As you may read in other entries, Imaging is a big item with me. Because I believe so strongly in the electronic world, eCandidus™ has two main methods of converting paper to images.
Full imaging support is handled by the Document Manager, which breaks up documents into pages and allows you to annotate and reassemble pages from various documents into new ones. Documents stored via the Document Manager are stored in the eCandidus™ database, which takes a bit of time to properly convert and store the pages.
The Document Manager is a very robust system, however, it requires management from your side. For the offices that do not require the level of handling options, but just want to make use of external documents as part of the eCandidus™ system, Attachments are a simpler alternative, but there things that you need to understand to make full use of attachments.
The most important thing you need to understand about attachments is that they are not kept inside the eCandidus™ database. What eCandidus™ keeps is a pointer to where the document is located in your computer. This makes it very quick to setup, as only the pointer needs to be created. The original document is not modified in any way.
There is, however, a drawback to this. eCandidus™ cannot protect the original document. If you access the file with another program, or decide to delete it altogether, eCandidus™ has no way to prevent it. Also, if the document is stored in your computer, other associates may not be able to access the file.
The best way to solve this problem is not to store attachments in any station; instead they should be stored in a server shared folder, accessible to all associates using the same address. For instance, you could create a directory called in your server as C:\Scanner, and have each station map to it as K:\. Now when you attach a file in your K: drive, it will be stored in your server c:\Scanner directory and would be accessible to all associates.
So what is the actual process if you are scanning? Set your scanner to save to K:\. When you want to attach the scanned document, simply click on the Attach button, select the File entry and navigate to the K: drive, where you will find the scanned document.
This takes care of the accessibility and protection issues, but we are not done yet.
When you begin to scan and store documents, you will begin slowly, so the number of documents will be manageable. If you scan three letters per day, you will have close to eight hundred docuemnts at the end of your first year. This will make it very difficult to find the correct file when you are attaching.
eCandidus™ has options to help you manage the document folder, by simply allowing you to create a different folder for each case. This is done in two steps:
1) The first step is done once. In this step you will tell eCandidus™ that external documents are stored in a particular directory. Login as eCandidus, or your System Administrator account and select Tools/Settings/System from the main menu. Now scroll down to section 14. External and in the entry labeled External Directory enter the drive and folder where the external documents are kept, K:\ in our example. Save the changes.
2) The second step is done for each case. It does not have to be done for all cases in advanced, but can be done for each case as needed. In the Cover Sheet for the case, you will see a tab labeled Billing. Select the tab and look at the Directory field. Enter the folder name that you want to use for the case, for example if the case was John Doe vs. Big Co, you could use Doe, John as the folder name. Once you have entered the appropriate information, click on the Show Where Used command (the magnifying glass leftmost button). You will now see an entry labeled External (K:\Doe, John), which is the directory that was created.
Now when you scan any document for the case, simply route it to the proper folder in the K: drive, and eCandidus™ will automatically make not of it in the Show Where Used screen. Also when you select Attach and the File to attach a file, you will automatically be taken to the proper directory for the case.
And you are not limited to a storing all of the documents in a single directory. You can create any number of sub-directories, like K:\Doe, John\Letters and K:\Doe, John\Mail\2010. These will be displayed in the Show Where Used. And with one more setting, you can even bring them to the Document Bar of the case itself. Simply select Tools/Settings/Associates from the main menu and in section 5. Document Manager, turn the ExternalBar setting to true. Now when you view a case, you have access to all of the external files and directories right on the document bar itself. And adding documents is easy, simply drag and drop any document into the appropriate label.
By creating individual folders for each case, you will not have to hunt through documents for other cases when you attach, and you will also be able to see all the external documents quickly for any case.
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Attaching files is a quick and easy way to handle third party documents. In eCandidus™ you can attach to any object in the database, from cases to Things to Do and History notes. Attachments are carried over when you create new objects from existing ones, so if you attach a scanned letter into your History notes and then make a Thing to Do, the attached letter is also accessible as an attachment in the Thing to Do without having to view the original note.
For those of you that have large monitors, or multiple monitors, you can easily attach files by dragging the file from your Desktop of File Manager to the Attach button. This makes handling external documents a simple and powerful task.
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UPDATE: As of version 2011.09.01, you can use an UNC entry in place of a drive letter, so instead of having to map \\server\shared as drive K: in all your stations, simply use \\server\share as the ExternalDirectory! An extra plus is that this option makes the Webtop and SD much easier to install.