DOCFLOW SYNERGY Document Management for Business Applications From the order to the debt collections, the documents lead and activate innumerable Business Processes vital for the company, processes that an ERP can manage only in part. For example, think about the vendors invoice process registration and about the innumerable interactions between the paper archive and the terminal. It is not only a question of efficiency but also of the Quality and Competitiveness recovery that the company obtains by implementing paperless processes. Synergy can directly integrate with the ERP system user interface, being it a terminal emulator, SAP‐Gui or other; therefore, Synergy offers the user the possibility to recalling documents directly from his applications without changing operational modality.
DOCUMENT ENABLING FOR BUSINESS APPLICATION The ERP system contains data that are often extracted from documents and that are adequate to describe the process numeric part; nevertheless, it is useful to accede the original document in order to have a full information display. Nonetheless, the documents are either archived as paper format and their access is difficult, or they are stored in electronic archiving systems, different from the ERP; in both cases, the access to the entire information implies delays, inefficiency and risk of errors. Synergy allows accessing the document directly from the ERP procedure form, simply pressing a button. Thanks to the DocsAssistant, Synergy keeps trace of all the operations executed on the terminal and is able to link the transaction to the document, through the information displayed on the screen. The DocsAssistant modular structure allows the document enabling, without modifying the original program.
DOCUMENTS ARCHIVING AND SEARCH All the administrative documents, both received and executed, need to be archived for long term, both to face up to fiscal regulations and to answer requests from the market‐place at any time. Synergy substitutes the obsolete paper archives, microfilms and tapes, with an always‐accessible system to the information on the documents available. It automatically creates links between documents belonging to the same account transaction: the order with the invoice, the contract with the order. It offers punctual search functionalities on the indexes and full‐ text on the content. It consents a tree‐navigation based on the document data archiving.
FUNCTIONAL COMPONENTS PRINTING SPOOLS MANAGEMENT With DocFlow Synergy it ‘s possible to archive in the Document Management Repository any document generated by the Host system and transmitted as printing spool. Synergy DocsCold module, through proper configurations, is able to interpret the printing spool, to convert it into PDF documents and to archive it in the document management system utilizing, as indices, fields drawn from the spool itself. DocsCold consists in three parametrical modules, where each one of them carries out a specific action on the input spool file.
scanned and has been assigned the related typology of administrative document, DocFlow Synergy actives its Workflow process: it will notify the authorized user/s that a document has been received and needs to be processed. When the users accede to the document, DocFlow Synergy automatically recalls the Host working form, related to the document typology. Once the transaction done (e.g.: invoice entering), the system automatically assigns it the archived document. An optional “free form OCR” module is available to recognize the fields in the paper document (invoices, delivery notes).
INCOMING DOCUMENTS MANAGEMENT Whereas for the printing spools it is necessary to proceed to their archiving at the moment of their execution, for the incoming documents we have to consider various acquisition processes. • Early Archiving • Late Archiving • Simultaneous Archiving
EARLY ARCHIVING In the early archiving scenario, paper documents are first archived in the Document Management system and then processed by the Host. In the early archiving, the working process begins in a central mailroom where a designated person opens, organizes, sticks a Barcode label and scans the incoming mail. Once the incoming document has been
LATE ARCHIVING
In the late archiving, the working process begins in the central mailroom where a designated person opens up, organizes, sticks a Bar‐Code label and distributes to the users the documents to be recorded. Once the operator has physically received the document, he records it in the Host system and enters (or reads with an optical pen) the Barcode assigned to the document. Later on, all the recorded documents will be scanned with the Document Management system: it will automatically read and recognize the Barcode and link it to the related Host document.
SIMULTANEUS ARCHIVING The simultaneous archive could be considered as a special form of early archive and is the simpler archive process to be implemented The incoming document is scanned in the document management system and, at the same time, the recording of the document is generated or modified in the Host. This approach does not require a Workflow activation process.
DocFlow Italia Spa - Centro Direzionale Milanofiori strada 4 Palazzo Q8 20089 Rozzano MI Tel 02 57503366 Fax 02 57503369
[email protected] www.docflow.com
TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE 1) Incoming documents acquisition and protocol. BarCodes with progressive codes are applied to the documents that are then acquired via scanner, thanks to systems adjusted on the requested volumes. It is possible to acquire the documents via Fax/mail server 2) Document management system archiving and web user interface, composed by two modules: a. Document Management server: the server deals with the physical document archiving into the electronic format in the Document Server, (RAID or Jukebox discs) and manages the search indexes in the Data Repository (DB server SQLServer or Oracle). DocsFusion is a NT service. b. Documents Management Webtop: it is the web user interface dedicated to the archived documents navigation/search/display and distribution. It is realized in ASP technology for web server Microsoft IIS. DM Webtop is customisable for any requirements 3) The module DocsAssistant deals with the integration between the document management system archiving and the host. 4) Host/Mainframe: no modification is foreseen for the server side system but the file‐transfer activation with the document management system for the printing spools and indexes sending. 5) Terminal Emulator: The Host users utilize exclusively the native user interface to accessing the documents. 6) Web Client: Document management system users utilize the web browser to accessing the documents.
DOCS ASSISTANT DocsAssistant is the Synergy system key component, and has in charge all the interfacing between the terminal emulator and the document management system. DocsAssistant acts at the client level and activates the following functions:
DocFlow Italia Spa - Centro Direzionale Milanofiori strada 4 Palazzo Q8 20089 Rozzano MI Tel 02 57503366 Fax 02 57503369
[email protected] www.docflow.com
FUNCTIONAL ARCHITECTURE
OPTIONAL MODULES Electronic signature Electronic document legal validation AUTOSCAN Off‐line archive management (MASS MOVER) Automatic distribution via fax or e‐mail Off‐line archive creation (XMLDOCS) SYNERGY is available on the major platform utilized by ERP system