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Tuesday, April 17th, 2012

“Seventeen Years of Records Lost in Recent Flood”

Does this headline catch your eye like it did ours?

Last September, this is exactly where City Year—a local Columbia, SC non-profit that helps to keep students in school—found themselves, according to local news. Seventeen years of records destroyed, in a span of 24 hours.

Imagine if your institution’s only copy of student records, business documents, and other important files were lost in a flood or other natural disaster with no type of backup—years of information gone in just a few hours. How terrifying!

This is why our Records Conversion services are so important. All of our paperless solutions help to eliminate the possibility of lost records, but if your current paper documents are not electronically archived into the system, it could take years to transition a single department paperless. Maintaining two archives—one physical and one electronic—creates confusion and wastes employee time searching for documents.

Softdocs’ Records Conversion division converts archived documents, microfilm and microfiche into digital images that can be stored and retrieved within our enterprise content management solution, Doc e Scan.

Not only does this eliminate the need for filing cabinets full of paper, but the best part is that once all the documents are in Doc e Scan any document can be easily searched for, accessed, and reviewed by anyone with access to the system.

So, why can’t I scan and index our archived documents manually?

You can, and while many institutions without the extra time or manpower decide to let us take this big project off their plate, our Professional Services team can come in and train you on-site.

Whether you decide to do this yourself or have our Records Conversion division do it for you, Softdocs can empower your employees and bring efficiency to your institution by eliminating the hassle of paper-heavy business processes.

And hopefully sooner rather than later, you’ll be asking yourself, “How in the world did I ever find anything in those filing cabinets?” as you quickly and easily pull up a PO or student record on your monitor in seconds.

Click here for more information and details of our Records Conversion process or call Softdocs’ Records Conversion Manager, Patrick Daniel at 888.457.8879 x147.

Unique Customer Processes: Columbia College

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Softdocs is constantly going above and beyond our customers’ expectations by creating new solutions to make their unique processes simpler. And though these solutions begin as client-tailored add-ons to our products, once created they become available to all our clients. This week, our EMMA development director Ricky takes us through a process we originally developed for Columbia College – automating employee leave requests and time banks through our time and attendance solution.

Through our EMMA time clocks, employees now have the ability to submit leave requests and send them directly to their supervisor for approval. Employees can select a date and then the number of hours for leave time, citing a reason if necessary. The form is submitted, and EMMA sends the form to the employee’s supervisor for approval or denial. Next time the employee clocks in, they can easily see on their calendar if their leave request was approved.

Employees can select single days, multiple days or partial days in hour-long increments. They can also choose which time banks the hours should be taken from. For example, an employee may opt to take an entire day off, but ask that half the hours be taken from their sick time and the other half be taken from their vacation time. This process also provides employees with the ability to view the number of hours in their time banks in real time.

All approved leave requests are then deducted from the appropriate time banks, and the data can be exported directly to your accounting solution. Additionally, any changes to time banks made within the accounting solution are updated automatically within EMMA, ensuring the clarity and correctness of the information.

Automating this process for Columbia College completely eliminated their leave request paper trail and saved their employees hours of tracking down leave requests and updating time bank information. Want to do the same for your institution? Contact a Softdocs representative.

Unique Customer Processes: Columbia County Board of Education 2

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Softdocs is constantly going above and beyond our customers’ expectations by creating new solutions to make their unique processes simpler. And though these solutions begin as client-tailored add-ons to our products, once created they become available to all our clients. Our development manager Carvel sheds the light this week on another solution we created for the Columbia County Board of Education: an easy way to track partner contributions using Doc e Fill.

In school districts today, businesses play a major part in assisting and contributing to different schools within a given school district.  These contributions come in as monetary donations and donations in the form of cars, motors, golf carts, etc.  These donations are very important in helping school districts manage the education of the youth in America.  It becomes the responsibility of the district to track these donations to the schools and to the district.

School districts need a method of tracking these donations in order to be able to recognize the donors, yet put the responsibility of recording the donations to the different schools.  The school district can then pull a list of the donors and contributions made to each school in an effort to recognize and thank the donors/partners for their contributions. In order to track this, Softdocs has come up with some Doc e Fill forms and a forms-to-table hook.

Partner Request Form – This form is used to enter the partner information necessary to track who donated to the school. Only new Partners should be added using this form. This form is routed to the individuals overseeing the partner contribution tracking, who will review the form, ensure that the requested partner does not exist in the system already and then archive it. When the form is approved and archived the requested partner with relevant information is added to the system.

