• Colorado Division of Forestry.
• Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife.
• Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety.
• Colorado Division of Water Resources.
• Colorado Geological Survey.
• Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC).
• Colorado State Land Board.
• Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB).

According to Susan Lesovsky, Application Support Manager for the CWCB, the DNR purchased a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system in 2005 to replace a legacy IBM system that lacked an out-of-the box Web interface, optical character recognition (OCR) functionality and the ability to automate business processes. “Our old system was pretty much limited to search-and-retrieval,” she explains.

She notes that a top priority for implementing Laserfiche was making it easier for citizens to stay informed about government activities. “Ultimately, our customer is the public, and our success is measured on how we provide and process information for them,” Lesovsky says.

To that end, the DNR upgraded to Laserfiche Rio in 2009. According to Lesovsky, “Laserfiche Rio has allowed us to increase the transparency of information to the public, and it’s done it in such a way that we don’t have to worry about connections or cost.”

In particular, she describes the benefits of upgrading to Laserfiche Rio as:

• Greater public access to information through the WebLink Public Portal, which provides unlimited connections.
• Scalability through unlimited servers and volume discounts on user licenses to accommodate future growth.
• The bundled functionality of Web Access and Workflow.

Laserfiche Rio Enables Citizens to Cut through Red Tape

Lesovsky notes that Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper recently called for every department in state government to reduce red tape. Good government, he says, is characterized by “efficiency, effectiveness and elegance.”

“As one of only two recommended content management systems for the state, Laserfiche epitomizes all three E’s,” Lesovsky says.

She explains how easy it is for citizens to access documents such as the CWCB’s meeting documents:

• The current year’s materials are available on the Board’s Website in a table that provides direct links to PDFs stored in Laserfiche.
• Archived materials are accessible through a custom search box (created using the WebLink Designer) on the lower right side of same page or through this link.
• The custom search box is limited to three fields (title, date range and document type) to streamline access and reduce user confusion. (Custom search components have been included throughout the CWCB’s Website to help direct the public’s search for Board-related documents.)

Colorado’s Decision Support Systems Website also includes custom search boxes throughout its Website, such as the one at the top of this page that searches according to document type and a few other parameters, while a set of “Google-like” search results based on document type displays below thanks to an encoded URL string.

“We used the WebLink Designer to create custom searches because we noticed that our users would get overwhelmed when presented with a long list of templates and fields,” says Lesovsky. “Each custom search focuses on a particular program area or topic and uses a limited set of search criteria within the associated template.”

Quick, easy and efficient searches support Hickenlooper’s goal of driving the “three E’s” into government operations. Lesovsky explains, “In the past, people had to come to our offices to request information. Laserfiche WebLink provides a simple and elegant way for the public to get immediate access to the information they need whenever they need it.”

Integrations Make ECM “Mission-Critical”

By integrating Laserfiche WebLink with other software applications, the DNR has been able to make information even more accessible. For example, by integrating Laserfiche with ESRI ArcGIS, staff can click on a stream and retrieve associated court documents, while public users can quickly access information associated with flooding and flood hazards in the state.

To see the public-facing integration in action:

• Visit Colorado’s Flood Decision Support System page.
• Click on the Flood DSS Map Viewer.
• Agree to the disclaimer.
• Click the Documents tab in the top menu.
• Enter your search criteria in the pop-up window. For example, select:
  • Group: Historical Flooding.
  • Document: Historical flood photographs.
  • Type: Photographs.
• Hit the search button.
• A new window displays the results (produced on-the-fly by an encoded URL string) in a grid format.

It’s the integrations with applications like ESRI ArcGIS that make Laserfiche “mission-critical.” According to Lesovsky, “When you integrate Laserfiche with business-specific systems, you embed it into your existing workflow processes and it becomes integral to how you operate.”

ECM Enables Electronic Forms Processing

Laserfiche Rio has been a particularly effective ECM solution for the DNR because different divisions can configure it to meet their unique needs. For example, the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) uses Laserfiche to enable an eForm application that provides an interface for oil and gas operators to enter and submit permit forms and supporting documents. There are currently six active forms and three in development.

According to Ken Robertson, Application Developer for the COGCC, “Uploaded files are stored in our production Web server. Once the operators submit the form to our internal server, we export the attachments to Laserfiche.”

He explains that the public can view the files directly from the production Web server or wait until the files are imported to Laserfiche and use WebLink to access them. Furthermore, he outlines how the COGCC has used the Laserfiche SDK to create customized Laserfiche scripts and programs.

Robertson says, “For those attachments still sitting in our production Web server, we created a Windows service to check queued files in the Web server every 15 minutes and use the Laserfiche Toolkit [SDK] for .NET to import files to the Laserfiche repository server. In the meantime, we also collect the Laserfiche reference numbers in our attachment table so that system (eForm) can provide a WebLink download page for users to view the attachments.”

He notes that there is a separate application that allows oil and gas operators to upload well logs, which are imported into Laserfiche using Laserfiche Import Agent, a tool that captures and processes electronic documents. Scanning staff members use Laserfiche Quick Fields to index other types of electronic documents.

The biggest benefit of processing permits and well logs with Laserfiche is time. Robertson says, “We used to shuffle files from one person to another until they were approved, and then we scanned everything into the system. Having the operators upload their attachments to their documents saves an average of 15 minutes of scanning and indexing time for our staff, not to mention the time saved on data entry.”

He goes on to explain that having everything available electronically at the beginning of the process allows multiple people to work on the same forms simultaneously, further reducing processing time.

“Not only do we save time,” Robertson says, “but the approval process is now more transparent for the public.”

Lesovsky adds, “Laserfiche is powerful, flexible and easy to work with. Even though all our divisions use the same system, we can all use it a little differently.”

Looking Ahead

Lesovsky is particularly excited to use Laserfiche to harvest data across organizations. She explains that the CWCB has already conducted a feasibility study and has a grant in place to make it happen.

“Colorado State University has an ECM solution other than Laserfiche but a healthy collection of water information. The Colorado Water Resources Development & Power Authority and the Colorado River Water Conservation District currently use Laserfiche, with repositories of useful water documents. By hooking our systems together and using common metadata, we’ll be able to search for information across all four entities and gain a more complete picture of accessible water information in the state.”

She says that the DNR is also working on integrating Laserfiche and SharePoint. “Most of our divisions use SharePoint for their external Websites. Right now, people have to conduct separate searches if they want to find content stored in both Laserfiche and SharePoint. What we’re looking to do is enable searches that return results from both systems at the same time.”

All in all, she says, “Laserfiche Rio is a great tool. The bottleneck now is just finding the time to make it do everything we want it to do.”

Guidelines that apply:

• The promotion applies to both Avante upgrades for existing customers and new purchases for first-time buyers.
• New customers purchasing Web Access or Audit Trail and existing customers who use Web Access or Audit Trail in their systems will receive free software costs for Web Access and Audit Trail with their free licenses.
• All customers must purchase full-price LSAP coverage for new licenses.

This promotion is open to both domestic and international customers. Contact your VAR or account manager today!

Note: Since this is a preview, the details and appearances of certain elements may change between now and the final release.

The Web Access Metadata Pane in the Document Viewer enables you to view and edit a document’s fields, tags, linked groups, versions, and digital signatures, but you may want to do more with the metadata or view it in more space. Clicking the pop out button in the top right corner of the Metadata Pane (or right-clicking a document in the Folder Browser and selecting Metadata) opens the Metadata Viewer in the main portion of the screen.

The Metadata Viewer gives you all the options available in the Metadata Pane, plus the ability to compare version changes, view additional details or revert to specific versions and remove digital signatures. You can also choose how many columns you want fields displayed in, customize the toolbar (for fields, tags and links) and hide or display the Fields, Tags, Links, Version and Digital Signatures sections as needed. The Metadata Viewer opens in a new tab which allows you to navigate from the viewer to other panes quickly and more efficiently.

This promotion can be applied to:

• Team and United customers upgrading to an Avante system.
• Existing Avante customers who purchase five or more named users.

The Laserfiche Mobile app allows you to work with documents inside your Laserfiche repository as well as new information, providing access to whatever you need, wherever you are. Users can:

• Copy, move, rename, download, e-mail, print or delete content.
• Capture and upload new content with the iPhone camera.
• Participate in workflow automation processes by accessing metadata fields.

To learn more about Laserfiche Mobile™, be sure to watch our new, 15-minute Webinar, “Laserfiche Mobile™: ECM for the iPhone.”

Remember, Web Access LSAP must be purchased and there is no discount on LSAP. Users purchased after the promotion ends on September 30 must pay for Web Access software for those users. The promotion ends September 30, so contact your account manager today at (800) 985-8533.

Rather than implementing separate solutions for the clinical and non-clinical sides of the house, MCCMHS officials recognized that enterprise content management (ECM) would be the most efficient and cost-effective way to answer its document-related challenges.

ECM Supports EHR

MCCMHS’ search brought the organization to Jeff Nelson of Bolt Document Management, a Laserfiche reseller based in Elkhart, IN. “Initially the objective was for the Laserfiche system to act as a bridge between legacy information and future digital content,” Nelson remembers. “At the same time, implementation of Laserfiche allowed MCCMHS to address areas where working with paper was simply inefficient.”

In 2003 Pat Latimer, the former project manager, led the effort to implement a 118-user Laserfiche system in the agency’s centralized scanning bureau. Staff began migrating and adding patient histories and signature forms for use in conjunction with patient records, which were being generated from Avatar by Crystal Reports and then scanned into Laserfiche.

