Frequently Asked Technical Questions

Introduction

We’ve designed this presentation to provide CIOs and IT personnel with a short yet comprehensive introduction to the Laserfiche system and its capabilities. Our hope is that, by reading our responses to the most common technical questions we receive from prospective clients, you’ll learn how Laserfiche will help your organization manage information most effectively—without creating extra work for IT.

Laserfiche Solutions Overview

We offer three core solutions that meet a variety of business needs:

• Laserfiche United is a multi-department system designed for 16 or more concurrent users.
• Laserfiche Team is a workgroup system designed for as many as 15 concurrent users.
• Laserfiche Intuition is a single-user system.

   

Once you install a Laserfiche solution, it’s easy to upgrade to a larger system as your organization grows or you expand the system to additional departments and users. For example, you might install Team as part of a single-department pilot, and then upgrade to United when you’re ready to expand Laserfiche to additional departments.

Note: The information in this FAQ applies primarily to United and Team. For more information about Intuition, click here.

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Laserfiche Architecture Overview

Laserfiche utilizes an n-tier architecture with several components: the Laserfiche Server, the database management system (DBMS), the file server and the Laserfiche Client application. Client applications include the Laserfiche Web and Windows clients, as well as Laserfiche Quick Fields.

To access documents stored in the Laserfiche repository, the client application must first connect to the Laserfiche Server, which contains information about each user’s rights and privileges. This server also maintains the index files that enable users to perform full-text searches.

The Laserfiche Server has access to the next tier in the architecture, the DBMS, which stores the repository’s folder structure, metadata, security information, annotations and more. The Laserfiche Server uses this data to access the final tier in the architecture, the file server. The file server contains the physical volumes—which can be hard drives or removable media—where the repository’s documents are stored.

When the DBMS returns a document’s location to the Laserfiche Server, the server retrieves the document from the physical volume where it’s stored and grants the client application the appropriate level of access to it, based on the user’s rights and privileges.

 

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1.  Do I need special hardware in order to install Laserfiche?

No. Laserfiche utilizes standard hardware and operates on the Windows Server platform. It supports the Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle DBMS platforms and is storage-media independent. It also uses standard network communications protocols (HTTP/WebDAV, TCP/IP), and all communication can be encrypted using standard tools (IPSEC/SSL).

We recommend that you install Laserfiche on a system that meets the following requirements:

Server

• CPU: 2 GHz processor or better
• Memory: 2 GB RAM or more
• Operating system: Windows Server 2003 (Service Pack 1 or later)*

*Also supports Windows XP (Service Pack 2 or later), Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Client

Standard client:

• CPU: 1 GHz processor or better
• Memory: 256 MB RAM or more
• Operating system: Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 2 or later) or Windows Vista*
• Web browser: Internet Explorer 6.0 or later

Client on which you’ll also install Laserfiche Scanning:

• CPU: 2.4 GHz processor or better
• Memory: 1 GB RAM or more
• Operating system: Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 2 or later) or Windows Vista*
• Web browser: Internet Explorer 6.0 or later

*Also supports Windows Server 2003 (Service Pack 1 or later) and Windows Server 2008.

DBMS

• Laserfiche United supports Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (Service Pack 4 or later), Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (Service Pack 2 or later), Oracle 9i Release 2 (9.2.0.6.0), Oracle 10g and Oracle 11g.
• Laserfiche Team supports MSDE (Service Pack 3 or later) and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (Service Pack 2 or later).

Physical Volumes

• You can store documents on any device that can be mapped to the Laserfiche Server through a UNC path, including attached RAID arrays, NAS and SAN devices, and optical jukeboxes.

HTTP Server

• Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 5.0 or higher*

*Only applicable if you intend to install the Audit Trail, Web Access or WebLink modules.

 

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2.  Which scanners does Laserfiche support?

Laserfiche supports a variety of commercial scanners and multifunction peripherals (MFPs). It also supports an array of specialized devices, including wide-format scanners, check scanners, and microfilm and microfiche scanners.

There are several options for interfacing scanners with Laserfiche:

• Laserfiche ScanConnect includes a variety of ISIS drivers and enables supported scanners to communicate directly with Laserfiche software.
• Laserfiche TWAIN is a scan engine compatible with many scanners that use TWAIN drivers.
• The Laserfiche Kofax engine supports scanners that use Kofax Adrenaline cards or software to capture images.
• Laserfiche Universal Capture finds files on a hard drive or removable media and imports them through the Laserfiche scanning interface. Universal Capture is particularly useful for image capture methods that don’t use standard scanners.

The Laserfiche scanning interface includes easy-to-use image enhancement tools, such as deskew, despeckle, blank page removal, auto-rotation and image cropping. The interface also supports the image enhancement tools provided by your scanner.

Laserfiche Quick Fields is an additional solution that enables you to automate document capture and processing. Based on your organization’s needs, you can utilize Quick Fields plug-ins for bar code scanning and check scanning, and to retrieve document metadata from third-party databases.

