Paperiton ADF - Technical Information

Paperiton ADF is a Windows service that automatically adds new documents to Paperiton DMS according to your specific business rules.

Paperiton ADF Source Directory

First, a file system directory of a server will be defined as a Source Directory of Paperiton ADF.

The Source Directory is linked to Paperiton ADF with a configuration file, defining the rules for the new documents. If needed, you can define multiple source directories, with different configurations and business rules.

The rules of a Source Directory contain for instance the following settings:

• The location of the Source Directory
• Connection information for Paperiton DMS Server (server, database)
• The DMS folder where documents will be added
• Instructions how the document metas are to be filled
• Configuration of custom extensions handling dynamic values of meta information, read from another system or database
• Document Routing rules (routing the document automatically to one or more users)
• Document Process rules (sending document automatically to a Document Process)
• Document status rules (final version or not)
• Access rights settings
• File type and size limitations
• Meta data file configuration
• Logging rules for successful and failed additions

Now, Paperiton ADF is ready to be used, waiting for documents to be added.

Running Paperiton ADF

As Paperiton ADF is a Windows Service, Paperiton ADF can be run the time of the day best suitable for the process, giving administrators the flexibility to control what happens and when. The configuration file is read when the service is started, and if there are already documents queued in the Source Directory, the handling of those will begin immediately.

Paperiton ADF watches its source directories for new files. As soon as a new document appears in a Source Directory, it will be handled according to the configuration of that directory.

Paperiton ADF sets the document meta information, static or dynamic, and other instructions to the document when adding it to Paperiton DMS Document Management System. If the target DMS folder contains inheritable meta information, those will be also applied to the document.

Static instructions are defined typically in the configuration file, while dynamic data is read from some other system according to the rules, document by document. For that reason, Paperiton ADF has the possibility to use external components to fetch the dynamic meta values.

Meta data files provide meta information linked to the document

The actual document may also have the values of custom metas passed for the ADF in a separate data file, which is simply placed with the document to the source directory. Paperiton ADF will read that information while preparing the document for save to the DMS, again according to the configuration.

As an example, if some code information is extracted from a scanned document as part of the scanning process, like a barcode value, customer code, order number, or something similar, that code can be stored as a custom meta information with the document, or used as a key information to retrieve even more information to be used as meta values of the document.

It does not matter what kind of a document it is, as long as it suits your needs. The document can be originated from a scanner or another computer system.

Below, some common scenarios are discussed.

Adding scanned documents to Paperiton DMS

Modern scanners have good batch and OCR functionality to convert the original paper document to a document containing text and pictures. It is important to understand the difference between an image, or picture of a document, and a document produced as a result of OCR, interpreted from that picture.

For a document management system an OCR'ed document is more valuable and usable than a picture of the original document, like for example a file in a TIFF format. A document containing text can be searched by its contents, which provides largely enhanced search capabilities, and snippets of text can be copied from the document as text, and used for other purposes from there.

Typically, the scanning process converts the contents of a paper document to Adobe PDF format, which is generally recognized as a good solution for long term storage of electronic documents.

The scanning system will be configured to place the output documents to a Paperiton ADF Source Directory, and it will be collected from there, and saved to Paperiton DMS Document Management System.

Different types of documents may require different handling rules when added to the document management system. It is usually possible to define different batch/job types, or profiles, in scanning software, having also different output locations. Those output locations could be linked to again to different Paperiton ADF Source Directory configurations. As a result, the scanner operator can ensure the proper DMS handling procedure very easily.

Paperiton DMS is not limited to any specific scanners or document capturing software. As long as the quality and type of the captured documents is optimal for the needs of our customer, the solution can otherwise be selected freely. The only requirement for the usage of Paperiton ADF is that the resulting electronic document can be directed in a way or another to the ADF Source Directory.

Extracting barcode information or interpreating and reading code values from the scanned image is done by the scanner software, and passed with the document to Paperiton ADF as a meta data file.

Obviously, you can have more than one scanner, or other sources, to feed the documents to Paperiton ADF. 

Importing documents created by other systems to Paperiton DMS

As an example, you may have AS/400, Linux, or UNIX-based systems, which create reports as files in a regular manner. Those reports should be made available from within the document management system to users.

A typical arrangement for this would be to create a Paperiton ADF Source Directory for this purpose, and to move the automatically created files there as needed from the output directory of the system that originally created the document. If additional meta information is available from the source system, it can be moved with the document, and applied to the document when saved to the document management system. In that way, the document in DMS will have the necessary metas filled with the data extracted by the original system that created the document, to link the document in DMS to the actual data.

It does not really matter where the document is created, as long as the documents can be moved to a Paperiton ADF Source Directory with FTP, or any other suitable means.