Dave McElfish, Director of Technology, says that although the original idea was for clinical staff to simultaneously access patient information from Laserfiche and the practice management system, “the reality was, even though we purchased Avatar with the idea of integrating it with Laserfiche, when we explored it further, it was going to be cost prohibitive on the Avatar side of the project.”

In the meantime, Laserfiche deployment had been extended to MCCMHS’s HR and finance departments, which likewise began migrating backfiles to ease storage costs and give staff the ability to retrieve information on command. System use has since grown to the point that the Laserfiche repository now houses over 800,000 documents.

More recently, McElfish says clinical staff have once again expressed interest in being able to access to information from Avatar and Laserfiche at the same time, even going so far as to revisit the idea of using Avatar’s add-on imaging module. “After much consideration, our clinical staff felt that would put us no further ahead in our goal for a true, single database to model our EHR from,” McElfish says. “The reality is that Laserfiche is designed to manage unstructured data, so in that respect it’s closer to that single database because we are able to include unstructured data, such as lab reports and doctor’s notes.”

Going Mobile

McElfish adds that MCCMHS has been speaking with Nelson and Bolt to explore ways to simplify and streamline how data is entered and accessed between Avatar and Laserfiche. McElfish says staff is especially encouraged by the release of Laserfiche Mobile, which could be used to grant clinical staff in the field comprehensive access to patient data via Web Access. He says several options are being considered, including taking advantage of the Laserfiche Q3 Promotion to upgrade the agency’s current system to Avante and receive Web Access (which is required to use the Laserfiche Mobile app) for free.

“We know that allowing staff to access information from Laserfiche on iPads in the field would be a huge boost in our productivity,” says McElfish.

An Avante upgrade would provide lot of potential for automation as well. McElfish notes that Nelson and Bolt have recently been discussing implementing distributed capture processes for paperless faxes and digital signatures via virtual rubberstamps, all routed by Workflow through the agency’s central scanning office for oversight.

Looking ahead, he is understandably pragmatic. “Although Laserfiche is not our primary practice management system, it represents a critical and necessary content management tool that complements Avatar.

“We’ll continue to have paper and documents that need signatures, and the simplest, most cost-effective way to incorporate them into our EMR strategy is to use Laserfiche. There are digital signature solutions and other options, but Laserfiche lets us use what we already have,” McElfish adds. “Our goal was and is to have a single database to model our EHR from, and Laserfiche has provided us with the portability and flexibility to move forward with that goal from a solid foundation.”

Until September 30, Laserfiche is providing free Laserfiche Web Access—which includes Laserfiche Mobile, Laserfiche Web Access Light (designed for Blackberry, Opera and Safari mobile browsers) and the Laserfiche SharePoint integration—for new Laserfiche Avante customers, existing Laserfiche Avante customers who purchase five or more named users and current customers who upgrade to Laserfiche Avante systems.

“More customers are using smartphones and tablets in the office, as well as for remote and mobile work,” said Tom Wayman, Laserfiche Vice President of Product Strategy. “Laserfiche Mobile provides a complete end-to-end solution that captures and controls mobile content—making it even simpler for users to get their jobs done, whether they’re in the office or the field.”

Laserfiche Web Access allows users to securely access, search and manage documents in their Laserfiche repository through a Web browser, from anywhere with Internet access. Laserfiche Mobile extends these remote access capabilities to the Apple iPhone, enabling users to:

• Create and upload new content with the iPhone camera.
• Automatically crop, straighten and enhance captured information, with full text recognition.
• Copy, move, rename, download, e-mail, print or delete content.
• Browse for documents in a folder structure or search the entire repository.
• Participate in workflow automation processes by accessing metadata fields.

Laserfiche Mobile, which includes a built-in demonstration, is available for free download from the Apple App Store. Users interested in the promotion can call a Laserfiche solutions specialist at (800) 985-8533 or e-mail info@laserfiche.com.

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while still offering business units the flexibility to respond quickly to changing conditions. The Laserfiche product suite is built upon Microsoft® technologies to simplify system administration, supports the Microsoft SQL platform and features a seamless integration with Microsoft Office® applications and a two-way integration with SharePoint®.

Laserfiche distributes its software through a worldwide network of value-added resellers (VARs), who tailor solutions to clients’ individual needs. The Laserfiche VAR program has received the Five-Star Rating from Computer Reseller News/VARBusiness magazine.

Laserfiche, Run Smarter and Compulink are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

“In today’s mobile world, being able to access information anywhere is critical, but federal agencies can’t afford to compromise security,” said Brian LaPointe, Vice President of Strategic Solutions at Laserfiche. “With Laserfiche Mobile, IT has the protection of a complete end-to-end solution that extends DoD 5015.2-certified records management all the way to mobile devices—while staff have the flexibility they want.”

At FOSE, Laserfiche will demonstrate how Laserfiche Mobile maintains governance, risk and compliance (GRC) standards for the mobile government workforce by:

• Managing records captured and accessed through Laserfiche Mobile with DoD 5015.2-certified records management functionality.
• Distributing capture while maintaining control over naming and filing conventions.
• Maintaining auditability over all system interactions, even if they take place on a mobile device.

With Laserfiche Mobile, users can:

• Create and upload new content with the iPhone camera.
• Automatically crop, straighten and enhance captured information, with full text recognition.
• Copy, move, rename, download, e-mail, print or delete content.
• Browse for documents in a folder structure or search the entire repository.
• Participate in workflow automation processes by accessing metadata fields.

Laserfiche Mobile, which includes a built-in demonstration, is available for free download from the Apple App Store. In order to accept connections from Laserfiche Mobile, Laserfiche Avante and Laserfiche Rio users with Web Access can download the free Laserfiche Mobile Add-On from the Laserfiche Support Site.

Laserfiche will be on hand at booth #1021 during the conference to demonstrate Laserfiche Mobile. During the show, orders placed for Laserfiche Avante systems of five users or more will receive free Laserfiche Web Access for the entire system, which includes Laserfiche Mobile and the Laserfiche Mobile Add-On.

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure while still offering business units the flexibility to react quickly to changing conditions. The Laserfiche product suite is built on top of Microsoft® technologies to simplify system administration, supports the Microsoft SQL platform and features a seamless integration with Microsoft Office® applications and a two-way integration with SharePoint®.

Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

Now until September 30, Laserfiche is providing FREE Web Access and Laserfiche Mobile—for all users—for:

• Team and United customers upgrading to an Avante system.
• Existing Avante customers who purchase five or more named users.

Laserfiche Web Access allows users to securely access, search and manage documents in their Laserfiche repository through a Web browser, from anywhere with Internet access. Laserfiche Mobile extends these remote access capabilities to the Apple iPhone, enabling users to:

• Create and upload new content with the iPhone camera.
• Automatically crop, straighten and enhance captured information, with full text recognition.
• Copy, move, rename, download, e-mail, print or delete content.
• Browse for documents in a folder structure or search the entire repository.
• Participate in workflow automation processes by accessing metadata fields.

Note that Web Access LSAP must be purchased and that there is no discount on LSAP. Users purchased after the promotion ends on September 30 must pay for Web Access software for those users.

To take advantage of the promotion, contact your account manager at (800) 985-8533.

At the same time, Chelsea had been experiencing what Hyland terms “a slowdown” with some departments—IT and the Inspectional Services Department (ISD) among them—facing staff reductions of up to 15–25%. For Joseph Cooney, Director of Inspectional Services, servicing the FOIA/public records requests his department received every week from real estate agents and lawyers was affecting overall service levels. “We’re down enough staff that to devote one or two people to spend a whole day finding and copying paperwork to fulfill requests was just brutal,” says Cooney.

Filling a need, launching a vision

In 2009, Chelsea IT and ISD combined efforts to go before the Chelsea City Council to propose implementing an enterprise content management (ECM) system to address the problem. “It was a pretty easy sell,” recalls Hyland. His vision was to acquire a system that eventually all departments would use, with ISD leading the way. “ISD had the immediate need and the 100-year-old documents that made the case for digitization that drove the project.”

Out of the three vendor responses to the city’s RFP, it was the Laserfiche Avante ECM system proposed by Mike McDonough of area reseller Duplitron that met all the city’s requirements the most cost-effectively. “Several cities in our area were also already using Laserfiche,” Hyland notes. Faced with his own staff reductions, Hyland was especially encouraged by the idea of using Web Access to deploy, administer and eventually expand the system. “We have a virtualized environment, so the Web-based client made the most sense for us,” Hyland says. “The less desktop installation we need, the more resourceful it is for my staff, and Web-based deployment means more users can use the system from any browser in our intranet.”

For his part, Cooney was won over when Chelsea’s Deputy City Manager, a resident of neighboring city Peabody, showed him how that city’s Laserfiche Web Portal made public information instantly searchable and available from its website. “He literally typed in his name and every document came with his name in it came up right away. I was like, ‘That’s awesome. I’m sold.’”

Searchable, viewable, sendable

In April of 2009, the city purchased a 10-user Laserfiche Avante system with Import Agent and Web Access. Initial deployment targeted the ISD’s overflowing storerooms. Cooney’s staff began scanning in the 45 filing cabinets of building, electrical, zoning, etc. inspections, ranging from bulky legal size file jackets to 3×5 cards. Laserfiche in turn made all the documents, regardless of size, age or number of pages, immediately searchable by address and viewable as a series of thumbnail images. The improvement for Cooney and his staff was immediate. “We could literally be on the phone with a request, type in the address, ask, ‘What’s your email?’ And ‘Boom, boom, boom, see ya later’—it’s sent and done,’” says Cooney. “All our inspection notices coming in now are scanned in. We’re not bogged down at all.”

