Review of ImageNow at Towson University

USM Oracle/PeopleSoft Mid Atlantic Regional Conference June 2, 2009 Gettysburg College

Presented By

Jay Taffel Sr. Business Analyst – Office of Technology Services Document Imaging Lead Involved with ImageNow From the Beginning 2

Synopsis

Overview of Document Imaging at TU What Works for Us More Importantly, What Didn’t Work Upgrade Lessons Learned What They Don’t Teach In Imaging School 3

Towson University

   

Towson, Maryland Founded in 1866 21,111 Students 63 Undergraduate Majors



Bachelors, Masters & Doctoral Programs

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Background

Implemented February 2005 75 Concurrent Client Licenses 15 WebNow Licenses 470 Active Users (200 with Graduate Admissions) 12+ Departments / 15 Scanning Stations  More Broad Than Deep Deployment   3 Departments are Paper-less, Others Archival Every Transcript is Now Electronic – Scanned or PS Used With PeopleSoft / FRS / MS Access / Manual Lookup 5

Towson ImageNow Profile

Currently 6.2.1

 Upgrade from version 5.42 to 6.1.5 Nov. 2008  Upgrade to 6.2.1 March 2009 Additional Agents / Services  WebNow, E-Mail, Fax, Import Agent UNIX / Sun / Oracle Scripts Purchased for Targeted Results   SQL Calls to PeopleSoft Tables for Auto Indexing Mail Merge Client Printer for Form Letters 6 6

How Many Docs?

A Dean's Office An Administrative Office Office of Tech. Services

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Financial Aid

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Admissions Undergrad Admissions Graduate

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Financial Services Human Resources Provost Budget Office Registrar Current Registrar Legacy Transcripts Pre-PeopleSoft Transcripts Pre-1987

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TOTALS Paper-less operation Documents 280 346 5,042 47,154 98,131 61,946 105,676 41,393 6,023 119,674 574,481 128,178 173,450 1,361,772 Pages 332 7,895 14,309 150,671 830,775 212,138 406,032 344,764 105,794 202,901 2,309,534 294,116 277,515 5,156,776 As of 4/30/2009 7

Averages

Average file size is 53,550 bytes / 52.3 KB Current 6-Month Average Monthly Volume  53,250 pages / 2.7 GB Storage Current 5-Month Daily New Documents Admissions GRAD Admissions UGRD Financial Aid HR Financial Services Registrar Total 359 741 291 289 419 295 2,394 8

Demand

Unlimited  4 Pages of Enhancements / Maintenance / Fixes  9 Desired New Implementations or Major Expansions  2 scanners still in boxes - have not had time to get to Unrelenting – See the Daily Averages Unmet  Need to balance with available resources and other projects / needs of the university  Production support  How strongly do the users demand 9

How We Manage It

User Licenses Were Bought by TU  Executive Initiative Money Scanning Station Costs Born by Departments  Scanners / CaptureNow / Kofax VRS  Any Special Scripting Services Needed OTS Pays for Annual Maintenance and Storage  No Chargebacks to Departments Mainly Use Client, But Have WebNow for Flexibility and Technical Reasons (aka Macs)  Need Both? 10

Skill Sets Needed

Business & Process Analysis   More Than Speeding Up a Bad Process

‘You can lose the image faster than the paper’

Minimal Server Management  Keep Everything in Sync / Log Files on Servers Technical  Understand How Image Works Through Systems  Read / Interpret Server and Client ini and xml Files  Read / Write / Debug iScripts Trainer – need to match to user population 11

Skill Sets Needed

Imaging Specialist  Effects of Scanning Options  Kofax VRS Usage and Settings Help Desk 

“I can’t find my document”

  Know the Difference Between C:\Program Files and C:\Users\\... User / Group Security –

“Why can’t I logon?”

Production Support Thousands of Little Details  I used to say 5,000. Now up to 6,000 (maybe more) 12

Indexing

The Chokepoint – Use Every Trick in the Book Patchcodes  Placed between pages in feeder to separate batch into smaller units  Fin Aid – between contents of different envelopes to keep mail grouped properly Barcodes    Add to forms: entire index or critical values  ID / Name / DocType / The more the merrier Use iScript to finish index based on barcode Keep it unique. We preface with “TU-” 13

Voucher Barcoded Cover Page

Nightly report makes pages based on cleared vouchers. Matched to invoices and scanned. Capture profile processes barcodes. No need to manually index.

