July 1998
Would You Like Images with that Software?
Adding imaging to a business application is as easy as ordering wine with your meal. (Maybe easier, depending on the wine list.) Here's the latest crop of image enablers.
by Penny Lunt
For those looking for solutions rather than technologies, image
enabling is an answer. Rather than buying an imaging system and then
figuring out how your other applications will work with it, image
enablers let you add imaging features to applications you already use.
They snap into your existing software like one Lego block to another with
very little integration work. Without leaving the business application --
whether it's accounting, financial, human resources, customer service or
something else -- you can call up the images behind the numbers and
transactions.
Whether you use Windows, DOS or mainframe programs, there are image
enablers out there that will work with them. Some provide imaging on top
of groupware, email or document management products. Others blend in with
any line-of-business application, including home-grown software.
To image-enable mainframe and DOS applications, these products
typically read customer account numbers or other codes off screens (this
is also known as screen scraping). The numbers are linked to images
indexed in a database.
To image-enable Windows applications, they generally use OLE or
ActiveX controls to link images to the existing application.
AccuSoft (Westborough, MA 508-898-2770) offers a Java-based document
publishing product called NetVue. It's an out-of-the-box image enabler
that allows query, retrieval, viewing and navigation of document images
over the Web.
A version of the product, NetVue for Docs Open, image-enables PC
Docs' Docs Open document management system. When the server component is
installed, it automatically finds the PC Docs database and associates all
the indexing fields, security access control and user preferences for the
PC Docs database. All the installer needs to do is create an HTML page
that has the viewer component on it. Users point their browsers to that
page and they're in business.
Accessed through a browser, NetVue pops up a query dialog box that
looks almost identical to the one in PC Docs. Queries are answered with
options based on the indexing in their PC Docs database. NetVue processes
the query and sends back a list of all the documents that match the
query. Users can then select any number of files off the list, launch the
viewer and navigate the documents with thumbnails, zooming options and
other viewing capabilities.
AccuSoft is working on image enabling other document management
systems as well. The standard version NetVue can be connected to any
existing database through ODBC connections. The product has a
programmable API in which individual options can be turned on or off.
Aside from imaging, NetVue gives your applications all the benefits of
the Internet. You can bring on new users without having to install
software at each workstation. You can use lower-cost clients. You can
upgrade or add a new feature at the server and instantly give everybody
access to the new functions.
"Within two years, the concept of a local area network will completely
disappear and all servers will be Web servers," predicts Scott Warner,
president of AccuSoft.
NetVue Version 2, released in June, is priced at $4,995 for a server,
a Java-based or ActiveX-based client, documentation and a
five-concurrent-user license. Additional licenses start at $294 per
concurrent user.
This product doesn't handle the capture side of imaging. It assumes
you already have a capture and storage mechanism in place. AccuSoft also
sells an imaging toolkit, ImageGear, which lets you build a viewing,
capture or storage and retrieval application from scratch. It comes in
two interfaces. The DLL version is targeted at C or C++ programmers.
Visual Basic, Power Builder, Access and Delphi developers choose the
ActiveX version of NetVue.
The company also makes ImageGear for Document Imaging, a viewer that
AccuSoft will customize for specific uses.
ByteQuest (Ottawa, Ontario 613-728-5977) offers folder management as
well as imaging in their 32-bit ByteQuest image-enabling product. Many
image-enabling products give applications access to images and text
documents that aren't physically stored in the document management
system. But Bassam Zarkout, director of products, says that ByteQuest's
folder management is more powerful because it lets several different
applications access the same sets of documents linked in folders.
"Folder enabling lets you access not only the document you request but
the other documents contained in a folder," he says. "There's a
well-defined file structure in which all the documents in the
organization are represented, whether they're part of a workflow or part
of a business application. We provide an integration via an API to these
documents and folders from those applications."
An example of where this is useful is a personnel file. Two or more
workflows or applications may need documents in the file simultaneously.
ByteQuest lets them share. ByteQuest is frequently used to image-enable
workflow applications such as Staffware, homegrown business applications,
mainframe legacy applications, and Oracle and DB2 databases. Customers
usually handle the integration to other programs.
"The fact that you're folder enabling rather than document enabling
simplifies the integration work," Zarkout says. "You don't have to worry
about linking the screens in your business application to the related
documents. A simple call into the folder structure brings you the folder,
displays its contents and lets you retrieve any of the documents."
How you image enable the application depends on the application
itself. Legacy mainframe applications may let you add a button in the
terminal emulation software that has the call to ByteQuest behind it. In
other applications, the call may be written in with Visual Basic or
C++.
ByteQuest provides three methods of document access. One is a search
by a profile of document folders and of folders within folders; it's like
searching the index at the back of a book. The second is navigation
through the filing structure. For example, looking through the personnel
area of the file tree; this approach is like looking in the table of
contents at the beginning of a book. The third method of accessing a
document is to get the business application or workflow to bring the
document to you. An API coordinator delivers the documents.
Pricing for this software ranges from a few hundred dollars per seat
to over $1,000 per seat.