Building on the ISD’s initial success, deployment has followed to the City Clerk’s office, which has merged with the Licensing office to further consolidate and optimize departmental functions and systems. Planned implementations include the city’s Law Department, which, like ISD two years ago, has nowhere to go but the attic of City Hall with its file cabinet overflow. Hyland expects more to follow. “We envisioned the system to be something more and more departments will be using,” he says, noting that this makes sense not only from an IT resource perspective, but also in terms of establishing a single point of control for governance. “Our next step would be to securely open up our information to the community.”

Turning ‘physical ROI’ into a practical framework for increased efficiency and governance

To that end, Chelsea is considering a potential upgrade to Laserfiche Rio, which would include a WebLink Public Portal, similar to the one used in neighboring Peabody. With the ISD success as a cornerstone, he says, the idea at least has a fighting chance. “The reality is that using Laserfiche has given us a ‘physical ROI’ in terms of getting rid of hundreds of filing cabinets, so we have that foundation and momentum to work from.” With modest IT resources and city staff often wearing many hats (City Clerk Deborah Clayman also serves as de facto Records Manager, for instance), a Rio upgrade would offer Chelsea bite-sized benefits of an ECM strategy (incremental deployment/licensing; increased governance; simplified records management; test server environments) without the city—or Hyland’s modest staff—biting off more than they can chew.

The possibilities are many—from simply having a single, centralized repository for documents generated by all city departments to replacing its current PDF-based online documents available with links to view documents (with appropriate redactions) right from subdirectories in the Laserfiche repository. There are also other potential projects, from image-enabling the Police Department’s CAD/RMS system through its current SharePoint deployment to linking the city’s cloud-based GIS system to the centralized Laserfiche repository. Hyland is as hopeful as he is realistic. “Right now our concept of ‘workflows’ are limited to file-sharing,” he says. “But I think when once we get all the departments online, we’ll be able talk about how that will work for us and what ECM can do project by project.”

• Laserfiche Mobile: After you download the app from the Apple App Store, tap OK at the welcome screen. On the login page, slide the Demo Mode button to ON, and tap Log in. This will open the demo repository, which contains numerous folders and documents you can work with. It even contains a New Documents folder where you can upload your own images, though Laserfiche makes no guarantee of permanent, long-term storage and will clear out the workspace periodically.
• Web Access: To work with a demo repository in Web Access, go to http://atlantis.laserfiche.com/laserfiche8/, where you will be automatically logged in as an end-user account. Note that you cannot import documents into this repository, but you can work with documents (e.g., annotate, change metadata) and export them.
• WebLink: To work with a demo repository in our WebLink public portal, go to http://atlantis.laserfiche.com/weblink8/ and search for a term (e.g., Laserfiche, quick, etc.). Note that this WebLink installation is configured for searching only.

These resources should make it easier on you when you want to preview the functionality of our Web-based and mobile applications. For more information, see the help files linked in each product.

“Laserfiche Mobile gives you the freedom to do everything you can do in your office from wherever you are, empowering you to work smarter and more efficiently,” said Tom Wayman, Laserfiche Vice President of Product Strategy. “In this day and age, you shouldn’t have to be tied to your office because all your information is locked away in paper files or the approvals you need are still based on paper processes.”

Laserfiche Mobile takes advantage of the iPhone’s touch screen, gesture recognition and high resolution interface to provide an immersive user experience. With Laserfiche Mobile, users can:

• Create and upload new content with the iPhone camera.
• Automatically crop, straighten and enhance captured information, with full text recognition.
• Copy, move, rename, download, e-mail, print or delete content.
• Browse for documents in a folder structure or search the entire repository.
• Participate in workflow automation processes by accessing metadata fields.

“Laserfiche Mobile significantly changes content capture,” Wayman added. “For twenty-five years, Laserfiche has invested heavily in the development of innovative ways to capture information as quickly and efficiently as possible, with patented PhotoDocs™ photograph processing technology, lightweight Web interfaces and, now, an iPhone app that extends Laserfiche to one of today’s most popular mobile devices.”

Laserfiche Mobile, which includes a built-in demonstration, is available for free download from the Apple App Store. Laserfiche Mobile operates with Laserfiche Web Access as a part of Laserfiche Avante and Laserfiche Rio systems. To accept connections from Laserfiche Mobile, Laserfiche users can download the free add-on, Laserfiche Mobile Add-On, from the Laserfiche Support Site.

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while still offering business units the flexibility to react quickly to changing conditions. The Laserfiche product suite is built on top of Microsoft® technologies to simplify system administration, supports Microsoft SQL and Oracle® platforms and features a seamless integration with Microsoft Office® applications and a two-way integration with SharePoint®.

Laserfiche® and Run Smarter® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

• Aspire Zone Foundation: Qatar’s largest athletic foundation chose Laserfiche over competing FileNet, Documentum and Ever Team solutions. Itqan was chosen to implement a 100-user Rio system for all five of Aspire’s companies after showing Aspire how easily Rio could integrate with existing line-of-business applications.
• Qatar Financial Markets Authority: Laserfiche was chosen as the ECM standard for the agency—which oversees the nation’s securities exchange—due to Laserfiche’s localized Arabic interface and extensive SDK.
• Lekhwiya (Qatari Royal Internal Security Force): After a six-month sales campaign, Lekhwiya chose Laserfiche Avante with Web Access to standardize reports and provide secure, remote access to records.

According to Mustafa Siddiqui, Head of Applications and Laserfiche Solutions, the sales increase has resulted from adopting a more consultative sales methodology. “Our success this year has come from positioning Laserfiche as the flexible, scalable ECM solution that adapts to meet an organization’s specific and changing needs,” Siddiqui says.

He mentions the Aspire Zone Foundation Rio project that will replace Aspire Logistics’ legacy Primavera Expedition construction management system while utilizing 10 workflows and establishing an ECM infrastructure. “We’re looking to close another 1,000 licenses in Q2,” Siddiqui adds.

The success has been good for Laserfiche’s profile in Qatar. “FileNet has traditionally been the prominent EDMS player, but we’re proving how relevant the Laserfiche Agile ECM messaging is to the market here,” he says. With the support of Muath Khatatbeh, CEO of parent company Itqan Holding, Siddiqui’s team added staff to establish its own separate Laserfiche division last quarter.

The integration takes advantage of a variety of Laserfiche 8.2’s new features, including:

• Enhanced PDF support, including native page and text generation.
• Dynamic fields and metadata.

It also adds support for the Laserfiche Web Access thin client and Laserfiche WebLink public portal.

The integration was developed under the Laserfiche Professional Developer Partnership™ (PDP) program, which provides customers access to a variety of third-party integrations, configurations, plug-ins and Web tools. LincWare has been a member of the program since 2008.

“LincDoc delivers tremendous value for Laserfiche customers that are looking at enhancing their systems through document automation and electronic forms,” said Alex Wilson, director of the Laserfiche PDP program. “We appreciate having partners like LincWare who give Laserfiche customers excellent options for extending and expanding their Laserfiche systems.”

With LincDoc, users can automate common documents and forms and connect them instantly to Laserfiche. Documents can then be routed using Laserfiche Workflow business process management and managed using Laserfiche’s fully integrated Department of Defense 5015.2-certified records management functionality. LincDoc also has a native iPad application that allows users to capture forms and data, which are transmitted automatically to Laserfiche.

“LincWare is proud to offer a premiere solution that combines our flexible eForm and document automation tools with Laserfiche’s industry-leading enterprise content management capabilities,” said Darren Mathes, CEO of LincWare. “Since both Laserfiche and LincWare are dedicated to improving enterprise efficiency, our partnership is a natural fit.”

About Laserfiche:
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

Laserfiche launched the Professional Developer Partnership (PDP) program in 2007 to democratize content management by allowing customers to benefit from the customizations, configurations and integrations designed by more than 75 PDP partners. Leveraging the experience and creativity of PDP partners helps customers create ECM solutions that are best suited to their unique needs.

Laserfiche® and Run Smarter® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

About LincWare:
LincDoc’s eForm creation and document automation tools empowers businesses and organizations to better serve their customers and constituents, reduce costs and better leverage bottom line critical information. LincDoc is available in the cloud, and on-premise, and on devices like the Apple iPad. For more information visit www.lincware.com.

• Kaplan International Centers. AMI leveraged PDP partner Cambridge Conections’s Docs-on-the-Cloud to develop a 200-user Rio pilot system for the Fortune 500 company, beating out a competing CompuThink solution.
• City of San Luis Obispo. The reseller recently added Web Access to a 100-user Avante system as part of an ongoing implementation that includes EnerGov and ESRI GIS integrations.
• Northrop Grumman. AMI is completing a MSSQL-to-Oracle server upgrade and utilizing the Laserfiche SDK to complete customizations for the aerospace company.

According to President George Bandarian II, the increase in sales is the direct result of “embracing” Laserfiche agile ECM messaging to successfully present function-rich solutions with the flexibility to grow with a customer’s business. “We don’t sell ‘document management,’” says Bandarian. “Everything we talk about is related to process optimization.”

Bandarian adds that AMI has supported this message by promoting staff to Technical Support Specialist positions. As a result, AMI has become more competitive as an ECM provider, as evidenced by the success of the Kaplan International Centers project.

“We utilized PDP partner Docs-On-the-Cloud to implement a cloud-based pilot implementation to satisfy the company’s UK IT Director,” he says. “With the encouragement of Kaplan’s U.S. IT Director, we were then able to show his counterparts in Australia, New Zealand and Canada that Rio’s scalability made it the most efficient and cost-effective way to implement a global ECM standard for managing international student records and automating student onboarding.

“Our success is being able to create partnerships with our customers so they ultimately choose the best Laserfiche ECM solution for their needs,” Bandarian adds.

