SimpleIndex Tips & Tricks – Document Separation
OMR Document Separation
Fast, accurate document separation without barcode separator sheets
A unique but lesser-known feature of SimpleIndex is the ability to separate documents with Optical Mark Recognition (OMR). Many document capture applications have OMR, but few use that capability to do document separation. It offers a huge opportunity to save on document preparation costs for any job that uses generic bar code or patch code separator sheets.
When dealing with general documents that have no regular patterns or keywords to identify them, the most common solution is to use separator sheets that have a bar code or patch code on them. These must be inserted by the person preparing the documents for scanning, adding significant paper, printing, and labor costs to the process.
With OMR document separation, the prepper simply draws a black mark in the upper-left corner of the first page for each document. This is fast and easy, and doesn’t make you add paper to a process that’s supposed to reduce it!
SimpleIndex will recognize this mark as a new document and increment an Autonumber field to start a new file. The OMR process is just as fast and accurate as barcode recognition. The only consideration is whether you can tolerate having a black mark in the corner of the first page due to recordkeeping rules.
You can also use OMR with SimpleCoversheet separator sheets to convey batch type, document type, and other multiple choice data. Add text elements that use an O with plenty of space around it to indicate where to mark. Now your generic separator sheet can easily indicate batch types with a mark, instead of having to print separate barcode sheets for each option.
OMR Separation Tips:
- Use a wide-tip felt marker to mark the corner of the page in one stroke with a mark big enough to distinguish between staple holes and other stray marks.
- Set the OMR field threshold and position the zone so that missing corners and staple holes won’t trigger the separation.
- Make sure the scanner’s background is set to white so that there is not a black border around the page and missing corners will be filled in with white.
- Have fun! You don’t have to scan documents, you get to!
Contact your SimpleIndex representative or download SimpleIndex 11.4 today to get a demo of SimpleIndex’s OMR capabilities, and see how we can improve your document capture workflow!
