Create!form Adds Scanning Capabilities to Archive Application

by Alex Woodie

Create!form International is introducing new capabilities for scanning hard-copy documents into its electronic archive. Next week the Waltham, Massachusetts, software company will begin shipping a new version of Create!archive that allows users to scan paper-based documents into the archive using high-volume Kofax scanners and low-volume Hewlett-Packard scanners, and even directly from Windows programs, in addition to capturing spool files directly as they come off the print queue.

Create!form's specialty has always been moving users away from pre-printed forms and allowing them to create PDF versions of their documents, such as invoices, purchase orders, and statements. Of course, not everybody has moved completely into the nirvana of electronic documents, where documents are automatically faxed or e-mailed to the recipient or made available over the Web (Create!archive's role). For these customers, Create!form provides the Create!print module, allowing them to print their documents and distribute them in hard-copy forms.

But when one of these hard-copy forms would come back to the company with, say, a signature approving a purchase, there was no good way to store that updated form alongside the original electronic version of the form in the archive. That's why the company developed new scanning capabilities in Create!archive that allow the user to scan the signed purchase order into the archive, while maintaining all the indexing and searching capabilities that Create!archive offers.

Create!form has provided three new ways to input documents with Create!archive 2.7. For high-volume environments, Create!archive now supports an interface to Kofax Ascent Capture, an imaging application that provides optical character recognition (OCR) and some indexing capabilities. Create!archive users who are repeatedly scanning in large numbers of documents that are based on the same template can use Ascent Capture, a popular application that is compatible with most major scanners.

For companies scanning lower volumes of documents, or documents that will vary widely in their layout from one to the next, Create!archive now supports an interface to HP's Digital Sender, a hardware device that looks like a fax machine, but is instead designed to run paper documents into e-mails. There are several models of Digital Sender in use, but the most popular is the 9100c.

Create!form is also now providing the capability to input any visual or text-based documents directly from Windows, by right-clicking the document with the mouse and choosing the "Send To: Create!archive" option. Users will be able to directly input Word, Excel, PDF, and plain-text documents, in addition to others.

Two other new features in Create!archive 2.7--document aging and duplicate management--will augment these new scanning capabilities, in addition to providing functionality in their own right. As Create!archive users increase the number of their documents available as PDFs over the Web, it can sometimes put strain on the network connection when searches return hundreds or thousands of documents. Document aging allows Create!archive administrators to create rules that will automatically move or delete documents when they reach a certain age.

Similarly, with the new duplicate management capabilities, administrators will be given new options for managing documents that share the same invoice or document number. For example, if a company has received a signed copy of a purchase order (which it can now scan into the archive with the new scanning features), the user will be given the option of moving, storing, or deleting that document, or replacing the old version of the document with the new version, according to the company's rules.

Users will also be able to create an unlimited number of archives with Create!archive 2.7, which has implications for security. "This capability allows users to configure the new archive database, to fit their own security and policy needs," says Jeff Nicholson, product marketing manager for Create!form. "The indexes are entirely separate, so they're assured that, no way, will somebody be able to access that index, even if they had security breach . . . It's a great tool for HIPAA compliance."

Create!archive 2.7 also includes new customization options for the optional Web-based Search Client (the standard Create!archive search client is a 32-bit Windows program). These new options allow users to tailor colors and layout of the Web search interface to more closely match their own Web site.

Create!form will start shipping Create!archive 2.7 on April 28. Create!archive requires a Windows-based server running SQL Server, Oracle, SpyVision, or Alchemy databases, along with Microsoft's IIS Web server. An unlimited-use bundle with Create!archive server and the Web-based Search Client costs $24,995. The Create!archive server by itself costs $14,995. For more information, go to www.createform.com.

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