For example, Emma works in her company’s shipping department. Every week she searches for all entries that have blank field values for the Shipping Date and Shipping Address fields and fills in the missing information. Rather than opening the Search Pane and typing the advanced search syntax for these searches, she uses the syntax to create a custom Quick Search that she can quickly access every week.

The following instructions are for Web Access, but you can configure a custom Quick Search in the Laserfiche Client as well.

To create a custom quick search:

1. Click the down arrow to the right of the Quick Search and select Customize Quick Searches.
   
   

   

2. In the Customize Quick Searches dialog box, click Create.
3. In the New Quick Search Item dialog box, enter a name for your new custom Quick Search and click OK.
4. Ensure the new search is selected in the Custom Searches list. In the Search Query textbox, type the advanced search syntax for your search, using the token %(Search Term) to substitute for the search terms users will eventually provide in the Quick Search bar.
   
   

   

   Example: Emma needs to search for blank field values in different fields. The advanced search syntax for searching for blank values in a particular field is {[]:[fieldname]=””}. Because she will provide the field name as her search term when she searches, she replaces fieldname with the search term token, %(Search Term), in the syntax. With this substitution, the syntax reads {[]:[%(Search Term)]=””}. If Emma types Shipping Date into this search, the syntax passed is {[]:[Shipping Date]=””}. This will return all documents that have an empty Shipping Date field.

   Note: The %(Search Term) token can be used more than once in the saved search syntax. All of the instances of this token will be replaced with the search term the user enters.

   

5. Click Save Changes. Your custom search will now appear in the Quick Search drop-down menu.

• This release of the Laserfiche Server, Client and Web Access includes the latest fixes and performance enhancements, as well as new features such as dynamic fields, enhanced PDF support including native page and text generation, text and dynamic stamps, and improved search options.
• Laserfiche Records Management Edition now includes the full set of 5015.2 revision 3 certification functionality, including several new cutoff instructions, more flexible handling of individual records, briefcase export support and full support via Web Access.
• Laserfiche 8.2 also includes fixes and enhancements to the Laserfiche Administration Console, Snapshot, Scanning, PhotoDocs, the Office Plug-in and Audit Trail, as well as full online help files.

Next steps:

1. Get more information about the release, including the complete list of enhancements and download links.
2. Read the release notes for the Laserfiche 8.2 Client and Server.
3. Read the release notes for Laserfiche Web Access 8.2.
4. Visit support.laserfiche.com for videos, forums, Knowledge Base articles, and more.

At Empower 2011, it was clear that the Laserfiche community understands the strength inherent in numbers. It was our largest conference ever, attracting 1,400 attendees in the form of VARs, customers, prospects, analysts, reporters and Laserfiche employees.

“In 2010, the members of the Laserfiche community showed real ingenuity and creativity in their use of agile ECM. We’re delighted by their achievements and honored they made the effort to attend the conference to share the secrets of their success with their peers,” said Nien-Ling during her keynote speech.

Reflecting on the Community’s Success in 2010

During the conference, many Laserfiche customers shared the amazing results agile ECM has helped them achieve. Here are just a few of the highlights:

• Using WebLink, the Long Beach Police Department has strengthened its gang injunction program. In 2010, gang-related murders in Long Beach were down 53.8% and gang shootings decreased by 13.5%. Jonathan Stafford, Administrator of LBPD’s Records & Technology Division, said, “Laserfiche allows us to deliver information to officers in the field in as few clicks as possible. The impact on gang activity has been huge.”
• Using Laserfiche, Durham County, NC, will reduce Workers’ Comp claims by millions of dollars over the next few years. “Because staff no longer has to transport heavy files to court or move heavy boxes to retrieve closed files, the risk for injuries, particularly back injuries, has been greatly reduced. Laserfiche will potentially mitigate Workers’ Compensation claims by millions in the next few years,” explained Nina Bullock, Administrative Assistant to the County Attorney.
• Pulte Mortgage, meanwhile, enables business continuity during harsh Colorado winters by giving its loan processors anywhere access to information using Web Access. “In the past, if we heard a snowstorm was coming, we’d move all the paper loan files that were due to close to a hotel and house our processors there until the storm had passed,” said CIO Gary Ives. “Giving them access to the information they need from home saves money and energy.”

In addition to individual organizations’ successes, the community as a whole had a productive year. The number of Laserfiche Luminaries expanded by 25%, the number of customer-led user groups multiplied to 30, and more than 15,500 people attended 385 Webinars over the course of the year. Nearly 50% of the top digital cities and counties in America are Laserfiche users, and hundreds of people have already certified their content management expertise through the Laserfiche Certified Professional Program.

Laserfiche itself had a busy year, supporting the launch of Laserfiche Strategic Services Canada, expanding its offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai, releasing Laserfiche 8.2 and a new integration with Salesforce.com, and becoming the first (and, so far, only) ECM provider to achieve DoD 5015.2 certification for its integration with SharePoint 2010.

Looking Ahead

For Laserfiche, 2011 will be another year of growth. We’ll soon be opening a new domestic office, as well as sharpening our focus on Latin America and continuing to empower LFI’s success in the Pacific Rim.

In terms of the product roadmap, our developers are currently working on:

• Ensuring that Laserfiche provides a seamless mobile experience with innovations like the Laserfiche iPhone app.
• Expanding the number of pre-built activities included with Workflow.
• Making Laserfiche 8.3 compliant with Australia’s VERS certification requirements.

As she came to the end of her keynote speech, Nien-Ling quoted Winston Churchill: “We now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.”

Chuck Beard, president of DynaSource, credits a year-long sales strategy leveraging the high-visibility success of its Spindletop Mental Health and Retardation Services account (which uses Laserfiche and SharePoint to support its Anasazi EMR system) with closing the deal.

“We put our efforts into making the Spindletop account the best it could be—for the client and for us,” says Beard. This meant spending early 2010 expanding Spindletop’s use of Laserfiche to several non-clinical departments (HR, Accounting, Admissions, etc.) using Quick Fields, Workflow and Web Access.

Beard points out that a major catalyst for the sale to ETBHN was a presentation given by Spindletop CIO Jerry Carnley to a statewide group of 40 CIOs in June. “He had the enthusiasm and tenacity to say ‘Here’s what we’ve done, we need to get this out to everybody,’” Beard explains.

ETBHN spent the summer assessing solutions before choosing to adopt Rio—and the Laserfiche/SharePoint integration—for all its agencies in late December. “ETBHN wanted a standardized application for each department that would offer standardized deployment across locations,” Beard explains. “Out of multiple competitors, Laserfiche was the only one with a single point of contact to access patient records through SharePoint.”

Beard is confident DynaSource can continue to build on this exponential success in 2011. “We used to focus on implementing cookie-cutter solutions; this is more like whole bakeries,” he says. “Spindletop represented not only a county-wide opportunity, but one that’s now regional, statewide and, ultimately, national in scope.”

Mergers and acquisitions account for much of SEPT’s growth, but innovation, says Dominic Malvern, Head of Information Systems Development, accounts for much of its ongoing success. “It’s never been a stereotypical government ‘Mental Health Organization,” Malvern says.

In fact, when SEPT transitioned from a purely state-funded trust to a more privatized “Foundation Trust,” one of its primary initiatives was to partner with Adobe to develop an EMR system using its LiveCycle products supported by a Laserfiche ECM system from Laserfiche reseller ScanDoc/Fortus. Malvern saw the chance to hit the ground running with a pilot project in the trust’s Forensic Services Department, which was moving to a new building as part of a modernization program.

“It was the ideal opportunity for us to modernize how our live patient records were accessed, as it was apparent that continuing with a manual process was not in keeping with the state of the art service we provide to our patients,” he says. That process, he adds, had remained manual by default because the legacy imaging system in Forensics didn’t meet the Trust requirement for working with live patient records.

“A single patient record could run for several years, sometimes through a person’s entire adult life, so it would extend into several volumes,” he explains. “Constant patient monitoring meant frequent updates to records for many reasons such as observation or treatment plans, sometimes every 15 minutes.”

A Pilot That Needed To Fly 24-7

When choosing a department to establish proof-of-concept before deploying a full-scale EMR system, SEPT couldn’t have chosen a more challenging one than Forensics Services—or one in which the impact of a successful ECM implementation would be so pronounced.

Malvern worked with ScanDoc’s Steve Livermore to implement a Laserfiche pilot system for active patient records management system using:

• Quick Fields advanced capture to input, sort and file the steady stream of patient information.
• Workflow to automatically route information for reviews, approval and distribution.
• Web Access to allow both remote deployment and access to the system over SEPT’s broad geographic service area and affiliated agencies.

SEPT implemented a clinical pilot project in 2009 and, over the course of a year, the new system kept up with the staff’s round-the-clock demands, amassing over 500,000 documents in the Laserfiche repository in the process.

Malvern says the real breakthrough operationally was having a system aligned with the increasing need for information sharing between regional service offices. “Increasingly we have to work on a multi-disciplinary and multi-agency basis, so having shared but secure access to patient records and notes is vital,” he says.

From an IT perspective, Web Access gave the organization one more tool to centrally control system administration while capitalizing on Laserfiche’s flexibility to configure various access levels remotely.

“Being able to deploy the system through our server or using Web browser options allowed us to control the type of access we wanted to make available,” says Malvern. “Web-based deployment is key because of the ease of maintenance when working with such a large group of users. Updates and upgrades would be unwieldy to deploy with a large number of single desktop clients.”

Going from EMR to ECM Saves $1.5M

The vision to extend Laserfiche from its supporting role in SEPT’s EMR project to a full-scale ECM deployment came with the support of ScanDoc/Fortus’ Livermore, who helped Malvern make the case to SEPT’s directors to implement Laserfiche for the trust’s non-clinical side.