Feith's (Fort Washington, PA 215-646-8000) Quick Integrator interfaces
the Feith Document Database with legacy applications such as accounts
payable, accounts receivable, human resources or order entry. The first
version of Quick Integrator was for legacy applications that ran at a
terminal window. The second version provides quick integration to
Windows.
"Quick Integrator lets us index and view documents while running the
application we're image enabling," says Don Feith, president. "We give
them two function keys: a 'show me the paper' key that's associated with
the record they're looking at, and an 'index this' key that lets you
index documents based on what you've typed into the legacy
application."
A typical application can be found in a university registrar's office.
Incoming paper can be scanned in the mailroom into workbins. Later,
somebody goes into the workbins, looks at the paper and types information
from the paper into the legacy application. They create a record for the
image in the database, and when they're done, they press the "index this"
button, which indexes the paper they're looking at with the information
they just typed into their legacy application. This is good for archiving
document images as you process the information manually.
Quick Integrator provides barcode recognition, mark sense and OCR.
Some customers use barcodes for clinical laboratory tests. The doctor or
clinician fills out a form that has a barcode on it. He or she then takes
copies of that barcode and puts them on test tubes. That's what ties them
together. When the paper is scanned in, the barcode is automatically read
and indexed.
Feith has also developed connector modules that tie the Document
Database to such sophisticated applications as SAP, Walker Financials,
PeopleSoft and Oracle Financials (Oracle and SAP have certified the
connectors).
Quick Integrator is priced at $300 per user, not including server
software and professional services.
FileNet (Costa Mesa, CA 714-966-3400) has integrated its Watermark
imaging product for NT to more than 100 vertical applications, including
legal, insurance claims processing and customer service. The most
commonly enabled application is customer service.
"FileNet provides the base technology, says Robert Maynard, director
of product marketing for FileNet applications. "We have a base of
integrators that we sell our product to, and they build a custom
application for a pharmaceutical or accounting company, for example."
Watermark handles front-end capture and image management, including
OCR, indexing and storage. Workflow tools let you route documents from a
vertical application to Watermark or to another application.
"It integrates nicely with other products because it's built on
Microsoft standard programming interfaces," Maynard says. It's also made
up of Visual Basic components, so anybody with a little training can
customize it. Capture can be handled either with Watermark's standard
ad-hoc batch capture or with an integrated high-speed scanning module,
such as Kofax's Ascent Capture. A ten-seat configuration of Watermark
ranges in price from $10,000 to $150,000, depending on the number of
features and the level of sophistication the customer needs.
Whetstone (Orem, UT 801-714-2840) bought Open Image, a NetWare-based
file server application, from Eastman Software in August 1996. Whetstone
built their own client piece for the server. The resulting image enabling
software is called ViewWise. This system works with legacy mainframe
applications, Novell's GroupWise product, Lotus Notes and Sybase and
Oracle databases. The State of Utah processes all its insurance claims
with ViewWise. Other clients include Union Pacific Railroad and
JCPenney.
"The premise we use in our image enablement is that email is the best
method of pushing imaging to the end user," says Mark Ward, vice
president of marketing. "Next to the network operating system, email is
the most proliferated platform out there. By using that medium as a way
of introducing imaging to users, you overcome the initial shock of
education. It's integrated to an interface with which they're already
familiar."
The company saves money by using the infrastructure it already has in
place rather than installing a new one.
Some vendors say that email isn't a robust enough backbone to handle
production imaging and workflow, but Ward counters that email systems can
handle tens of thousands of users processing thousands of messages per
day.
"They've built the architecture in email systems to readily handle the
distribution and maintenance of documents as well as images," Ward says.
"That's why you're seeing vendors like Novell build document management
into their system."
Ward contends that once companies like Novell figure out how to
connect their document management to a relational database, they'll be
able to compete with the likes of PC Docs, Documentum and Domino.doc with
enterprise-wide document management based on email.
Novell GroupWise ships with a basic desktop imaging client. It's a
Visioneer PaperPort-style TWAIN scanning system with a simple document
management product. Whetstone provides a connector so that if
organizations want production imaging, they can buy the ViewWise server
piece. They can then access tens, hundreds of thousands or millions of
documents through the GroupWise system. The movement of high volumes of
images doesn't tax GroupWise because they're passed through to the
ViewWise system, which is designed to handle that load.
ViewWise captures document images with TWAIN, ISIS or Kofax-based
high-speed scanning. It assigns keywords to the images. It OCRs and ICRs
the text with its own engines and uses a full-text indexing scheme for
search and retrieval.
The system costs $1,495 per concurrent user. (If a company buys 200
concurrent seats, they could run it on 2,000 workstations, but only 200
people could use it at the same time.)
Whetstone is working on image enabling Microsoft Exchange, Lotus
Notes, Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator and other products.
They're committed to serving the 70 million NetWare users out there as
well.
These are just some of the image enablers out there. As you
investigate these and others that you come across, look for a solution
that will blend in smoothly with your other software, that will handle
the volumes and speeds you need and that will grow with you as your
imaging needs get broader or more intense.
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