CVISION Technologies

Question: Can I use my company MFP (multi-functional printer) device to scan files and for document faxing?

Answer: Yes, you certainly can use your corporate MFP device in this way. Until a few years ago, copiers in the office were analog and scanning was done with dedicated scanners, and that was that. Of course, in the last 2-3 years all this has changed.

Your office copier is almost definitely digital these days and, most likely, supports copying digitally (i.e., scanning) to a directory. The location of each person’s scan directory can be set per copier or MFP. This means that instead of sending back a faxed document, e.g., signed contract, one can copy (i.e., scan) to a local directory and then attach the scanned document to an outgoing email. It is cleaner, you know the document is received by the other party (unlike a fax), and they in turn can forward to other people.

The typical MFP or digital copier device interacts with the network it’s connected to in at least two ways: i. type in client code and scan to email address, ii. type in client code and scan to client network directory. This MFP interaction is tricky to catch on the email level but quite easy for an IT Administrator to catch on a directory level. Each client user can have a hidden watched folder where the MFP actually sends the file to and then an output watched folder which is actually visible to the client. In this way, the MFP device can be used effectively to deliver, for example, searchable, web-optimized compressed PDF documents instead of TIFF files. There is a one-time configuration time sync on the part of the IT Administrator, but the result is a much more functional company MFP device.

Question: Can I use document scanning via my MFP (multi-functional printing) device and OCR download software to completely eliminate the paper documents that are cluttering up our office ?

Answer: Yes, with a few caveats. Every office would like to go paperless, i.e. “the paperless office”, but there are many reasons why this is non-trivial. For one, scanning documents, particularly legacy data, is labor intensive and many firms are not geared up for it. Often this legacy scanning is best outsourced to a company that specializes in document scanning. It is generally easier to come up with a workflow solution that includes in-house day forward scanning of new documents into the system.

Scanning is usually done in addition to document retention, but does not necessarily replace the need in many applications for retention of original documents.Once scanned, original documents can be stored offsite, while the scanned versions are loaded into the corporate database. These electronic files essentially replace the original paper and are used internally and to present to clients on demand. It is only under unusual circumstances, e.g., litigation with a client, that the original paper files might need to be retrieved.

Under Check 21 rules, and in various other applications, the scanned electronic image of the original file can be used to completely replace the original paper document. In mortgage applications, the original paper document is retained and stored (usually offsite) while the electronic scanned version is kept in the company database.

So effective document scanning can reduce a lot of the office clutter caused by paper document retention.

The typical company office has an MFP device, though maybe not a dedicated scanning device. Nevertheless, scanning paper documents into your company database as electronic files is fairly easy. A standard MFP supports network-based scan to email and scan to folder. The client at a firm typically types in a code and then decides whether to scan to email or to a folder. In the event that clients at a firm all scan to folder for later use, such as email attachments, then it is easy for a program to intercept the scanned electronic file. In particular, for each client there can be a hidden watched folder and an exposed client folder, which is actually the watched outfolder. When a new document is scanned in by the client, the hidden watched folder picks it up and processes it. OCR and converson to PDF would be a typical set of hidden processes off the MFP. When the user returns to his/her computer, the electronic scanned file waiting in their directory is a searchable, web-optimized PDF file.

For this to all work seamlessly, the OCR download program must accomodate watched folder. Conversion to PDF is also desirable in the OCR program. Preferrably, this OCR download also supports compression and web-optimization (see http://www.cvisiontech.com/pdf_compressor_31.html) making it very well-suited for generating text-searchable PDFs that are ideal for web-based applications and sending as email attachments.

Question: Every office these days has an MFP (Multi Function Printer) device, or two. Maybe more. The relevant IT question is : How can the office get the most use from this MFP device? Once converting office paper into electronic documents, text searchability seems like an important function. The problem is twofold: i. Many office MFP devices offer no, or very limited, OCR (optical character recognition) capability, and ii. running OCR directly from the MFP device, even if possible, will slow down the machine processing rate tremendously. Of course, slowing down the MFP increases the waiting time for anyone using the device. How then do you OCR from an MFP device without slowing down machine throughput?

Answer: The best solution to this problem is based on a separation of processes. Do not run the OCR directly from the MFP device, even if it has OCR support. The performance of an OCR system embedded on a typical MFP devices tends to be mediocre, at best. In addition, trying to run the OCR process in real-time, in sync with your MFP, will take up much of your MFP resources and hurt your processing speed.

Any heavy-duty CPU process, such as OCR, should be taken off the MFP device and performed elsewhere. A perfect OCR solution for MFPs consists of assigning to each user (that needs OCR) a passcode that, when in “scan to folder” mode, actually scans to a watched folder. That is, the MFP scans the file and drops it in a watched folder and proceeds to the next document. Meanwhile, the watched folder for this user is being “watched” by another process on a separate machine.

This other process, such as our PdfCompressor, can perform all post-scan processes to this document such as OCR, web-optimization, compression, security, and meta-data, and then deposit the document in the user’s actual ouput scanning folder. This solution keeps the MFP available and running at full capacity, while providing extremely functional PDF documents to the end-user.