We’ve also created several Quick Fields forms processing modules that identify and sort forms, capture information and optimize image quality. These modules eliminate manual processes by automatically capturing and indexing data—such as ZIP codes, account numbers and client names—from large batches of unsorted forms.

 

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3. How are user licenses handled?

Each Laserfiche Server is licensed for a particular number of simultaneous connections. When you’re setting up security, you specify the type of connection each user can open:

• A full-featured connection enables users to perform all the tasks for which they have security, such as scanning documents into a repository and entering or modifying document metadata.
• A retrieval-only connection provides users with read-only access to a repository.

The number of user licenses you need depends on two factors:

• 1. The number of users who need to log in to Laserfiche concurrently.
• 2. The type of connection for which each user is authorized.

When a user attempts to log in, the system first determines the type of connection (either full-featured or retrieval-only) for which he’s authorized. It then checks to determine whether any licenses of this type are available for use.

Note: Users who are authorized for a full-featured connection can only connect to a repository using a full-featured license. However, you can allow retrieval-only users to connect using a full-featured license in scenarios where all retrieval-only licenses are in use, but full-featured licenses are available. (Regardless of the license they use, these users will always have read-only access to the repository.)

 

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4.  How is security structured?

Laserfiche security involves two components: authentication and authorization.

Authentication is the process of presenting and verifying credentials prior to connecting to the repository. Laserfiche supports two methods of authenticating users: password authentication, where users authenticate using their Laserfiche username and password, and Windows authentication, where the client relays the credentials of the current Windows user.

Authorization is the process of controlling access to objects in the repository. In Laserfiche, access control involves five security mechanisms:

• Feature rights determine whether a user can perform certain actions, such as scanning documents into the repository or conducting searches.
• Access rights fine-tune the allowed actions for specific objects, such as particular volumes, folders, documents and template fields. For example, you might provide a certain user with access to all the documents in a folder, but deny him access to its subfolders.
• Privileges grant users the right to perform certain administrative functions without having administrative-level access to the entire system. For example, a certain IT staff member might be given the ability to create user accounts, but not be able to open any of the documents in the system.
• Security tags are a method of assigning security to a document based on its sensitivity. Once a tag is assigned, the document is only accessible to users who’ve specifically been granted access to documents with that particular tag.
• Filter expressions enable administrators to specify conditions that must be met before a trustee can access a particular document. For example, an administrator might create an expression stating that when a certain template field is set to “Yes,” only members of a particular group can access the document.
  

Windows Authentication

Windows authentication enables you to take advantage of existing Windows accounts when setting up Laserfiche security, instead of having to duplicate those accounts in Laserfiche. You can take advantage of Windows authentication in two ways:

• You can manually link a Windows account to a Laserfiche user or group account. The Windows account then inherits security from the Laserfiche account.
• You can specifically allow or deny Windows user and group accounts access to Laserfiche. Once you grant an account access, you can then assign rights and security tags to it, just as you would with a Laserfiche user or group.

 

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5.  Are the documents stored in a Laserfiche repository accessible over the Web?

Yes. Laserfiche offers two modules you can use to provide staff, business partners and/or clients and constituents with access to the documents in a repository:

• WebLink provides a read-only connection to a repository. It’s platform independent and supports all major browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari. WebLink is highly customizable and can be easily integrated with your organization’s other Web-based applications using a library of ASP.NET Web controls.
• Web Access provides both read and write access to a repository, allowing users to perform such tasks as scanning documents, modifying metadata and adding annotations. It supports Internet Explorer 6.0 and higher and Firefox 2.x.

WebLink is particularly popular among our local government clients, who need to provide the public with online access to statutes, property records, meeting minutes and other documents stored in Laserfiche. Web Access is popular with firms that have large numbers of remote employees who need to access and edit documents in the Laserfiche repository.

 

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6. Does Laserfiche integrate with Microsoft Office applications?

Laserfiche works seamlessly with Microsoft Office applications, and users can send Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Outlook e-mails and other files to Laserfiche at the click of a button.

Using Microsoft Web Folders, you can also enable users to browse a Laserfiche repository using Windows Explorer. If you enable this functionality, a user might, for example, create a Word document, select File > Save As, and then browse directly to the Laserfiche folder where she wants to save the document.

Laserfiche also offers several points of integration with SharePoint. The first three utilize the Web Access module:

• The Records Center integration enables users to send documents to Laserfiche from within SharePoint, map SharePoint metadata columns to Laserfiche template fields and send documents to dynamically created Laserfiche folders. This integration is particularly useful because SharePoint displays a hyperlink that opens a Laserfiche document in Web Access, meaning that users can open all their documents, including those stored in Laserfiche, from a single location.
• The web part integration enables you to drop the Laserfiche folder browser into a SharePoint page. Users can then browse the Laserfiche folder structure and open documents from within SharePoint, as well as scan documents into Laserfiche.
• You can enable users to search Laserfiche from within SharePoint. Their searches will search Laserfiche fields and annotations, as well as each document’s text, and search results (including lines of context) will appear within SharePoint.

