Capture Strategies in Laserfiche

Brett Hickinbotham, Presales Engineer at Laserfiche, walks through the various capture tools in Laserfiche along with their use cases.

Capture—the process of getting data into Laserfiche—is an integral part of many business processes. The sooner documents are stored in Laserfiche, the sooner they become auditable, available to other users and subject to record retention rules. Here are the various capture tools available in Laserfiche.

Drag and drop into Laserfiche

Dragging and dropping is the simplest form of capture. Simply select an entry and drag it into a folder in Laserfiche.

You can drag and drop any of the following:

  • Single files.
  • Whole folders.
  • Entire hard drives.

Dragging and dropping is good for:

  • One-time or irregular captures.
  • Capturing locally stored documents.

Laserfiche Snapshot

Laserfiche Snapshot allows you to print electronic documents directly into the Laserfiche repository. During this printing process, all of the files are converted to TIFF images. Laserfiche Snapshot is a great tool for:

  • Archiving documents.
  • Sharing unalterable copies and unsupported file types with others.
  • Appending pages to documents.

Use Snapshot as you would any other printer.

Microsoft Office Integration

Laserfiche’s integration with Microsoft Office, which is part of the Laserfiche Client installation, allows you to:

  • Save Microsoft Office files directly to the Laserfiche repository.
     

  • Edit document metadata from inside a Microsoft Office application.

The Laserfiche integration with Microsoft Outlook allows you to:

  • Save e-mails in Laserfiche directly from Outlook.
  • Automatically populate metadata fields.
  • Attach documents stored in the Laserfiche repository to outgoing e-mails.

It is great for quickly archiving e-mails and attachments.

 

Laserfiche Import Agent

With Laserfiche Import Agent, you can monitor certain network folders and import documents from them into the Laserfiche repository. You can schedule the utility to look for documents during a certain time frame or on a continuous basis.

 

Import Agent is useful for fax servers, multifunction printers and FTP sites—basically anywhere that users scan documents into a network folder.

Laserfiche Scanning

Laserfiche Scanning comes standard with the Laserfiche Client. You can use it to capture and process physical documents as well as image files stored locally or on a network.

Scanning is great for capturing:

  • Physical documents from various remote locations.
  • Large quantities of documents to be processed later.
  • Documents that don’t require much metadata entry.
  • Mixed batches of documents.

Access Laserfiche Scanning from a button in the Client.

You can select from two different scanning modes:

  • Basic mode, which is recommended for scanning one document at a time.
  • Standard mode, which is recommended for scanning a batch of documents.

Laserfiche Quick Fields and Quick Fields Agent

Laserfiche Quick Fields is a much more automated version of Laserfiche Scanning. With Quick Fields, you can capture and process:

  • Physical documents.
  • Digital documents stored on a network drive or in the Laserfiche repository.

You can configure Quick Fields to:

  • Automate metadata entry.
  • Look up and validate information from a database.
  • Perform a variety of image enhancements.
  • Classify different documents based on a variety of identifying factors.
  • Extract information from barcodes.

Laserfiche Quick Fields is ideal for:

  • Processing a large number of documents.
  • Automating data entry and classification.
  • Centralized processing.

Laserfiche Quick Fields Agent allows you to automate Quick Fields sessions and run them on a variety of schedules. It is ideal for making Quick Fields hands-off and works well in conjunction with Laserfiche Scanning.

Laserfiche PhotoDocs

Laserfiche PhotoDocs allows you to convert photographs into Laserfiche documents. You can:

  • Capture images from cameras and phones.
  • Reprocess documents previously stored in your repository.
  • OCR image text.
  • Perform a variety of image enhancements including:
    • Crop.
    • Straighten.
    • Rotate.
    • Convert to black and white or grayscale.
    • Adjust brightness and contrast.

It is ideal for use with:

  • Books.
  • Unusually sized documents.
  • Fragile documents.
  • Receipts and business cards.

You can create and save processing profiles for frequently used enhancements.