“Once I heard the directors were looking at other solutions, and knowing what Laserfiche was capable of, it seemed a waste to restrict its application to purely clinical processes,” says Malvern. “Of course, it seemed an even bigger waste to spend further public money on more software that would be superfluous when we had a perfectly good system that would likely be better than anything else on the market.”

Now moving ahead with full-scale deployment of its Rio system to what will eventually be 3,000+ users, SEPT is effectively standardizing its information management on Laserfiche, eliminating the need for multiple departmental systems—and their corresponding service agreements and upgrades.

“Initially Laserfiche was envisaged solely as a clinical and medical records solution, but we have now realized that it can be a complete multi-functional document management system for the whole organization,” he says.

“We’ve begun implementation in non-clinical areas such Human Resources and Finance, as well as Vehicle Service Management, where we’re using Quick Fields and Workflow to automate our lease applications.” Additionally, another major project is underway to use Laserfiche to meet Information Governance Corporate Records retention regulations.

“From a roll-out prospective, it makes life much easier to have one multi-tasking system that all employees are trained on no matter what their function. It makes live support a far more streamlined and efficient activity,” he explains.

Malvern says the efficiency—and cost-savings—are starting to add up. “Within 18 months to two years we’ll be able to replace all our legacy imaging systems with Laserfiche. Implementing Laserfiche and its enterprise licensing enables SEPT to discontinue several annual contracts and service agreements. It also delivers savings on labor and print costs for information requests, as well as paper document archive and retrieval services. Realistically, this will save us US$1.5 million over the next three fiscal years,” he says.

Note: Since this is a preview, the details and appearances of certain elements may change between now and the final release.

Page Count

You can limit your search results to return documents that contain a specific number of pages or that fall within a certain page range. For example, you can return documents that have exactly three pages, more than three pages, less than three pages or that fall between three and five pages.

To perform a Page Count search, open the Search Pane, click Customize Search and select Pages.

Selecting Multiple Folders to Search Through or Exclude

You can limit your search results by searching within multiple folders inside your repository. For example, Roger wants to look through medical records that only Susan scanned into Laserfiche. He performs a Created By search for Susan, but quickly realizes there are too many results to sort through. To narrow his results, he adds a Within Folder search and searches within the Medications and Test Results folders to return only the medication and test result records that were scanned by Susan.

You can also use the Within Folder search to exclude one or more folders when you run a search. For example, test results are organized by month inside the Test Results folder. You want to search for all test results in 2010, with the exception of those scanned in September and November. Add the Test Results folder to the Within Folder search and select within from the drop down menu. Then, add the September and November folders and select not in from the drop down menu. This will search through the Test Results folder for every month in 2010 except September and November.

To search within multiple folders, open the Search Pane, click Customize Search and select Within Folder.

Electronic File Size

In addition to searching for documents that have electronic files associated with them, you can also specify the electronic file size in bytes (B), kilobytes (KB) or megabytes (MB). For example, Lesley can search for documents that have electronic files associated with them and that are smaller than one megabyte in size.

To search for electronic files that are less than, exactly or more than a specific size, click Customize Search and select Electronic Files.

Note: These search enhancements will also be available in Web Access 8.2.

When used in conjunction with a Web Access URL, login profiles allow you to grant whoever clicks on your URL access to your repository as a predetermined user. This enables you to control the type of access and security rights that people who use your URL will have when they click on it. You can modify any Web Access URL to include a login profile by attaching the &profile=profilename syntax string (where profilename is the name of a login profile you have created) immediately after the name of your Laserfiche repository. For example, the general syntax structure for a URL that will display a particular folder in the Folder Browser is:

http://servername/laserfiche8/index.aspx?db=database#id=id;view=browser

• servername is the name of the server where Web Access is installed.
• database is the name of your Laserfiche repository.
• id is the folder’s entry id number.

If you want to modify this URL to include a login profile, the URL would have the general form:

http://servername/laserfiche8/index.aspx?db=database&profile=profilename#id=id;view=browser

Login profiles are especially useful if you want to create URLs that grant generic access to people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to your repository. For example, Roanoke & Brown Insurance wants to use Web Access as a portal for its customers to upload their claims information to its repository. However, the repository also contains internal company records and other information that Roanoke wants to keep its customers from accessing.

To satisfy both of these functions, Jim, the company’s Laserfiche administrator, begins by creating a generic Laserfiche trustee with limited security and entry access rights that will serve as the user login for every customer who accesses the repository. He also adds a login profile named “Customer” to the repository that links with this generic user. Jim creates a Folder Browser URL that will take customers directly to the folder where they can upload their claims information. Along with the appropriate Roanoke server and database names, he attaches the login profile syntax to create the URL:

http://Roanoke/laserfiche8/index.aspx?db=RoanokeInsurance&profile=Customer#id=2019;view=browser

When a customer clicks on the link, he or she will be automatically logged in to Web Access as the generic “Customer” user without being prompted for login credentials. Moreover, the customer will be brought directly to the appropriate folder, and will only have access to the entries explicitly granted to the generic user account.

• For steps to create a login profile, see Profiles in the Web Access Help files.
• For more information on Web Access URL linking, see the URL Linking in Web Access 8.1 white paper on the Laserfiche Support Site.

Laserfiche administrators can view a user’s effective feature rights and privileges in the Laserfiche Administration Console. Feature rights control which actions are available to that user through Laserfiche client applications, such as the ability to print, scan, import, or export. Privileges grant the ability to perform administrative operations and to bypass certain regular security elements. If security settings are managed through groups, those settings will not necessarily be indicated in top of the Rights tab of a particular user’s profile. However, if you click View in the Effective Rights section, a dialog box appears that shows the user’s effective feature rights and privileges based on their group memberships. If the user belongs to multiple groups, you can click on a specific feature right or privilege to see which group or groups granted it. In addition, you can view effective rights for an item, such as a volume, template, or field, by right-clicking on that item and selecting All Tasks and Security. In the View Effective Rights tab, you can select a Laserfiche trustee or domain account to view that user’s effective rights for the item. 

In the Laserfiche Client or Web Access, users with the appropriate rights or privileges can see the security settings for a particular entry by right-clicking on a document or folder and selecting Access Rights. Entry access rights control the ability to view or modify specific elements in the repository. In the Entry Access dialog box, the Access Rights tab indicates the rights available on that document or folder by group and their scope and inheritance through the folder structure in the repository. The Effective Rights tab displays the effective rights on that document or folder for a given user or group based on the inheritance shown in the Access Rights tab. By default, the effective rights are shown for the Current Connection, which means the user you are logged in as. Click Choose to browse (in the Client) or search (in Web Access) other users and view their effective rights.

Whether a user can view these entry access rights is determined by some of the effective rights discussed here. To view the entry acess rights for a particular item, a user will need either the Read Entry Security access right on that entry (which can be applied through inheritance, including from the repository root), or the powerful Manage Entry Access privilege throughout the repository.

To configure Windows authentication settings for Web Access

1. Open the Web Access Configuration Page.

2. Under the Repositories section, select the repository you want to configure and click Edit.

3. Under Connection Options, select:

• Prompt for Laserfiche credentials to allow users to enter their Windows credentials in the form Domain\Username. This option will still allow users to log in with Laserfiche and/or LDAP accounts.
• Prompt for Windows domain credentials to allow users to enter their Windows credentials without having to specify the domain first. This option will NOT allow users to log in with Laserfiche and/or LDAP accounts.
  Note: After you have selected this option and clicked Save, the Select a login domain dialog will be displayed. Enter the domain users will log in to so they do not have to specify it at login. If no domain is specified, your Connection Options setting will default to Prompt for Laserfiche credentials.
• Auto-login using integrated Windows authentication to allow users to be automatically logged in to the repository using the same Windows credentials used to log in to their computer or network.

4. After selecting your connection setting, configure Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows authentication:

Note: The following settings are configured by default when you install Web Access 8.1 fresh. However, if you are upgrading from a prior version, or if you find Windows Authentication is not working, you may need to use the steps below to properly configure IIS.

• Open IIS and select the Web Access virtual directory. By default, it will be named Laserfiche 8 and located under Default Web Site in the Web Sites folder.
• If you are using IIS 6:

Right-click the Laserfiche8 folder and select Properties.

Select the Directory Security tab, and under Anonymous access and authentication, click Edit.

In the Authentication Method dialog, select the Anonymous access checkbox if you are configuring for the Prompt for Laserfiche credentials or Prompt for Windows domain credentials connection options. Select the Integrated Windows authentication checkbox if you are configuring for the Auto-login using integrated Windows authentication option.

• If you are using IIS 7 or 7.5:

Double-click Authentication in the center pane.

In the Authentication Configuration Pane, enable Anonymous Authentication if you are configuring for the Prompt for Laserfiche credentials or Prompt for Windows domain credentials connection options. Enable Windows Authentication if you are configuring for the Auto-login using integrated Windows authentication option.
Note: If you do not see the Windows Authentication option, make sure the Windows Authentication feature is installed on your copy of IIS.

5. Optional: If you have selected the Auto-login using integrated Windows authentication option, and your Laserfiche Server and Web Access Server are running on different machines, you will need to configure Kerberos to handle the auto-logins. For information on how to configure Kerberos for Web Access, see the Configuring Kerberos guided help video on the Laserfiche Support Site.

Note: In addition to the above steps, if you have not already done so, you will also need to add Windows domain users and/or groups to your repository and grant them Trusted status. These settings can be configured in the Laserfiche Administration Console. For more information, see the Laserfiche Administration Guide.

