Recommendations for Document Imaging Solutions

We are using ImageNow and the enrollment management folks like it a lot.  Since we are neighbors, Gary, you are most welcome to come over to UMass Boston and check it out in person. 

Anne

Anne Scrivener Agee

Vice Provost for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer

University of Massachusetts Boston

100 Morrissey Blvd.

Boston MA 02125

617-287-5410

Anne.Agee@umb.edu

Maria,

Speaking of workflows in ImageNow, I saw a demonstration of the capabilities in the past week and was struck at the lack of any user interface to develop workflows, and what appeared to be a single folder full of javascript-based scripts, one for each workflow. There didn’t appear to be any source code control or versioning for the scripts – anyone with permissions could change a single space in a file and cause a workflow to break with no way to figure out where in the code it was or who did it.

Is that really the case, and if so, has this been an issue for you with the product? We’re just beginning to migrate our imaging and workflow to ImageNow. Thanks.

The workflow interface was very simple and somehow users were able to create sophisticated workflows with lots of scripting. The latest version of the workflow designer is much nicer,  a lot of capability that required scripting before has been added standard to the GUI, super queues simplified a lot of the workflows,  they also have added granular permissions to processes and objects,  but moving to new capabilities requires to redo workflows so most users stayed with their older workflows.  The use of scripting gives users a powerful tool but I agree that could be chaotic if not documented properly.  You are right, there is no versioning, so most work is done in production (I know very scary). They have been working on workflow copy functionality, I believe if not in the new version, is coming pretty soon. That has been on the top user requests.  Our workflows are somehow simple, I know we could automate a lot with scripts but we are small. I do not even have a dedicated administrator!  I saw a workflow for a healthcare company that was very impressive: multiple offices all across the US, sophisticated automated AP and Billing, OCR and approval process,  one centralized scanning office in the US. It was a massive workflow and the admin confessed she was scared to touch it!   

Sorry for the long email.  You can PM me or call me and I will gladly tell you more about our experience.

Is anyone aware of any viable open source imaging & workflow products?

Thanks,

Chuck Lanham

University of Idaho

Hi,

Ithaca College has also just implemented Nolij Web.  We literally went live with our 1^st area, Grad Admissions, this past week.  While we have just started to implement (We plan to implement across campus with over 100 business processes), we believe it is going to be a huge success.  We do see and are using Nolij Web as the engine for managing documents and creating workflows and then adding our own functionality to it.  We are very pleased with how things have worked out so far.

We have three key components as to how we are using the system:

1.       The “Power Users” (People that will be using the system significantly – mainly key admin offices) will work within Nolij – Since they will be in the system constantly, we figure they will be able to learn and work with the interface.

2.       The “Casual Users” (People that need to work with the workflows on a limited basis – faculty and some admin office users for example) will work within “IC Workflow”, which is an in-house developed website that links to Nolij and pulls in the necessary info to complete the workflow step.  We went this way so that these people do not need to go into Nolij Web, they do not need to learn a new system and we can present a much more user friendly experience.

3.       E-Forms – In many cases, we are creating our own web based forms for the different processes.  These forms pull information from our various systems (Banner, Parnassus and Nolij and feed information back to Nolij).  While Nolij has a form capability, it is somewhat limited.

Hope this information helps.

Bill Liddick

William E Liddick

Associate Director, Enterprise Application Development

Ithaca College

wliddick@ithaca.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE CIO Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:CIO@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Ravi Ravishanker
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2013 8:49 AM
To: CIO@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [CIO] Recommendations for Document Imaging Solutions