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Admissions Barcoded Cover Page

Step 1: Capture profile processes barcode and submits to workflow.

Step 2: Workflow iScript makes SQL call for name.

Worksheet used by UGRD Admissions has printed barcodes. Used as first page of admission folder.

Can match barcode processing with scripting. No need to manually index.

Very powerful.

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Indexing

Keep Them Uniform  Index for Person’s Docs the Same in All Applets Drawer Folder Tab Field3 Field4 Field5 Dept.

TU ID Name DocType Time frame Not used Access for specific department PeopleSoft EmplID if available Last, First (MI?) (Suffix?) Predefined lists Could be scan date, doc date, term, aid year or calendar year Could be SSN, but discouraged 16

Indexing

Automate As Much As Possible  Bought a script to perform SQL call to PS tables. Modified many times to use in other queues.

 Fill in EmplID or SSN and route to Auto Index  SQL to PS tables to get Name  Becomes keypunch instead of searching in PS  Warning! You

will

lose documents if wrong ID matches someone else’s name 17

Lessons Learned

Departments Have to Own It  They learned applets  They learned users and groups  They learned workflow administration  They even learned how to read scripts!

Retention Policies are Critical   If you add 3GB a month, you need to plan on how to get that space back or get more of it Easier to get rid of old paper: it’s taking up space and you need cabinets for this year’s stuff  No one

really

wants to delete records 18

Lessons Learned

Fax Agent  Quickly becomes indispensable  FinAid has received 12,000 pages in 3 months!

 Production support / uptime critical  Default is for Fax Agent to

not

keep tiff files after hand-off to main server. You might want to change that in case of database / network issues.

 inserverFax.ini

;TRUE/FALSE, default TRUE source.objects.delete=FALSE 19

Upgrade Lessons Learned

From 6.1 to 6.2 is more than a ‘service pack’   No database & file structure conversion, but significant ‘under the hood’ changes need follow-up The “What’s New...” documentation does not indicate the impact these changes bring   New licensing allows free test server   Set this up in target version before upgrade See impact of new functionality  Get the imagenow.ini file just right before deployment Our upgrade took 2 ½ days 20

Upgrade Lessons Learned

LearnMode 6.2

Very different interface and functionality  Tricky with variable PeopleSoft html I’m not sure translation from pre-6.2 is sufficient  Having issues with column headings using aliases  Not really interested in remaking all 140+ templates  Cannot make new application and then rename to old for replacement – reported as QA issue Pre-defined lists do not have default choice Any hyper-learn needs to be redone 21

Upgrade Lessons Learned

Views – New in 6.2

Another quasi-security privilege  Controls what docs users can view Controls searching in ImageNow If use PS security to control access to images, need to exclude group/users from All Docs and make new limited view  Default allows searching, deny if use PS security Cannot create and share filter for other user  No way to copy/paste or see SQL 22

Upgrade Lessons Learned

Workflow Privileges – change in 6.2

“Inbound” script has same privileges as user who sent item into queue!

 If user cannot remove workflow item, script will not remove item Need to add “Within Queue” script to perform DeleteWFItem or similar actions   This runs as workflow agent Queue cannot be “Complete Queue”  Status set to “Complete” and no scripts will change item 23

Upgrade Lessons Learned

Copious Log Files – 6.2

Everywhere – on inserver and all workstations Send Once E-Mail Alarm Still no built-in capability  Alarms periodically repeat based on rules, not event driven Use script SendMail of new item in queue function to notify receipt 24

Upgrade Lessons Learned

Capture Now Profile Management – 6.x

Each Windows user has their own profile:

imagenow.ini

&

inscan.xml

files (default) One profile for all users  [Paths] In C:\Program Files\ImageNow 6\inowsystem.ini

WorkPath="C:\Doc...ngs\All Users\Application Data\ImageNow" ;for each user to have unique ;WorkPath="C:\Doc...ngs\%Username%\Application Data\ImageNow" Capture Profiles can be stored on inserver  See ImageNow documentation for Capture Profiles 25

Questions?

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Contact

Jay Taffel Sr. Business Analyst Office of Technology Services Towson University E-mail:

[email protected]

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