D
ocument management isn’t a sexy new idea. It’s at least as old as computing itself: as a child, I remember asking my parents why they needed so many little keys on their office keyrings, and getting the answer that these were for their individual, lockable output trays on the various printers and copiers they used. The documents they handled were so sensitive that even a casual bit of misfiling could spell disaster – and individual secretaries were, even then, becoming anachronistic. So their employer had invested in a complicated, state-of-the-art copier that could keep track of who was making each copy, and deposit each user’s prints securely into their own personal out tray.
Some years later, I happened to meet a programmer who had worked on the Post Office’s OCR project –a project which transformed the business of letter sorting by electronically reading handwritten postcodes and turning them into those little blue dots you used to see printed on the outside of the envelope. It was a necessary evolution, he explained, as the number of letters being processed was outstripping the availability of workers to route the mail by hand. Like the locking trays, those blue dots were reflections of the supreme importance of pieces of paper – and the growing difficulty of managing them. From one perspective, you might say that the Rise of
the Machines began in the 1970s as a direct expression of the need for document management. That’s not to say that it’s ancient history. Document management remains crucial in the 21st century. For sure, it’s become “You might say that the something much Rise of the Machines began broader than simply keeping track of in the 1970s as a direct sheets of paper: the expression of the need for QR code on your document management” smartphone that lets you board a plane is a document, just as much as a letter from your landlord that lets you move into a new office. But the old issues – too many eyes on one type of document, not enough on another – remain as prevalent as they ever were.
The Network Documentmanagement
ABOVE Document management can save you a lot of money – and space
BELOW Modern, superfast scanners such as these by Xerox and Fujitsu are a valuable addition to a digitising office
believe the figures for numbers of pages ingested per day into their document management systems. In short, the best advice is not to skimp on the hardware, even if the initial cost seems higher than you’d hoped. Depending on your needs, you may be able to save money by investing in a big multifunction office printer with its own ADF, so it can tear through big scan jobs in minutes or seconds. By all means, test your procedures with a slow, clunky £29 inkjet MFP before you roll them out,
Readers’ poll
In wake of the news that Facebook had suspended 200 apps for potentially misusing data, we asked you what its motivations might be. The results were clear:
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best it can be used to meet the business objectives. That’s a shame, as it’s that guidance that companies such as ours provide. Engaging with vendors gives customers the opportunity to plan a better solution and allows vendors to prove their worth even before money has changed hands. Alan Ingram
We vendors are given soulless lists of requirements and asked to put a tick against the ones we can do Touching Base
Your comparative review of LibreOffice in the June 2018 issue of PC Pro (see issue 284, p30) failed to mention its database known as Base (a free rival to Microsoft’s Access). Let me fill the gap. According to Libre’s own website for Base, anyone who wants to make changes to Base must do it themselves – which means that effectively it’s completely unsupported. In fact, two serious bugs in Base that I reported to the OpenOffice Organisation long ago, before it split into the Libre and Apache versions, remain uncorrected in LibreOffice. The Apache version has fixed one of the bugs; the other remains unfixed but doubtless has a low priority since I offered the pre-split developers an effective workaround. I wish both Apache and Libre would put more effort into fixing bugs and less into adding “features” that only a decreasing minority will want to use. John White
OCR in Office
It’s a cynical move. Facebook has its own best interests at heart.
6% It’s good news. The company has our best interests at heart.
In response to our survey, Vladimir Lungo commented: “I live in a developing country and as such I haven’t really paid much attention to what Facebook does with my data... What’s the point of protecting your data anyway? The government and other webpages all store some of what you do, and really, does it affect you? Does it matter if they know something you do?” Adam, on the other hand, explains how he “deleted all posts, tags and Like history and now only keep the single most recent post on there. My personal info is now all made up as well.” John Delaney was just as bullish. “I would never sign up to be spied on and milked by Facebook even if they paid me.”
Jointhedebate Join the growing PC Pro community on Facebook at facebook.com/pcpro Get the latest news and updates by following us @pcpro Email us at letters@pcpro.co.uk
They’re only doing it because they’ve been caught out. I haven’t changed my social media habits: I’m expecting the companies will change their modus operandi Tony C If an app wants permission to do something I ask ‘Why?’ and, if they don’t or can’t give a good reason, they don’t get it John Chapman I made use of all the security and sharing preferences before the recent news. Sadly, most are not even vaguely interested Adam I deleted Facebook and I am considering doing the same with Twitter and Instagram. Life is better without Facebook Nick DO YOU STIL 13 SEC RET THE PES
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ISSUE 284
ISSUE 283
Office has a hidden optical character recognition (OCR) engine in OneNote. Upload an image or add a screengrab and OneNote will recognise it automatically. The text can be copied to the clipboard and is fully searchable inside the application. N Blake
It’s shocking. Safeguards should have been in place to stop the misuse before it happened.
£5.99
Document management may sound dull, but Steve Cassidy finds out how it can save you valuable time – and money
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All that’s changed is that the modern businesses that are suspicious that equivalent of the lockable–tray copier costly document-management has to deal with those who carry their projects are scams or rip-offs. (Then sensitive data around on an iPad again, that’s not unique to document rather than in a cardboard folder (and management – such accusations who don’t necessarily understand the come up with IT projects of all limits of security when it comes to kinds.) Wi-Fi printing). Factor in a general Indeed, there’s still much to be perception of document said for the lockable paper tray, as a management as simple and metaphor if not a reality. It may go old-fashioned, and it’s easy against the optimistic precepts of to understand why certain computing gurus, but it’s a companies baulk at practical solution to an everyday spending money on problem – and that’s what document something that “ought to be management is all about. easy”. But even if we accept that some aspects of the Paper trail technology are simple and Small companies tend to assume that old-fashioned, that’s no bad their workflow is too simple to justify thing. It’s a classic geek mistake investing in anything more than a to think that every modern filing cabinet or two. But even if you problem needs a rarefied, don’t need to do much in the way of compute-intense solution. actual managing, technology can help. One of my old clients, in the Get the hardware right course of a deal, ended up holding You might assume that document some sensitive documents that were management starts with a scanner, (even by the standards of these but it’s nigh-on impossible to do things) very long. It rarely needed to rational document management if refer to them, but had to retain them your printers aren’t up to the job. If securely– which meant dedicating something starts out as paper, there’s two full-height office cupboards, in a a good chance it’s going to get printed room with a locked door. out again at some point; we may want As you can imagine, the mere to save the environment, but people process of scanning in all this are more comfortable clutching a nice paperwork yielded huge rewards. The physical piece of A4 than referring to data was downsized into a single a digital representation of it. locked drawer, allowing the company Indeed, you should probably to situate two additional staff in the proceed on the assumption that room that had been freed up. In people are going to print more than consequence, it ended up increasing you bargain for – and the same applies its turnover by about a quarter of a to scanning. I’ve had arguments with million pounds a year. companies who simply refuse to That might sound like a special case, but that’s the nature of the beast. Talking about document management in general terms has always been a challenge, because it’s in the narrowest, most specialised roles that the technology most visibly pays for itself. Those who really need a lightning-fast write-once storage subsystem already know it; with the more generic stuff, like a simple scan and store process, it can be harder to point to exactly where the benefits are going to justify the investment. Indeed, I come across plenty of
JULY 2018
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Document management: well,d’oh!
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