosophy & Getting Started Guide
An introduction to the way SimpleIndex approaches document processing - Bringing Document Imaging to Everyone
How Simple Software solutions reduce the cost of entry into the Paperless Office - Sample Applications
Examples of different ways you can put SimpleIndex to use - Compare SimpleIndex to the Competition
Videos showing the same batch of documents being scanned and indexed with SimpleIndex as well as 4 top desktop document capture applications. - Top Features of SimpleIndex
Detailed information on the automated scanning and indexing features of SimpleIndex - Demonstration Videos
See how SimpleIndex automates indexing with OCR and barcode recognition - Simple Software University
Online training videos teaching all aspects of Simple Software configuration - Simple Software FAQ
Answers to common questions about Simple Software products - How Many Clicks does it Take to Scan My Documents?
Printable brochure in PDF format
SimpleIndex Applications in Your Industry
PDF brochures outlining some of the applications for SimpleIndex in various industries.
SimpleIndex Feature Highlights
Links to more information on the major features of SimpleIndex.
- Streamlined Document Capture
Ways that SimpleIndex helps reduce labor by streamlining the workflow and automating common indexing tasks - TWAIN and ISIS Scanner Driver Support
Use any scanner with SimpleIndex - Zone, Full Page and Dynamic OCR
Extract index data no matter where it appears on the page - Barcode Recognition
Read barcodes from scanned images to automate indexing - Optical Mark Recognition (OMR)
Read check boxes to find True/False or Yes/No values - Index Autofill
Populate multiple search fields with existing data from your database - Electronic Imprinting
Apply bates stamps and other image stamps/endorsements electronically - Database Integration
A full range of interactive database features allow for creative integration with custom database applications - Document Presence Auditing
Make sure that all required documents are present in the batch before it is released - Document Retrieval Options
How to find and view files once you have indexed them with SimpleIndex - Command Line Processing and Custom Application Integration
The SimpleIndex command-line interface makes it the easiest document capture application to integrate with your custom business software - Enable Distributed Document Capture
Companies with many remote locations can now afford to implement Distributed Capture with SimpleIndex
The Simple Software Imaging Suite
These applications enhance and expand the functionality of SimpleIndex by providing barcode printing, automatic uploading, quality control and direct integration with popular applications like QuickBooks.
Top Features
The following is a list of the Top 25 major document capture features of SimpleIndex, in no particular order.
- Indexing support for all file types
- Viewing support for any installed, OLE-enabled application
- No monthly page processing limitations
- Text processing support for OCR’d images, PDF files and MS Office documents
- Barcode Recognition
- Dynamic & Zone OCR
- Manual Zone OCR by indexing operator
- Full-Page OCR to text, MS Word or HTML
- Optical Mark Recognition (OMR)
- Unstructured data capture using Template and Dictionary Matching
- ODBC & OLEDB database connectivity
- Use any database to store index data for document management and retrieval
- Automatic population of index fields using database lookup (Autofill)
- Document Presence Auditing – ensures all required pages are present in each batch
- Clipboard / Screen Shot OCR
- Command line execution
- Input from any TWAIN or ISIS scanner or network folder
- Media Wizard to create royalty-free, searchable document CDs or DVDs
- Output images to TIFF, JPEG, PDF or PDF/A
- Page Order Validation: reads the page number from each page with OCR and compare it to the scanned page order.
- Double-Index Validation: compare the value of two fields during unattended processing and automatically route documents to exceptions when the values don’t match.
- Automatic forwarding of a copy of the first page: from each exported file a first page is forwarded to a separate folder for data processing.
- Integrated document separation: combines pages into multi-page documents without the need for a 2-step configuration.
- Output index information to database or comma-delimited text file
- Blank page detection and deletion
- SharePoint 2010 Integration
- Auto-Rotate
- Easy-to-use cropping and redaction tools to remove confidential parts of images
- Electronic imprinting and bates stamping
New versions History
Simple Software is always working on updating and upgrading. Here you can find change log for SimpleIndex.
KB Articles for OCR Features
- Language Pack for Standard/Tesseract OCR
- Languages Supported in SimpleSoftware OCR Engines
- What is Document Imaging?
- Change the Dictionary Separator Value
- Change the OCR Font or Type
- Regular Expression (RegEx) - Syntax or Type
- Autonumber Increment Value
- I'm using full page OCR. The information is all appearing in the txt file but it is losing format about half way through. Data to the right is ending up at the end of the txt doc. Can this be fixed?
- Is there a way to just use part of a bar code or OCR value? For example, extract "50" from the value "124450"
- If I have a form which is filled manually by hand, can SimpleIndex read the data from it?