Partner Maintenance Form – This form will be used to add new partners, modify attributes of an existing partner, inactivate a partner, or delete a partner.

Partner Contribution Form – This form will be used to enter the contributions made by partners to the schools.  This form will be archived by the user originating it and is not routed.

Fiscal Year Maintenance Form – This form should be used by the administrator for the Partner Contribution Tracking System to control the fiscal years which will be available to the School/Location level users to record a contribution. The user will be allowed to enter new fiscal years as well as lock access to the different fiscal years.

Contributions Transfer Form - This form should be available only to the administrator of the Partner Contribution Tracking System. It will be used to move a single or a set of contributions from one partner to another. The user will select from a dropdown  list of Partner #s or names which is required on this screen, select a location and also a fiscal year (both optional in order to return all contributions for a given partner) in the FROM section of the form. Making the above selections will list all the contributions which fulfill the selected criteria. The user can then check the checkbox corresponding with the contributions which they want to transfer. The user can then pick a Partner (required), Location and Fiscal Yr. (both optional) in the TO Section of the form. On archival of this form, the selected contributions will be transferred from the Partner in the FROM Section to the Partner in the TO Section.

Want to know more or want to implement this process in your institution? Contact a Softdocs representative.

Unique Customer Processes: Columbia County Board of Education

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Softdocs is constantly going above and beyond our customers’ expectations by creating new solutions to make their unique processes simpler. And though these solutions begin as client-tailored add-ons to our products, once created they become available to all our clients. Our development manager Carvel sheds the light this week on a solution we created for the Columbia County Board of Education: an easy way to export entered data from Doc e Fill forms to an outside vendor.

Softdocs worked with Pat Sullivan at the Columbia County Board of Education (GA) to improve the benefits enrollment forms used for their employees to sign up for enrollment in dental insurance, vision insurance, flex spending and other benefits. Pat mentioned that their process for handling these forms in Doc e Fill included printing a copy of the form at the end of the routing. The forms were then faxed over to the appropriate provider so the new employees could be enrolled in their system.

In Doc e Fill, there is a Forms-to-Table hook that allows for the data entered into a form to be stored in a custom table within SQL. The data from this form is written into the table whenever the document is archived. With this hook in place, the information the employee selected on the form is then written to the custom table. At the end of the signup period, CCBOE now uses Crystal Reports to connect to the custom table, extract the information and store it in an Excel spreadsheet. Then the enrollment information is then sent to the provider where they have a routine to load the information into their records.

A new purge form was created to allow CCBOE to be able to purge the data in the custom table by date. This is a generic form that can be used with any of the Softapps business process solutions for managing the data in the customized tables.

Want to know more or want to implement this process in your institution? Contact a Softdocs representative.

Disaster Recovery: Restoring Your EMMA Application

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

For the final post in our disaster recovery series, our lead integration consultant Brad details the main components necessary for an EMMA backup.

EMMA (Employee Monitoring, Management and Attendance) has one mandatory backup section and one optional backup section.  The mandatory backup section is the SQL database.  As with Doc e Scan 3.0, there is only one database to back up.  This database holds all the information for EMMA to run correctly.  The information in the database includes, but is not limited to fingerprint information, employees, security, locations, departments, subgroup information, leave information and alerts.  For backup of this information, we recommend a SQL maintenance plan that will give a backup (.bak) file of the SQL server through automation, and then use a tape backup or other media storage separated from the physical hard drive of the server.

The optional backup is backing up the update folders for both the PC and ET versions of EMMA.  The versions are stored in separate folders under a shared root folder.  The shared root folder is typically named “EMMA” with the two folders named “PC” and “ET”.  The reason for this is that the versions have many differences in functionality.  For example, the PC version allows for data manipulation where the ET version only allows for clocking actions, viewing/approving clocking actions and creating vacation requests.  Backing up these folders on a separate media storage device is recommended every time the system is upgraded to a newer version of the software.

For more information on restoring EMMA or any of our Softdocs products, please contact Softdocs support.

Disaster Recovery: Restoring Your Doc e Serve Application

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Our Doc e Serve Supervisor Kipp continues our disaster recovery series this week with tips and information on restoring Doc e Serve.

Like Doc e Scan, Doc e Serve needs two components for backup:  the file archive and system databases.  The file archive can be broken down into 3 sub categories: completed, pending and passthrough.  The completed files are the most important for a successful Doc e Serve backup.

