Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition--Elite, Quadrant Offer New Releases of Document Management Software

New OS/400 document management software is available this month from Elite Document Solutions and Quadrant Software, two of several vendors participating in this space. The new image-acquiring capability in eliteSUITE makes it an easier matter to capture an electronic signature and load it on the proper invoice or receipt form, while Quadrant's Formtastic Fusion5 now generates PDF documents and features closer integration with third-party OS/400 imaging products.

Elite Document's eliteSUITE includes four core modules--eliteFORM, eliteFAX, eliteMAIL, and eliteCHECK--as well as a Windows-based spool file viewer and prebuilt integration with Vanguard Systems' IMS/21 OS/400-based imaging and archival suite. With the Version 5.3 release of eliteSUITE, the company has given users the capability to capture images from anywhere on the network and to combine them with any OS/400-based electronic document that users develop with the software. After developing certain conditions in eliteSUITE, the product handles all the rest and automatically finds the right images and correctly places them in the electronic document.

One of the uses for this new capability is transmitting signatures. There are several electronic tablets on the market that salesmen and route drivers can take into the field and capture their customers' signatures. Whether it's a hard-wired (or wireless) signature-grabbing device, eliteSUITE can be used to merge the signature with the right electronic invoice, delivery receipt, or other document, which can then be e-mailed to the customer or the vendor as verification of the transaction.

This release of eliteSUITE also has new complex format conditioning capabilities, allowing users to apply multiple formatting rules, such as specific printing or e-mail formatting, to a range of spool files. This release also lets users apply multiple rules to a single spool file. Another new feature added to eliteSUITE in Version 5.3 is support for automatically compressing lines that appear in a single block of fields, thus improving the look of documents. Finally, the suite's eliteMAIL module has been enhanced to support the exchange of comma- and tab-delimited files between an iSeries and a PC, for e-mail distribution.

Andrew Rackauckas, president of the Lake Forest, California, company, says Elite's customers have been asking for the capability to capture images and signatures from their network and to dynamically add them to electronic documents. "We have responded and now have the ability not only to capture images but also to add grids and borders, to dynamically fit the data, and to give the electronic document a much more custom look and feel for every page we output."

Meanwhile, Quadrant Software, based in Taunton, Massachusetts, has delivered a new release of its core OS/400 document management utility, Formtastic Fusion5 Version 5.1.3. With this release, the company has delivered full support for the Adobe PDF file format. PDF is fast becoming the industry standard for exchanging documents across the Internet because Adobe makes the reader free, PDFs are easy to create, and the documents seldom become corrupted, no matter what type of computer they were created with or opened with.

With Formtastic Fusion5 Version 5.1.3, Quadrant is selling a new PDF Module that lets its customers output their spool files as PDF documents, for electronic distribution via the Web or by e-mail. This is good news for Formtastic Fusion5 users, says Gary Langton, Quadrant's president. "Allowing Formtastic users to output documents as PDFs provides greater versatility and wider access to key documents," he says.

The other major feature that Quadrant delivers with Formtastic Fusion5 Version 5.1.3 is prebuilt integration with three OS/400-based imaging and archival applications, including Real Vision Software's RVI, Vanguard Systems' IMS/21, and Gauss Interprise's VIP DocManager. (Gauss is currently being acquired by Open Text.)

With this release, documents generated in Formtastic can be automatically indexed for later retrieval in these imaging systems. Invoices, for example, can be automatically indexed to the imaging system in several ways, including by customer name, by customer number, or by invoice date, which gives users several ways to locate and retrieve the document.

Customers will see several benefits as a result of this new integration, Quadrant says, namely the reduction of the amount of manual work needed to prepare a document for archiving, and the potential for decreasing human errors. Companies with high volumes of Quadrant documents that need to be loaded into imaging systems can expect to save hours, if not days, of work as a result of the new integration, Quadrant says.

Both document management packages--eliteSUITE and Formtastic Fusion5--support a number of popular OS/400-based ERP packages, including those from J.D. Edwards, MAPICS, Lawson, daly.commerce, and the BPCS, PRMS, and Infinium packages owned by SSA Global.

Pricing for Formtastic Fusion5 Version 5.1.3 starts at $8,400. The PDF Module costs an additional $2,495. For more information, go to www.quadrantsoftware.com.

Pricing for the eliteFORM module is $6,550, and eliteMAIL with DirectPDF is $5,050. For more information, go to www.elitedocuments.com.