Because the Laserfiche Workflow module and SharePoint both utilize the Windows Workflow Foundation engine, you can also create Laserfiche workflow rules that perform actions in SharePoint. For example, you might create rules that complete certain tasks in SharePoint whenever documents meet criteria defined in Laserfiche.

 

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7.  Does Laserfiche support digital signatures?

Yes. Laserfiche has partnered with Algorithmic Research (ARX) to provide digital authentication for documents stored in a Laserfiche repository.

ARX CoSign enables users to apply signatures to a variety of files, including PDFs, multi-page TIFFs, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. Users can apply signatures to a region of the document or the document in its entirety, and the signature block can be configured to include a bitmap of the wet signature. Once a document or region has been signed, any modifications invalidate the signature.

CoSign is one of the many packaged Laserfiche integrations available on the Laserfiche Marketplace.

 

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8.  Do the Laserfiche Client and Server support virtualization?

Yes. To take advantage of Microsoft’s licensing structure, you can install various components of the Laserfiche system—including the Laserfiche Server and the MSSQL server—on virtual instances of Windows Server. Utilizing virtual servers has other benefits as well. For example, running multiple servers on a single machine helps you maximize system performance by making the best use of available processing power. Using virtual servers also reduces the number of physical machines you need to purchase and maintain.

You can install the Laserfiche Client on a virtual machine as well, which is useful if your organization’s workstations run on an operating system other than Windows. If this is the case, you can create a virtual machine on each workstation; you can then install both Windows and the Laserfiche Client.

 

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9.  How are backups handled?

Backing up a Laserfiche repository involves two primary steps: backing up the SQL or Oracle database that stores the repository’s folder structure, metadata and other administrative information, and backing up the volumes that store the repository’s image and text files, electronic documents and other content.

• Database backups: Both Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle include a variety of backup tools. If you’re using MSSQL Server, you can use Enterprise Manager or SQL Management Studio to back up your repository; the MSSQL Server help files include step-by-step instructions for these tools. If you’re using Oracle, consult your Oracle documentation for information about Oracle’s backup tools.
• Volume backups: Volumes are standard Windows directories and can be backed up using whatever method you prefer for Windows files. The main consideration when backing up volumes is keeping them synchronized with your SQL or Oracle database backup files. You can do this by making your volumes temporarily read-only.

 

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10.  Can I administer Laserfiche the same way I administer my organization’s other Windows-based applications?

Yes. The Laserfiche Administration Console is a unified interface from which you can manage your Laserfiche repositories. The Console enables administrators to perform such tasks as creating users and groups, managing security and modifying server and repository settings.

Because the Laserfiche Administration Console is a Microsoft Management Console application, it can be snapped into an enterprise console from which you can easily manage all of your organization’s Windows-based applications.

In addition to streamlining repository management, the Console also helps IT personnel perform two key tasks: monitoring system performance and configuring audit reporting.

• The Microsoft Management Console’s Performance Monitoring utility enables you to monitor the performance of your Laserfiche Server. This utility gives you the option of either viewing performance data in real time or logging the data for future use. Logging data is particularly helpful in identifying trends over a specified time period.
• If you purchase the Audit Trail module, you’ll also use the Console to specify which actions are tracked for which users. You can then easily review audit data using Audit Trail’s Web-based reporting interface.

 

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11. What can I do with the Laserfiche SDK?

The Laserfiche Integrator’s Toolkit helps you make the best use of the Laserfiche API. The toolkit includes instructions that will help you integrate Laserfiche with third-party applications, customize system functionality and automate Laserfiche-related tasks. It also contains a wealth of sample code, written in both C# and Visual Basic .NET, designed to help you tailor your Laserfiche system to your organization’s specific business needs.

To promote fast distribution, the Toolkit includes pre-built merge modules. You can use these modules to create installation packages that contain both your custom code and the relevant Toolkit components.

On the Laserfiche Support Site, you’ll have access to two additional resources that will help you make the most of your Toolkit investment:

• The Toolkit Forum enables you to engage in discussions with other application developers and with Laserfiche staff. You can ask questions, share best practices and learn about new ways of using the Laserfiche API.
• The Code Library contains a variety of integrations and custom applications—the majority of which were created by Laserfiche Development staff—that you can download and implement at your own organization. You can also post comments and ask questions about items in the library, as well as contribute code of your own.

 

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12.  What’s the process for moving documents from another digital document management system into Laserfiche?

There are several factors to consider when planning a conversion from another document management system to Laserfiche:

• Scanned documents: Laserfiche stores scanned documents as TIFF files, so if your existing scanned documents are stored in this format, you can easily import them into the Laserfiche repository. If the files are stored in another format, the Laserfiche Client will generally convert them to TIFFs automatically.
• Electronic documents: Laserfiche stores electronic documents in their native file formats. As long as your current system has not modified these formats, importing electronic documents into Laserfiche will be a straightforward process.
• Metadata: If your current system stores document metadata in a standard database, such as Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle, you’ll be able to extract the metadata without difficulty. If the metadata is stored in a proprietary database, an export utility will likely be necessary.

 

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