Ascent Capture from Kofax The component approach to document capture By Carolyn Gross, Product Manager Kofax Image Products Unlike first-generation turnkey imaging systems where all aspects of the solution were seamlessly integrated by a single vendor, modern PC-based imaging systems are now being built from reusable software components. In the component imaging approach, production imaging systems -- those capable of processing over 10,000 images each day -- are built from five primary applications, as shown in the figure to the right. Component Function Capture converts paper documents into images. It generally includes batch preparation, scanning, QA, indexing, re-scan, and export of images and indexes to long term storage. Storage permanently stores images on optical drives and jukeboxes, and includes platter management, volume management, and hierarchical storage management. View allows document images to be retrieved, via either keyword searches (using the indexes stored during capture) or full-text indexing, and then displayed. Document management provides centralized management and administration of large volumes of documents. It typically provides a file cabinet and file folder metaphor for retrieving documents. Workflow provides automation of routine work processes, usually by automatic routing of images as a replacement for manual routing of paper. To make the component imaging approach work, low-level integration must be kept to a minimum. This means that the five standard imaging components the table below must be available as packaged applications, complete and ready to function out of the box with only minimal setup and configuration. In the last two years the imaging market has seen a steady release of new applications in four out of these five areas, but document capture, the most critical and complex component, has been available only at the toolkit level. Only recently, with products like Ascent Capture from Kofax, has document capture become available as a packaged application. What Is Document Capture? Document capture is the process of converting paper documents into digital images and index data. Images are typically stored as TIFF files on an optical storage system and the indexes are stored in a relational database. The diagram on page 27 shows the entire document capture process. Although document capture is fairly inexpensive to implement (only about 20% of the initial system cost), it is by far the biggest on-going labor expense of most production imaging systems. A well-implemented capture system can reduce the operating costs on an imaging system by 20% to 40% or more. Ascent Capture from Kofax -- a Best-of-Breed Solution Ascent Capture from Kofax is a batch-oriented document capture application designed to process 50,000 documents per day or more at high throughput and low cost. Completely network- and protocol- independent, Ascent Capture can operate on any of the popular networking platforms in use today. Installation is performed in a single step, and users perform operations through easy-to-use menus and dialog boxes. Among the features included in Ascent Capture are: * Batch preparation. Ascent Capture is batch-oriented, which is essential in a production environment. Documents are prepped and sorted into batches of similar documents prior to scanning. Ascent Capture predefines multiple document classes, setting the parameters for the system to perform in subsequent steps. * Scanning. Ascent Capture provides rated speed support of a broad range of desktop production scanners, including all the leading high-end video and SCSI models. * Image enhancement. In order to expedite the indexing process, a number of functions such as image deskew, black border removal, and auto-rotate are automatically performed by Ascent Capture during the scanning process to clean-up the scanned images. * Optical character recognition. Linked to the indexing process, Ascent Capture provides support for both accurate and fast full text and zonal OCR. * Barcode. In addition to OCR indexing, Ascent Capture reads all popular barcode types. Barcodes are the most reliable method of indexing documents and Ascent Capture performs barcode recognition simultaneous with scanning to expedite the indexing process. * Indexing. Ascent Capture supports high-speed data entry of document index data. Ascent Capture also provides a flexible and powerful scripting language that allows real-time validation of all index data. * Re-scanning. Poorly scanned images found during the quality assurance process can be flagged for re-scan. The re-scanned image is then automatically reinserted in its proper place within the batch. * Release. Ascent Capture releases image and index data into a wide range of multi-vendor optical storage systems, hierarchical storage managers, databases, document management systems, and workflow systems, creating a plug-and-play approach to integrating a complete imaging solution. Kofax has designed Ascent Capture to scale gracefully from a single workstation to 50 or more workstations. Smaller capture operations (1,000­3,000 pages per day) can run scanning, indexing, and release all on a single workstation, while larger operations run each module of Ascent Capture on separate workstations. Capacity can be increased further by adding additional scan stations and index stations to the network. Dynamic load balancing keeps every station busy at all times. Rather than restrict users to a single networking environment, Kofax has made Ascent completely open and network independent. Ascent Capture is designed to run on any standard local area network that can be accessed from a Windows client workstation including Novell NetWare (3.x and 4.x), Windows NT server, UNIX, and Windows 95 peer-to-peer. Ascent is also network protocol- independent, making it compatible with all the popular protocols including IPX/SPX, TCP/IP, NetBios, and others. Ascent Capture supports any SQL/ODBC compliant database for storing and retrieving document indexing information, including Microsoft SQL Server, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, and others. Non-ODBC databases can also be used via simple customization of Ascent Capture's Visual Basic release scripts. Ascent Capture's release module can export documents into third-party workflow and document management packages as well as standard optical systems. Ascent Capture produces industry standard document formats readily interchangeable with leading document management and workflow systems. Customizing your Ascent Capture application is also a breeze. Using standard graphical development tools such as Visual Basic and Visual C++, users can quickly and easily integrate Ascent Capture into any application. This ease of customization feature makes Ascent Capture an ideal solution for image- enabling existing legacy applications. The overall goal of Ascent Capture is to reduce the long-term operating costs of production document capture. Kofax has achieved this by incorporating key technologies normally found only in expensive turnkey imaging systems and integrating them into one, complete, ready-to-install application. Ascent Capture was developed as a response to changes in the ways production-level imaging solutions are being built. For resellers, Ascent Capture opens the market by providing a plug and play solution ready to integrate with other component applications. End users benefit because of Ascent Capture's lower price point and faster installation. And unlike competitive offerings with their toolkit-like building block approaches, resellers and end users no longer have to become expert in all facets of document capture. Drawing upon its decade of experience in providing products for document capture, Kofax offers, with Ascent Capture, a flexible and cost-effective capture solution for virtually every requirement. Component imaging, through the use of complete applications like Ascent Capture, is the future of document imaging. Kofax Image Products, 3 Jenner Street, Irvine, CA 92718 714-727-1733 Fax: 714 727-3144 Internet:http://www. kofax.com Carolyn Gross is product manager for the Ascent family of component applications at Kofax Image Products. IW Special Supplement, March 1996
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