Laser Fiche WebLink 5.0

By Doug Henschen

The KISS principle has helped LaserFiche become a top-selling document imaging system. Laserfiche (www.laserfiche.com) has been plugging away with its “keep it simple” philosophy since the mid-’ 80s, eschewing sophisticated technology in favor of user-friendly, affordable systems.

Version 5.0 of LaserFiche and LaserFiche WebLink stick to the tried-and-true formula. The new news in this May release is full management and support for electronic documents such as Word and Excel files — something other systems had years ago. Still, the company has delivered a practical, affordable upgrade of a venerable product.

Client/server system pricing starts at $8,995 for a five-full-user departmental system supporting a single database; view-only clients start at $3,995 for 25 users (lower per-seat prices in volume). The WebLink module is $9,995 supporting a single database. Competitors in this range include IMR (www.imrgold.com), with its Alchemy system, and Westbrook (www.filemagic.com) with its File Magic and Fortis systems.

At a Glance
Product: LaserFiche and WebLink v5.0
Vendor: LaserFiche
Torrence, CA
310-793-1888
www.laserfiche.com

Description: Value-oriented document management system with a Web publishing module and new e-doc support and PDF download features.

Platform Support
• Client: Windows 9X/NT/2000, browsers
• Server: NT, MS IIS, Netscape, Apache
• Database: Pervasive 2000 SQL

Strengths:
• Easy to afford, administer and use.
• Plug-in options let you pay only for what you need.
• Robust search and annotation features.
• Simple Web, email and PDF-download access to files.

Weaknesses:
• Electronic files can only be viewed in their native applications (unless they’re converted to images).
• Web module is view-only; you can’t resubmit edited or annotated files online.
• System lacks a workflow option.

Pricing: Multi-database client/server systems start at $8,995 for five full users. View-only clients start at $3,995 for 25 users. WebLink module is $9,995.

LaserFiche manages documents with a Windows Explorer-like folder and file approach that is familiar and intuitive. The company has more than 250 canned “index card” templates for everything from specific government and educational applications to broad accounting and human resources uses. Add the system’s standard annotation, OCR and robust search features, and you have everything you need to manage large volumes of documents that originate on paper.

LaserFiche formerly managed electronic documents by treating them like paper. You imported them into the system using a Snapshot Plug-in that transformed them into uneditable raster files that could be indexed, full-text recognized, stored and retrieved like any other image. The Snapshot Plug-in is still available for archiving edocs, but many customers wanted a way to collaborate on still-active files in their native format.

Version 5.0 lets you bring live edocs into the LaserFiche database using an Import tool or simply by dragging and dropping them into the file tree structure. You can apply the same index values to electronic documents that you apply to images, but for now you have to apply these one file at a time (a batch import feature is in the works).

Electronic document file icons are immediately visible (if you have group and user security privileges) wherever you placed them in a folder or subfolder. LaserFiche relies on external viewers for electronic documents, so when you click on a file, it launches in its native application. This approach supports any type of electronic document, but you have to have the application in order to view the file.

Adding a feature lacking in some other low-priced systems, LaserFiche offers an Audit Trail Plug-in option that tracks who performed which changes to a document and when. There’s also an E-mail Plug-in that lets you send any file within a LaserFiche database as an email attachment.

The LaserFiche WebLink module makes everything in LaserFiche accessible over intranets or the Internet without HTML coding. You can drill down through folders and subfolders to the document level, but you don’t get the easy tree view used in the standard client. If you’re opening MS Office files, they will launch right in Internet Explorer 5.0 if you have Office 2000. WebLink is easily deployed, but it is a view-only system. Edocs and images you examine can’t be resubmitted online after editing or annotation.

For those who are accessing images, a new PDF download feature lets you preview documents and then download only the pages you need as PDF image files. This saves time and bandwidth, particularly if you’re dealing with multi-page documents.

LaserFiche delivers the basics in its standard product while keeping niche functionality such as zonal OCR extraction, barcode reading, COLD and CD publishing, on the options list. This approach keeps costs down and makes this system a favorite with budget-conscious government agencies, mid-sized businesses, work groups and departments, and colleges and universities.

—Doug Henschen