Batch import is especially useful when importing groups of documents that will be stored in the same location in the repository and/or contain the same metadata. For example, Sarah works in her company’s Human Resources department and during the busy recruiting season she imports over 100 employment applications a day. For each document, she needs to provide a document name that includes the day’s date, as well as assign it an “Employment Application” template and a “Needs Review” tag. Rather than import the applications one by one and then assign the necessary information on a per document basis, she can use batch import to load the files and apply the metadata to every file in the group.

To import multiple documents at once:

• Navigate to the folder where you want to import the files, and select Import from the File menu.
• In the Import Files dialog box, click Browse.

• Make sure that All Files (*.*) is selected under Files of type. Browse to the files you want to import, select one, and click Open.

  

  Note: You can only open one file at a time using the Choose File to Upload dialog box. Repeat steps 2-3 as necessary until you have opened all of the files you want to import.

• Click Start Import.
• Optional: In the Importing Document dialog box, configure the following:
  • Verify or change the document name in the Name textbox.
  • Under the General tab, verify the folder location where the files will be imported and, if necessary, change it. Select the volume where your documents will be stored.
  • Under the Fields tab, select the templates and/or fields you want to assign to your documents, and enter any values in the fields.
  • Under the Tags tab, assign any tags you want to associate with your documents.
  • Select the Apply all these properties to all documents imported in this batch checkbox to apply all of the above options you configured to every file.

  

  Note: If you select the Apply all these properties to all documents imported in this batch checkbox but do not alter the document name in the Name textbox, all of the documents in the batch will retain their original names, unless you have configured a default name for imported documents in the Autoname section under New Documents in the Settings dialog box.

Note: If one of the files you are importing is an e-mail message, two additional tabs (Attachments and Distribution List) will be available to configure. For more information on how to configure the options in these tabs, see the Import E-mails section of the Web Access help files.

• Click Next to import the files.Note: If you did not select the Apply all these properties to all documents imported in this batch checkbox, the Importing Documents dialog box will open again and you will be asked to configure the options in step 5 for the next file.

E-mail Pages

With Web Access 8.1, we have given users greater flexibility when e-mailing documents, allowing you to select individual pages from a Laserfiche imaged document to include with your message.

Note: You cannot e-mail individual pages of an electronic document.

To e-mail a page or pages from an imaged document:

• Display the document’s thumbnails in either the Preview Pane or the Document Viewer.
• Select the thumbnails of the pages you want to e-mail. To select more than one page, hold CTRL while selecting thumbnails.
• Right-click the thumbnails and select Send Pages in E-mail.

Note: The Send Pages in E-mail option is available only if the settings in the E-mail section of the Web Access Configuration Page have been configured.

• In the E-mail Basket dialog box, verify that the page numbers listed under the Select Page Range column match the pages you selected. If not, click the column and type the numbers of the correct pages. The range can consist of consecutive pages (e.g., 3-11) or non-consecutive pages (e.g., 1,5,9,67).

• Click Create E-mail.
• In the Send E-mail dialog box, enter the recipient’s e-mail address in the To field. If necessary, change the subject header and/or e-mail message. Specify how the pages should be included with the e-mail (URL links, Files, or Zip), and click Send.

In-Document Search URLs

In addition to being able to share URL links to a specific entry or to repository-wide search results, users can now use URLs to share results for text searches performed within a specific document. For example, John searches within a sales record for the company name “Castle Industries,” and he wants to share the results with his co-worker, Karen. If John and Karen have access to the same repository (as well as appropriate security rights), he can copy the URL and send it to Karen, who will be directed to the document and the corresponding search results when she pastes the URL in her Internet browser.

You can also create your own in-document search URLs using the following syntax structure:

http://servername/laserfiche8/index.aspx?db=database#id=id;view=pages;find=searchquery

To complete the URL, replace servername with the name of the server where Web Access is installed, database with the name of your Laserfiche repository, id with the document’s entry ID number, and searchquery with the search term you want to find.

Quick Print

Users with Adobe Reader installed on their computers can now print Laserfiche documents from Web Access more easily with the new Quick Print tool. In Web Access 8.0, printing a document took four steps: export as PDF, save it, open it and click Print. Quick Print condenses these steps by exporting and opening the document with one click. From there, users can print using Adobe Reader’s print options.

Note: Quick Print can only be used with Laserfiche documents with fewer than two watermarks, and it cannot be used with electronic documents.

To use Quick Print

• Make sure you have added the Quick Print tool to the Folder Browser or Document Viewer toolbars.

• Select or open the document you want to print.
• Click Quick Print and use the Print option in the new window that opens.

• Enhanced Configuration Page Options: remote access, SSL configuration per repository, automatic log in using cookies, restriction of specific accounts to Web Access.
• Support for Laserfiche 8.1 Server Features: recycling pages and electronic documents, LDAP authentication, WebDAV support.
• E-mail Enhancements: send pages of a document via e-mail, configure custom default e-mail messages, other e-mail enhancements.
• Document Operation Enhancements: progress bars, the ability to undo specific actions.
• Metadata Enhancements: metadata in the Preview Pane, client-side tag creation.
• User Interface Enhancements: a thumbnail view in the Folder Browser, a toolbar drop-down to support more toolbar buttons, a new Search Pane and annotation pane.
• New Search Features: the ability to search by template, the ability to search Web Access using an Internet browser, List Field display, other enhancements.

The Template search type has been updated to display fields associated with a template when selecting it from the template drop-down list. This allows users to not only search by assigned template, but also appropriate fields.

Also new in 8.1 searching is the way you search a list field. In 8.0, you typed the value you wanted to search for in the list field. In 8.1, you can select the value from a drop-down list. If the list of values to choose from exceeds 100, Web Access will auto-suggest choices based on the first letters you type in the list field.

List Selection Menu

List Auto Suggestions

For example, the City of Brown has a Website that citizens use for everything from paying parking tickets to applying for a job, and the city wants to give citizens the ability to download public documents from the Web Access site as well. The city embeds Web Access into its city Website via an iframe. This way, users will not have to leave the city’s site to access the Web Access documents. Instead, they can use Web Access and still remain on the city’s Website, which they are already familiar with.

To Display Web Access in an iframe on Your Website

• Insert this html into the body of the html page that will contain the iframe:

<iframe src=”http://machinename/laserfiche8″ width=”x” height=”y” id=”idname“>
<p>Message displayed when the browser does not support iframes</p>
</iframe>

• machinename: The name of the server where Web Access is installed.
• x: The width of the iframe (% or px).
• y: The height of the iframe (% or px).
• idname: The unique id given to the iframe. The id attribute can be used by Javascript or CSS to make changes to or style the specific iframe.
• Message displayed when the browser does not support iframes: This is a custom message you create to inform users they are using a browser that does not support iframes.

Note: There are other optional attributes you can add to your iframe besides width and height. For example: align, frameborder, marginheight, marginwidth, scrolling, etc.

Web Access 8.1 introduces the Laserfiche Search Connector for Windows 7, which gives users the ability to search for entries in their repository using the Windows Explorer search bar. By doing so, you can search your repository from any network computer without visiting your Web Access site first. Moreover, it provides a search interface you might already be familiar with.

Note: The Search Connector can only be used with Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2

To add a Web Access repository to the Windows Explorer search menu

1. Open Web Access and log in to the repository you want to add.
2. In the bottom right-hand corner of Web Access, click Download Search Connector.

3. When the download dialog box opens, click Download Laserfiche Search Connector.
4. In the File Download dialog box, click Open.
5. Click Add in the Add Search Connector dialog box.
6. By default, Windows Explorer will open and your repository search will appear on the left-hand side under Favorites.
Note: Search connectors are specific to each repository.

To use the Search Connector

1. Open Windows Explorer.
2. Under Favorites, select the repository you want to search.

3. In the search bar at the top of Windows Explorer, type the word or phrase you want to search for and press ENTER.

Note: Windows Explorer will only display repositories you have added to the search menu. A repository must be configured for auto-login to successfully search it with the search connector.

Search connector results are displayed in Windows Explorer with the name of each document that matches your search, the date it was last modified, a thumbnail of its first page, a document summary highlighting its first two context hits, and the number of context hits in the entire document. If you double-click a particular result, the document will open.

Note: The Search Connector uses the same settings configured for Quick Search. For example, if Quick Search has been configured to search only entry names and text, the Search Connector will do the same.

Web Access 8.1 introduces a new Search Pane with updated search types. This Search Pane is more visible and closely resembles the Windows Client Search Pane, enabling users to switch between the two seamlessly without having to learn how to use a new search tool. To access the Search Pane, click the Search tab above the folder tree.

The Template search type has been updated to display fields associated with a template when selecting it from the template drop-down list. This allows users to not only search by assigned template, but also appropriate fields.

Also new in 8.1 searching is the way you search a list field. In 8.0, you typed the value you wanted to search for in the list field. In 8.1, you can select the value from a drop-down list. If the list of values to choose from exceeds 100, Web Access will auto-suggest choices based on the first letters you type in the list field.

List Selection Menu

List Auto Suggestions

The Investment Dealers Association of Canada (IDA) requires securities firms to verify client signatures when existing clients change their account information. While Credential was complying with this regulatory demand, they were simply running out of space to house all the paper client files required to verify signatures.

“Our staff needed instant access to client information, but we didn’t have space to store all our client files onsite,” remembers Vice President of Operations Ernie Nichiporik.

Mr. Nichiporik and his team began researching digital document management solutions, focusing their efforts on finding a secure, scalable Web-based solution that was still easy to use. “We really wanted a Web-based solution, so external parties could access the system even if they weren’t connected to our network,” he says. “And security features were key—we had to guarantee that our client files were safe and tamper-proof.”