Completed files are those that have been processed and delivered (by print, fax, email, etc.) through Doc e Serve and are used for reprints.  This category archives both the Job’s original data file and processed file.  Roughly 95% of our clients have a completed folder created for each Job type within Doc e Serve, which can be set to archive these files for anywhere from 0 days to forever.  However, some of our older Doc e Serve systems will only be able to save for up to 999 days.  To keep from losing any important files, the completed folders should be backed up at a minimum of every 2-3 months for recovery purposes.  Once Doc e Serve has purged the expired files, they will not be available for reprint without the original data file.

To find the completed folders, log into Doc e Serve, select a Job and click on either of the Completed Input or Completed Output buttons.  When selected, the top left screen will display a tree showing the location of the folder for the selected Job.  You can select different Jobs to find each of their completed Job folders.

The other items needed for Doc e Serve backup are the system databases.  The most important of these is named “Doc e Serve Info.mdb”, which houses all of the template information in one location. Other important databases include “Doc e Serve Log.mdb”, “Completed Jobs.mdb”, and “Job Template.mdb”.  All of these databases can be found in the “\Doc e Serve\System” folder.  Without one of these databases, Doc e Serve will not be able to run properly.

To guarantee that a database is not missed when backing up Doc e Serve, the entire system folder is recommended for backup.  By doing this, the backup will be able to restore the different graphics used on the templates. This process will also make a secondary backup of each Job template by backing up the DSI Files and Graphics folders.  The system folder should have a backup made at least once a month, though we recommend a full backup once a week in the case of a mid-month crash.

As long as the completed folders and the “Doc e Serve\System” folder are covered in the backup process, Doc e Serve will have all of the necessary files to recover from a crash.

For more information, please contact Softdocs support.

Disaster Recovery: Restoring Your Doc e Scan Application

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Next in our disaster recovery series, support specialists Cory and Carl tell you what you’ll need to restore your Doc e Scan system.

At its simplest, Doc e Scan only requires two things for backup: the image warehouse and the databases.  The image warehouse is the store of all images catalogued or kept by Doc e Scan. This is usually on the server’s data drive and named for the Doc e Scan user institution.  A tape backup of this folder is all that is needed to backup the images.

The database backup is a little trickier. The databases hold all the filing information, search information, security and everything else that makes the image warehouse useful.  Without the database(s), you will only have a random assortment of images stored in a directory structure that is nearly impossible to navigate. If you are running Doc e Scan 3.0 or higher, there is only one database to backup, located on the SQL server. If you are running an earlier version, you will have multiple databases: Doc e Scan Master, Doc e Scan Log, and one database per room in (usually named by “Building-Room”).

It is recommended that you run SQL maintenance plans that will give you a backup (.bak) file of your SQL server through automation, and then use a tape backup to copy these to another machine.  There are also other 3rd party backup programs that will make a “correct” backup of SQL databases, but they do not always complete all the other maintenance items a SQL maintenance plan provides.

It is important to make sure these two backups are run simultaneously to eliminate any discrepancies between the image warehouse and the SQL databases. Otherwise a new image might be scanned into the image warehouse without any record of it in the database.  Backups should also be scheduled during times of least impact on users (usually nights or weekends). Both the image warehouse and the SQL database(s) are needed for Doc e Scan to function, so it is imperative that both are backed up regularly.

Want more information? Contact Softdocs support.

Disaster Recovery: Restoring Your Doc e Fill Application

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

This week, support specialist Greg takes you through the different components needed to restore your Doc e Fill system in the event of a disaster.

In preparation for disaster recovery, Doc e Fill has three directories that need to be backed up. Located on the server are code files, storage files and database tables. Each play different roles in recovering a lost system; however, each is essential for a complete application recovery.

The code files are the base of the program. They contain the functionality and cosmetics of Doc e Fill, as well as documentation and user manuals. All files are located in a single folder which, if restored properly, will provide complete program restoration. This folder is located in the www root folder connected directly to Internet Information Services.

The database tables play an equally important role. They contain customized data for each client, along with user information, names of form groups, locations, departments and most importantly, references to archived, pending and saved forms. This is located directly on the SQL server, and a complete backup will need to be configured through the MSSQL Configuration Manager. Without database recovery, the Doc e Fill application would need to be reconfigured and customized.

The storage files have a less significant responsibility, but are still required for full backup recovery. They do not determine or prevent any functionality within the program itself, but are used for archived, pending and saved documents. In addition, all forms associated with Doc e Fill are located here.  This folder is located in the Program Files directory on the server.

Complete recovery involves copying and replacing the two copied folders and a restoration of the single Doc e Fill database. Restoration is a simple process, but must be done manually.

Need more help? Contact Softdocs support.

