News

Konica Minolta Partner With i2

Konica Minolta Business Solutions Australia Pty Ltd (Konica Minolta), a leading provider of advanced imaging and networking technologies for the desktop to the print shop, today announced their partnership with i2 Software's range of documents scanning and indexing applications.

"i2 Software offers a range of powerful yet easy to configure and use applications that fit perfectly within our solution portfolio" said Kylie Timmins, National Software Product Manager, Client Solutions Group from Konica Minolta Australia.

There is a growing need for businesses to scan and index their paperwork and incorporate this information into their systems. Konica Minolta's solution capability now means clients can scan large volumes of paperwork and sort, extract data and save the information with minimal user intervention. Not only can the information be used to name files but also create directory structures and output data to a range of databases and document management systems such as: Microsoft Sharepoint, DocNet and InVu. The result is processing paperwork in a fraction of the time and against the client's predefined business rules.

"We are very pleased to be part of the Konica Minolta partnership," said Andrew Wade, Director i2 Software. "This relationship will transform the way people deal with scanning and indexing of scanned documents within their business. Customers will quickly realise the benefits of our applications and Konica Minolta devices."

i2 Scan 2.6 Now Shipping

Version 2.6 of the much applauded i2 Scan Batch Scanning Application is now shipping.

Among other new features, this release includes a new Microsoft Sharepoint export connection option and the addition of the powerful extraction option to i2 Smart Seek - allowing for data to be extracted from documents where the region is inconsistent or unknown.

Conversion Server 1.1 Ships

i2 Software is pleased to announce the release of version 1.1 of i2's Document Conversion Server application.

Conversion Server provides the automated conversion of a wide range of file formats into a unified filename and file formats (including text searchable PDF) without requiring end user intervention.

The latest release version 1.1, adds some great new features including:

• Support for Separation Sheets: Now multiple documents can be scanned from your MFD (photocopier) in one batch.  Conversion server can detect the break in documents and create individual documents as a result of a single scan.
• Orientation Detection: i2 Conversion Server can now automatically detect and correct the orientation of pages while processing.
• Enhanced Blank Page Detection: We have increased the flexibility of the tolerance levels for detecting blank page. You now have greater ability to set the exact tolerance levels you require based on your unique needs.
• General improvements to Speed and Performance

If you are on a maintenance contract then your upgrade is free. Contact you local i2 dealer for details.

Murdoch Reclaims Office Space with i2 Scan

Western Australia's Murdoch University has more than 18,000 students and 1,400 staff from all over the world providing over 200 undergraduate degrees and postgraduate courses across a range of disciplines.

"We were faced with the challenge of regaining office space for renovations and University expansion," said Professor David Macey, Director Student Liaison & Recruitment. "We needed to find a solution to convert our tens of to thousands of paper records into electronic data. The scanning solution had to be flexible, allow for indexing according to our business rules and had to be easy to use".

After conducting research into what was available in the market we found i2 Scan presented us with the best fit. The process in creating jobs in i2 scan made the potentially daunting task of scanning and indexing thousands of documents quick and easy.

We created scanning cover sheets based on the data we wanted to capture. i2 Scan allowed us to bulk scan and automatically capture this meta data to name each file. The coversheet also acted as a document separator, so each time a cover sheet was scanned it acted as a trigger to create a new file. The meta data of the document was automatically OCR'd and visually validated on screen by an operator.

"We literally scanned millions of pages within weeks, the project ran quickly, easily and on time," said Ruth Brisbane, Division of Academic Affairs. "The hardest part of the entire project was removing the staples!".

Murdoch University has now reclaimed valuable office space for University renovations and have paper records in accessible named, text searchable PDFs. Over 14,000 physical documents (an estimated 3.5 million pages) are now available electronically freeing up valuable space.

i2 Scan 2.5 prepares for shipping

i2 Scan's latest release, version 2.5, offers several major productivity enhancements including the ability to auto-detect document types and route to the relevant job and a full automation mode for processing and exporting.

The document auto-detection feature reduces the need to separate documents into groups before scanning. "You can now scan mixed documents. For example accounts payable, sales orders and delivery slips can all be scanned at once" said Quentin Gribble, Director i2 Software. "i2 can detect these mixed documents and process them based on business rules without the need for pre-sorting". The ability to auto detect document types can greatly improve the time it takes to scan, index and output your scanned documents.

New features also include the ability to verify indexing values with a set confidence level. This means i2 can be minimised as a system tray item while it watches folders, extracts data and exports documents without any further user intervention. If confidence levels are not reached those docs can be retained in the job's folder for manual intervention. This new feature offers major advantages for the MFD / MFP market.
Trial CDs of i2 Scan are available upon request.

Smart Seek makes its entry

We continue to add features to our lead product; i2 Scan. In our latest release, version 2.4, i2 Scan includes the new Smart Seek functionality.

Smart Seek finds keywords within the Zones and Pages of your documents and then highlights and zooms into the region for the processor to locate information within the region. This feature can be particularly helpful when indexing unstructured documents. For example information such as ABN's, Invoice Numbers, GST amounts or Sub-Totals as these can be located anywhere on a page or document.

As a practical example, lets assume we had a pile of unstructured Accounts Payable invoices to be indexed. One of the fields of information that you may wish to retrieve might be the ABN of the supplier. To do this, simply add a zone to the i2 Job covering the area of the document that you think is likely to contain the ABN number (possibly the header section) or, if you are unsure, make the zone the size of the entire page. Now identify it as a Smart Seek zone within the Zone properties. Then enter ABN, A.B.N into the Smart Seek text field. That's it, your done!

Now, when you process your next bacth, i2 will first search for ABN and if it doesn't find it then search for A.B.N. Once either word is found on the page, the text is highlighted and the region around the text is zoomed. The processor is then easily able to locate the ABN number and use i2's Lasso tool to capture the number from the document's text.

For a demonstration of i2's Smart Seek feature, request a product demonstration through the website or contact one of i2's dealers.

i2 Searchable PDF Conversion Server

i2 has announced the development of a conversion server that will convert various image formats into text searchable pdf documents.

The product will sit resident in the background and convert any suitable files that are placed into designated folders. Coversion will include full OCR of any image based text contained within files while retaining the image layout and exact visual properties.

Andrew Wade, i2's Sales and Marketing Director said, "Although we believe that the i2 Scanning solution with its Text Searchable PDF module is complete in its own right, the i2 Conversion Server will add additional efficiencies and enable continuous profiling of documents without having to wait for batch export and conversion routines."

Release is expected in quater 4 of 2009. We will keep you up to date on the product's progress.

i2 Makes Batch Scanning Easy!

i2 makes scanning and profiling of large quantities of paper or digitised documents easy.

Developed after over 6 years of extensive discussions with the industry, the application allows for profiling of documents based on key from image, fixed zonal OCR, barcode and drag and drop OCR. This means scanned documents are able to be quickly and easily profiled right from the computer screen with minimal data entry.

Batch separator sheets means bulk scanning of documents, i2 detects job separator sheets and automatically create a new document file.

More importantly i2 can actively watch folders on a network, allowing for scanned documents from multiple sources including multi function devices.

Naming the documents as well as text files of the document data can be exported, allowing this powerful scanning application to be linked into your document management application.

Demonstrations of i2 can be arranged upon request.