After attending a presentation by IKON Office Solutions, Mr. Nichiporik and his colleagues chose a Laserfiche® digital document management system. “It had everything we needed. It was secure, easy-to-use, cost-effective and didn’t require a lot of time to implement.”

Within seven months, employees were fully benefiting from the new system. “Installation didn’t take long,” Nichiporik says, “and we started realizing benefits quickly. The seven month time frame to full productivity was due to the fact that we imaged all of our existing files, as well as new files coming in.”

Currently, over 60 users, located in four offices over 3,000 miles apart, use the Laserfiche system. Credential has three different business lines, and they store all their client files—including scanned paper documents, faxes and e-mails—in their Laserfiche repository. Documents are easily accessible thanks to templates that store the account number, document type and the department that last worked on the document. Credential also created a folder structure for the six different administration departments that house working documents, so that all company staff can locate documents that haven’t yet been archived in the client’s folder.

To further optimize business processes, Credential implemented several tools to automate document import and storage. Import Agent™ monitors the company’s network folder for new faxes, imports them into the Laserfiche repository and dynamically creates new folders to store them. Quick Fields™ document capture tools automate document scanning and storage, creating the file structure with different templates for each of Credential’s three business lines. The Quick Fields Real Time Lookup module accesses three different SQL databases to retrieve client information from the appropriate business line and automatically fill each scanned document’s template fields with client demographic information.

Staff who only need to view documents retrieve them through WebLink™, a read-only document viewer accessible through their Web browser. Users who have to add additional information to client files use Web Access™, a Web-based thin client that simplifies deployment and support. “Web Access really makes upgrades to the system easier, because we only have to install them on our Web server, instead of on each computer,” Nichiporik says.

“We also have a few ‘power users,’ who use the Windows®-based Laserfiche Client™ to scan and index documents,” he continues. “Using all three modules really fits our needs—and demonstrates the system’s flexibility. Instead of being locked into one option, we chose a combination of options to meet our exact requirements.”

Nichiporik believes that clients really appreciate the changes Laserfiche has brought to the company—“They really like that when they phone us with an issue, we have all their documentation in front of us,” he says—which is due to the secure digital storage of their files. Their previous paper-based storage system left staff dealing with lost faxes and misplaced documents, which made it difficult to respond to client requests in a timely manner. Thanks to Laserfiche, lost faxes have dropped by over 50%. “Now, only three people in the entire company have the authority to delete documents, whereas with paper files, anyone could misplace or lose a document in a file,” he says.

Credential also implemented the Audit Trail™ module to further guarantee security. Audit Trail tracks user actions within the Laserfiche system, simplifying compliance with regulatory requirements. “With Audit Trail, I can easily show IDA regulators that employees are looking up client signatures while updating client information, and I can also show them that we have a highly secure process to manage our client documents,” Nichiporik says.

Because of the company’s initial success with Laserfiche, Credential is actively planning to expand the solution. “Eventually, we’d like to integrate Laserfiche with our trading system, so that our sales force can easily access client documents during the trading process,” Nichiporik says. “Not to mention that many departments within the firm have seen how well the system works, and now want imaging for themselves.

“Because of Laserfiche, we now expect immediate access to documents,” he continues. “Laserfiche solves problems for us every day. It’s easy to use, easy to implement and works well in many different environments. Laserfiche is really a superior solution.”

Web Access 8.1 will offer some new options on the Web Access Configuration Page, including Configuration Page access and more authentication options, all of which will give you more flexibility in how you administer your site.

Configuration Page Access

Previously, the Web Access Configuration Page could only be accessed on the computer where Web Access was installed. In Web Access 8.1, it can be accessed remotely giving specific users the ability to administer Web Access from anywhere with an Internet connection. To do so, the remote user must be added to a specific Windows group or the local administrator’s group on the machine where Web Access is installed, and that group must specifically be allowed access in the Configuration Page Access section of the page.

User Authentication

In 8.1, administrators can explicitly restrict or allow specific Laserfiche or Windows users access to a repository under the Authentication section of the Configuration Page. By restricting an account, you will prevent anyone from using that login to gain access to the repository regardless of whether or not they enter the correct password or not. This also is useful if you only want Web Access configured to be viewable over the Internet for specific users. This setting is configured per repository.

Cookie Authentication

You can also allow users to authenticate to Web Access using authentication tokens generated by the new Laserfiche Authentication Service and stored in the user’s browser cookies. As long as the browser retains the cookie, the user will be automatically logged in when opening a Web Access session from a new browser window. Additionally, you can require users to use a specific type of authentication mode or allow them to select one. Private and public authentication modes control how long the token is active or valid. For example, if you are the only user accessing a machine, you should choose “This is a private computer,” as the token stays valid longer. If you use a public machine, and other people may be logging in, you should choose “This is a public or shared computer,” as the token will expire in a shorter period of time. When the token expires, the next user will not be able to access your information.

This language pack is installed on top of Web Access 8.0.1.

Web Access 8.0 Arabic is a standalone product, and it is not compatible with other Language Packs for Web Access and requires version 8.1 or later of the Laserfiche Server.

Please refer to the following Knowledge Base article for a list of known issues, as well as other release information. Find more information here.

If you are interested in Web Access 8.0 Arabic, please contact your reseller.

It’s all part of a new MO for police work in Elk River. No more gathering evidence at the scene and then poring over case files back at headquarters. Now the case files come to the scene, all the files, all the time.

Decades of police work are now instantly available to Elk River sector car laptops, thanks to a compilation of computer software and hardware that helped earn the small town PD a coveted Innovation in Information Technology award at the 2008 International Association of Chiefs of Police in November. The heartbeat of this new system is a growing database containing police incident and accident reports, photos, investigation notes, confessions. It contains all the information Elk River officers have compiled in the process of doing their jobs over the years.

This Elk River, MN, officer uses his squad car like a rolling office and his laptop as a library. It links directly to a Laserfiche electronic database containing the entire case file at police headquarters. The system helped earn Elk River a coveted Innovation in Information Technology award at the 2008 International Association of Chiefs of Police in November.

All the data are available over the Internet, through a password-secure link that’s easy as Google and works faster than Detective Columbo … a lot faster. Just type in a name, address, license plate or other investigation specifics, and every match found in the database at headquarters pops up on the sector car laptop.

Whether it’s a traffic violation or felonious assault, officers on the scene are instantly wired into headquarters, and they don’t need anyone pulling case files for them.

“When you think of instantly delivering to every officer’s car every piece of information that’s in our criminal files, that’s huge,” Elk River Police Chief Jeffrey Beahen said. “We’re talking real-time investigative tools at the officer’s fingertips.”

With the new system, writing up traffic violations starts with swiping the driver’s license into a barcode reader in the officer’s car. An electronic form pops up on the sector car computer with the license information already in place. Violation specifics are filled in by the officer, and a ticket is printed out and handed to the driver in a fraction of the time of conventional hand-written tickets, Beahen said.

At the same time, an electronic record of the violation heads over the headquarters via the wireless link, set up by the Minnesota-based Law Enforcement Technology Group, which designed the system. Once clerks back at headquarters verify the information, a permanent record is stored into the department’s database using software designed by Long Beach, CA, document management specialists Laserfiche. An electronic copy of the documents is also sent to the state’s court system for prosecution, saving staff clerical time on that end, too.

If the incident is something more involved, like a domestic dispute, officers heading out to the scene can call up any previous cases invovling the address, victim’s names or any other pertinent information from the department’s new database. The information requested – including photos – is available to the sector car computers via the same Internet connection, allowing officers to read up before they get to the scene.

It’s that database that officers instantly accessed on their way to the playground and on their way to the scene scene where the robbery suspect’s clothes were found. The database provided officers with everything the department had in its case files to help prepare them for the field work ahead.

Such databases are being employed by police departments across the country.

They reach far beyond the old CAD and RMS systems because they allow investigators to look into hundreds of thousands of case files at once, simply by using key phrases, names, addresses or other pertinent information. Such databases are allowing cutting-edge criminal investigation and prosecution across the country, specifically because they can search so much information so quickly.

In San Luis Obispo, CA, Laserfiche is helping law enforcement instantly search out case file details that took hours to look up manually. It helped Wichita, KS, investigators find the “BTK” serial killer, and the Brevard County, FL, sheriff’s office hopes a similar database it just installed will help solve cold cases, including a 14-year-old murder of a local girl.

“Law enforcement is just a natural application of this technology,” said Brian LaPointe, Laserfiche’s law enforcement technical advisor. “These databases allow officers to do in minutes what used to take hours. Having trained law enforcement professional spending their time rummaging through filing cabinets these days when they could be out protecting the public? That’s a crime.”

Officials with the aforementioned law enforcement agencies all agreed. However, they also said that installing these databases and making the transition to paperless operations like Elk River takes patience, commitment and cash. These systems are not just plugged in: a decade’s worth of police paperwork has to be scanned into a computer, and staffers have to be trained to use it.

But the long-term benefits far outweigh the short-term investments, Beahen and others said. The hardest part of installing the Laserfiche system in Elk River, Beahen said, was pulling the paperclips and staples from the existing files before scanning them in.

“The time spent getting the new system in place goes quick[ly],” he said. “The only downside is getting all those old documents ready for scanning. My staffers were getting their fingers cut on all the staples.”

The upside is that Elk River has saved the equivalent of 2.5 full-time staff costs in hours not being spent chasing down, copying and faxing paperwork, Beahen said.

Instead, clerical staff, who used to spend half the week typing in the weekend’s case files, are now caught up by 11 on Monday morning.