Troubleshooting for Doc e Serve Printing

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Are you having trouble printing your documents through Doc e Serve? Here are some quick troubleshooting tips from Rocky, our client services manager:

Check the printer.

Check the printer screen for any messages (ex. “Please insert MICR cartridge), check paper trays for stock or jams and ensure the printer is online and ready to print.

Check the computer.

On your My Computer screen, make sure your mapped drive does not have a red “X” on it, signifying a disconnection. If it does, double-click the drive to reconnect.

Under your Control Panel’s Printers and Faxes tab, right-click the print and uncheck “Pause Printing” or “Use Printer Offline,” if checked.

*NOTE: In XP and Server 2003, the menu should read “Use Printer Offline” without a check. If “Use Printer Online” is displayed, click to change.

Print a test page from your computer. After placing paper in each tray, right-click the printer and select Properties, then “Print Test Page.” If the test page does not print, contact your network administrator to resolve the issue.

If the test page does not print, proceed to the next step.

Check Doc e Serve.

Open Doc e Serve’s Manage panel and click on Passthroughs. If the approximate time you sent your file to Doc e Serve is listed in the “passthrough.txt” file, contact Softdocs Technical Support.

If the appropriate timestamp is not listed, there may be a problem with the file. Open the Process panel and ensure the Delayed Processing Mode is unchecked. Uncheck any options under “Suppress with Print Job” as well. Your file should then be under the Pending Output button within the Manage panel.

If it still not there, check the option under the Process panel to “Disregard errors, print anyway.” Your file should then be under the Pending Input button within the Manage panel and will need to be processed.

If you are printing MICR checks and the above has not worked, the problem is usually with the signature disk, often located on a floppy disk, CD or USB drive. Ensure that you can navigate to the floppy disk or CD through your My Computer screen. If it is located on a USB drive, the drive’s password may need to be re-entered.

If this did not solve your problem, please contact Softdocs Technical Support.

Service FAQ: Why use SQL Maintenance Plans?

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Some of our weekly blog entries will answer some of the most common questions we get from our customers. This week, staffer Carl addresses a topic that helps users maximize the efficiency of their Doc e Scan installations: using a SQL maintenance plan. If you have a question you’d like answered, please ask away or browse our website!

Why use SQL Maintenance Plans?

SQL maintenance plans are a sometimes underutilized part of the SQL package.  Many system administrators don’t realize the benefits of running SQL maintenance plans, and their database backups are done only through a third-party application.  This can cause headaches and problems down the road as database systems get slower and hard drive space slowly disappears.  A well-designed maintenance plan prevents both, as well as allowing users to restore a database to a specific time of day if needed.

The most important functionalities of a SQL maintenance plan are the full backup and transaction log backups.  All SQL databases consist of two files: an MDF file and an LDF file.  The MDF file is the actual database itself, holding all the data that your company has entered.  The LDF is a copy of every change to that database since the last full backup.  Many third-party backup programs do not do any form of LDF maintenance, but a SQL maintenance plan will clear out that LDF file whenever a full backup is made.  This means if you are not running a SQL maintenance plan, that LDF file will continue to grow…and grow….and grow.  I have received many phone calls asking about why this one file was eating up their entire hard drive.  This is probably the most important and most obvious reason for running a SQL maintenance plan.  Also, if you do this, it will create a database backup that is smaller than the actual database (it leaves out the blank space) that can be copied using a regular file copy.

Another benefit of a SQL maintenance plan is that if set up properly, you can restore a database to any specific moment in time.  This is done by doing a full backup on a regular basis, and a transaction log backup several times throughout the course of a day. An administrator can then restore the full backup, and use the transactional backups to go back to a specific moment.

Hard drive space can also be saved using the “shrink database” option.   When using SQL, records may be deleted from a database without releasing the storage space for reuse, leaving unusable blank space in your databases. “Shrink database” goes through and removes this space, releasing it back to the operating system.

Many system administrators will run a defragmenter on a hard drive to increase a computer’s performance.  SQL can do the same by running the “Reorganize Index Task” option.  This will go through and defrag the organizational tables within a database so that the information can be retrieved and referenced faster.  Without this, the index tables become cluttered and the system takes longer to run even simple queries.

The last benefit to mention about the SQL maintenance plans is the “Check Database Integrity” option, which will report any inconsistencies within the system so they can be fixed.

SQL maintenance plans are clearly beneficial for your system. They maintain the performance and health of databases as well as keeping hard drive space usage to a minimum. A system administrator may think they have everything covered by using a third party program to do their backups, but it does nothing for the overall health of the database system.

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