SimpleIndex Walkthrough

What Is SimpleIndex?

SimpleIndex is a tool to organize your documents automatically, whether they are scanned or digital.

It provides the advanced OCR automation features of enterprise-class software, with an interface and workflow that is optimized for the desktop user.

It can work as a standalone document manager, or a capture front-end to any app, database or cloud storage solution.

What Makes SimpleIndex Different?

Document capture applications fall into 3 main categories — Desktop, Enterprise and SDKs. SimpleIndex is a hybrid of all three.

Desktop scanning and OCR software require you to manually organize your files, which adds many hours of extra work over time, even if you only scan a few documents a week.

Enterprise solutions are designed to distribute documents to multiple servers and operators and keep hundreds of working batches in a queue, with all the extra setup time and license costs associated with them. (If they’ll even sell you a permanent license!)

APIs and SDKs make you re-invent the wheel. While you have direct integration with your app, any capabilities and UIs you want to have need to be coded. 

SimpleIndex puts powerful Enterprise automation and integration features into app that is designed and priced for desktop users.

The SimpleIndex command line interface lets IT and information workers who aren’t programmers integrate scanning, OCR and data capture into third party apps and RPA Bots.

How Does SimpleIndex Work

SimpleIndex is designed around a single batch processing model, performing all the stages of the document capture workflow in one sequence of steps.

These steps are:

• Import (scan or read existing files)
• Process (cleanup, OCR, barcode recognition)
• Index (QC review images and OCR, assign index field values)
• Export (save documents and index data to files and/or database)

SimpleIndex is designed to quickly scan and index a single batch by performing each stage automatically in sequence, without the operator having to click extra buttons or launch a different application. This design makes SimpleIndex much faster and easier to use, while lowering setup complexity and cost.

SimpleIndex replaces the series of individual commands required by some applications with a single “Run Job” button. This one click executes all the user-configured settings and batch steps.

SimpleIndex Jobs

Each type of document has different parameters for each processing stage that are used to capture and file the images. In SimpleIndex, a particular set of these parameters is called a Job. 

When configuring a job, you must specify how you want SimpleIndex to perform each of the processing stages from Import to Export. When a job is executed, SimpleIndex automatically launches all the processing stages in sequence according to the settings you specify.

The settings for a job are saved to a SimpleIndex Configuration File (*.sic). Any configuration file can be launched from Windows Explorer by double-clicking its icon just like any saved document. Doing this will start SimpleIndex and execute the job automatically.

Jobs can even be configured to perform all indexing automatically and hide the SimpleIndex user interface altogether. You can run them interactively while you work in other applications, or run them unattended on a server.

Processing the Sample Jobs

• Sample Job Videos – demonstrations and presentations
• Simple Software University – how to configure jobs
• Get an Online Demo – let us show you in a Zoom!

RTFM (Read The Fantastic Manual)

The Simple Software Wiki has extensive documentation and how-to guides for all of the features and usage scenarios, all in a Wiki format that lets you get additional information and context for any topic when you need to know more.

Core concepts and features have their own pages, with links to all of the settings and user interface options that relate to each one. Related training videos are embedded as well.