The new system has also translated into less paper taking up filing cabinet space around Elk River headquarters. In an average year, Elk River officers open 22,000 new case files with up to 2,000 pages each. Those kinds of numbers fill up filing cabinets fast, but with LETG’s new system in place, all that information is now fed directly into the Laserfiche database through the sector car computers.

The department saved $17,000 on reduced paper costs along the way. Where officer and staff filed away about a half-million pages of incident, accident and investigation reports in past years, in 2008, Beahen said they filed just about two dozen pages.

For any department balking at the time, work and money involved in such a transition – the Elk River system cost about $100,000 – Chief Beahen had this to say: “What do you want your staff to spend the majority of their time doing? I want my officers, detectives and sworn staff spending time on mission based activities, not heading to the filing cabinet or mailbox looking for paperwork. Way too much of our time was spent waiting, and looking, for paperwork. Now that time is spent on police work.”

This article was initially published in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of Public Safety IT.

So much so that in just three years, Saco has set a standard for e-government so high that its regional neighbors are beginning to look into it as well.

So why has Saco been so successful? For starters, when City Administrator Rick Michaud and Saco’s IT staff looked into document management three years ago, they didn’t have a problem, they had a plan.

“Our objective is ‘Online, not in-line,’” says Michaud. “We had a vision of public documents available 24/7 without ever having to wait in line again.” Now all they needed was a way to implement it.

In 2006, General Code Solutions Consultant Herb Myers demonstrated Laserfiche for city staff, prompting Saco’s IT Department to choose Laserfiche. Ease of use, scalability, “going green,” and establishing a portal for improved public service all factored into the decision. Myers, for one, was impressed. “I was amazed at how forward-thinking they were,” he says. “They wound up teaching me as much as I taught them.”

With the foresight and commitment of both IT and Michaud that, as Myers puts it, “’green’ starts with technology,” Myers and IT mapped out an implementation strategy in meticulously planned phases (see sidebar).

Saco’s initial roll-out called for multi-departmental implementation almost immediately, which prompted the appointment of Laserfiche Luminary Fran Beaulieu as the in-house Laserfiche Administrator. Beaulieu underwent what Myers and the City refer to as “’train the trainer’ training.”

Beaulieu admits progress was slow, owing to the need to assess each department’s willingness, as she puts it, “to let go of the paper.” Key to ensuring user buy-in, she says, was not so much dictating a way of doing things, but establishing a standard by “planning with each department’s staff, hearing their needs and wants, and helping lead the way.” This included weekly meetings, discussions of how to avoid duplicating files and coming up with a consensus of what would be the “logical place” to centralize information. “Some visualized immediate benefits, others required a bit more help in the vision,” she says.

This help began with all Administrative Assistants—Beaulieu dubbed them “power users”—training on the Laserfiche client for importing and scanning documents. Department Heads learned how to use the system via Web Access. “I sat down with them one-on-one and made sure they felt comfortable with what I was showing them before I left.”

Beaulieu also worked with the Assessing Department, one of the City’s biggest paper users, to import deeds into Laserfiche. “Once they were able to see the speed of a search and ease of use, they became my highest achievers,” she adds. “The Assessor’s Department has almost completely added a deed for every parcel within the city for constituents to view and access.”

Beaulieu used this experience to identify and standardize procedures and file structure in creating the City’s all-important Document Management Manual (DMM). Beaulieu’s committee determined that the addition of folders, renaming of documents and deletion of documents would be done only by Laserfiche Administrators.

Trainings were limited to certain shift times, so, inspired by General Code’s own training Webinars, staff created a short “how-to” video for Web Access users along with a simple guide—customized using the file structure created by the City—available internally.

By April 2008, expanded training and more departmental buy-in paved the way for enterprise adoption and Phase 3 public access. Saco’s Department of Public Works and Wastewater were by now online via Web Access. And implementing Quick Fields enabled the Assessor’s Department to automatically scan and index Property Tax Cards where OCR had been formerly problematic and manually typing the information was, as Beaulieu puts it, “not an option.”

How effectively? “The process used to require approximately 2 to 2 1/2 days of printing time for one person to accomplish and used about a whole toner cartridge and 20 reams of copy paper,” Beaulieu says. “Now the cards will be downloaded into Laserfiche in a matter of minutes. This process will save time and money.”

The final frontier was to break down the fourth wall of government and push it out to the community. WebLink would allow public access to city documents through the “Find-A-Doc” interface, with a how-to video and on-line instructions leading the way. Roll-out took some time due to customization, but General Code’s Brian Hoody set-up quick search links to bring users directly to a specified folder, even getting audio files to work for the City’s Planning Department via the “Find-A-Doc” portal.

Saco's "Find-a-Doc" Public Web Portal

Though just a few months old, “Find-A-Doc” is already resonating with staff and citizens alike. Maggie Edwards, an Administrative Assistant in the Planning Department, admits to being “a little intimidated at first” by the Laserfiche system, but now shares in Saco’s vision of a successful portal strategy. “If there’s a subdivision or site plan you want to know about, you can view the entire files online. If you wish to hear an audio of the minutes from the Planning Board meetings, you may do so,” she says. “Laserfiche has made it very easy to maneuver.”

Saco’s savings so far total over $10,000 a year, but as Beaulieu points out, “We also look at the value of the system for not departments, but individual value to users. Service to constituents is a big factor.”

• Planning and Engineering saves $7,580 a year by scanning large format maps.
• Inspection Reports saves $1,780 and 1,335 sheets of paper a year.
• The Assessor’s Office saves over $1,600 a year.

And now with the economy forcing municipalities to do more with less, neighboring Scarborough has requested a look at Saco’s Document Management Manual while other budget-strapped cities are investigating sharing services to access various documents and parcel information. Saco is also looking into integrating Laserfiche with its GIS application. “We’re already sharing some personnel so the idea of shared services and ‘umbrella IT’ makes sense,” Beaulieu says.

“The lines are so blurred in areas like road repair that regional administration makes the most sense,” she adds. “When you can see what documents are attached to parcels, that saves you phone calls and extra trips and that makes their life easier as well as ours.”

Cosentino founded Financial Foundations in 2001, and by 2006, the firm had doubled in size, with assets under management of $135 million. Although he is the sole owner of Financial Foundations, Cosentino was still aware that digital document management would benefit his firm just as much as a larger one. “In fact, I knew we had to implement an electronic filing system if we were going to continue to grow,” he says.

When Cosentino began looking for a digital document management solution, he consulted his technology advisor. They went to visit other financial advisors using Laserfiche to see how they used the system and how it fit into their existing work processes. All the users he spoke with raved about how easy Laserfiche was to learn and how well it worked with their business, which was crucial. “The fact that so many other financial advisors used Laserfiche was the number one reason I chose it,” he says. “The ease of use and the way it fit into my existing business were definite factors, but seeing how well Laserfiche worked for other financial advisors was really the key.”

At Financial Foundations, nobody misses their old paper-based processes. “It’s not just the ease of finding things, but the ease of putting things in,” Cosentino points out. “Now we scan, shred and toss all our paper. Desks are neater, there’s less clutter, and the piles of paper are completely gone.”

A key concern was not just eliminating paper, but also complying with increasingly strict FINRA and SEC regulations for retention and documentation. “With compliance the way it is, there were up to ten forms per client, and it was out of control,” he says. “The amount of paper is completely prohibitive.”

Financial Foundations is also using Laserfiche for more than just storing client records; their repository also serves as a centralized resource for everything from accounts payable to staff training. “All of our back-office processes are stored in Laserfiche,” he says. “Our staff can use the back-office folder to store information and retrieve the ‘how-to’s’ that will allow them to learn more, including all the processes for what they need to know and how to do it. This is a use I couldn’t have anticipated.”

Since implementing Laserfiche, Financial Foundations has grown, not just in staff, but also in clients. “With Laserfiche’s scalability, we’ll be able to grow more, and even faster,” Cosentino says. “Eventually, I’d like to open a branch office, and Web Access will aid with that. We’ll easily be able to create a centralized resource without duplicating our efforts. We can take advantage of Laserfiche’s connectivity and capabilities to create a centralized repository without the cost of setting it up.”

Back office staff are working so much more efficiently that Cosentino is also looking into buying another advisor’s book of business. “We’ll scan the information into Laserfiche and move it over,” he says. “In this industry, when you take on another advisor’s clients, that means all the applications and account forms too, and you have to have that back-office capability. If you’re going to grow by acquiring other practices, you have to transfer accounts, and without this capability, it would be nearly impossible to do without hiring on a significant number of staff. Laserfiche helps you grow in an easier, more cost-efficient way.”

Cosentino believes that growth will continue to be key for his firm as more and more sole proprietors begin to consider retirement. “Personally, I believe that over the next five, ten, even fifteen years, you’ll see a lot of integration and consolidation, and Laserfiche will aid with that,” he continues.

“There are so many one-person shops out there. They may have between $30-40 million in assets, but they don’t have a succession plan. Laserfiche works well as a succession plan, because the ability to easily transfer data increases the value of your business.”

Cosentino doesn’t doubt the value of Laserfiche to his business. “Absolutely, if you have Laserfiche, your business is worth more. If you don’t have it, tough luck, because clearly, you will have to implement a digital document management solution eventually, just to keep up.

“It may cost me up front, but in the long run, I will be in a better competitive position,” he adds.

To access Web Access Light in a browser on your mobile device, navigate to:
http://servername/laserfiche8/

To access Web Access Light in a browser on your computer, navigate to:
http://servername/laserfiche8/light

* Servername= the name of the computer on which Web Access is installed.

To view a demo of Web Access Light, visit http://atlantis.laserfiche.com/laserfiche8/light.

Web Access Light on the iPhone