Choosing a Document Imaging Solution for SharePoint

I continue to see a lot of discussions amongst blogs, discussion boards and other Web forums about how to deal with one of the identified “shortcomings” of SharePoint…imaging. The proliferation of SharePoint licenses in organizations of all sizes has shone a new light onto the struggles that organization’s face with paper, and the question, “How do I get paper documents into SharePoint” is being asked more and more.

And, not surprisingly, many vendors (hardware and software) have released products that offer a way to scan documents and load them into SharePoint. So how do you select which is the right product for you? Here’s a couple of questions you may want to consider:

 

1. How will scanned documents be searched for once saved to SharePoint? You should look for an imaging solution that offers both the capability to manually add metadata to a document at the point of scanning and perform OCR (optical character recognition) on the scanned image to create a full-text searchable PDF, or capture certain key pieces of data from the document and include them as metadata.

2. Are SharePoint workflows supported by enforcing metadata requirements for rules-based processing?  If you are using the workflow capabilities of SharePoint, it is important to be able to kick-off those workflows for paper-based documents at the time of scanning. Your document imaging solution should prompt users to include the necessary information needed for these workflows (such as content type and necessary metadata), at the capture device when scanning the document.

3. Are changes to the underlying SharePoint site structure reflected dynamically at the point of capture? SharePoint is a very fluid system and changes to sites, document libraries, lists, etc. are commonplace. When capturing paper documents, users need to be able to see the most recent version of the site that they are saving the document to. Document imaging solutions that use pre-defined routing (either using barcodes, embedded directives, or hot folders) can not easily stay up-to-date with changes. Using a document imaging solution that has dynamic integration with SharePoint ensures that users have access to the most up-to-date site layout because they are logged into SharePoint when scanning.

4. Does the document imaging solution require components to be added to the SharePoint server? This is important for two reasons. First, the less third-party software that has to be installed on the SharePoint server the better, as it reduces the risk of that software causing problems. Secondly, if the document imaging solution has components on the server, it can not support hosted SharePoint environments.

There are of course many, many other factors that go into choosing the right document imaging solution for SharePoint. For additional information, download the white paper series: Distributed Document Imaging: Maximizing Your Investment in Microsoft Technology.

Comments

[hosted document solutions]

Great tips, I will definitely keep them in mind...

[amila hendahewa]

http://amilahendahewa.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/document-imaging-with-sharepoint/

[Bob Bueltmann - KnowledgeLake]

Metadata capture is critical for structured content management solutions that will persist for years in an enterprise. However, so many MFP capture vendors focus on saving docs to SharePoint folders because they lack the reality of the real business world for information workers. No one wants to stand at an MFP and index a batch of documents and if no metadata capture, then use the file system. There are so many pretenders that are just confusing the market and not delivering on best practices....what a shame for our industry.

[Ed White - eCopy]

Metadata capture IS critical, however metadata capture has very little to do with saving docs in SharePoint folders. The reality is that there is value in both. The value is typically related to the type of content that is being captured, such as structured vs. unstructured, as well as how that information comes into the organization. For example, high volume transactional content that comes into the organization with a high degree of structure and repeatable context to the content can be indexed and automated quite easily. Then there is everything else. Other types of content are unstructured, yet highly relevant and high value. This content is most often unmanaged and needs to be worked with by information workers rather than simply batched and processed. Understanding what needs to be captured and how people will use the content is the key to finding the RIGHT solution that addresses the business need. The confusion in the market comes from people that only see capture in a single light and don’t look at capture based on the content and try to fit the problem to the solution. The ideal solution should flexibly address both manual and automated data extraction and indexing as well as enable information workers to use the technology the way they work, which includes navigation to the relevant content and locations.