New online store for Data Capture, Scanners, and DocuShare Tools

We've just opened our new ecommerce site, CriteriaFirstWare.com, and have a selection of products we believe will interest your organization for your document management needs.  We carry a full range of ABBYY products for desktop applications and departmental to enterprise use including FlexiCapture and Recognition Server.  Criteria First has retained it's position over the past seven years as one of Xerox' top DocuShare VARs, so have a look at DocuShare if you're considering implementing a collaborative content management environment for your company.  It's easier to implement and maintain than SharePoint and runs on more platforms with a wide selection of databases you can use.  It's long been considered the best value in the marketplace for document management. 

We've carefully priced our selection of scanners below that of the marketplace so you'll find the best values available.  Our selection includes only current scanners and not those being actively phased out by vendors so you'll be assured of selecting current technologies.  We offer portable scanners and high volume production scanners with everything in between.  If you don't find what you're looking for, contact us and we'll send you a quote. 

Xerox DocuShare 6.5.0 & Update 4

DocuShare 6.5.0 is an interim release addressing customer requests for accommodating certain platform and scalability issues until another major release is available around the end of the year.  Among the additions to the new feature set are:

Change History (formerly a CPX feature) which provides activity history query and reporting so that you can generate an audit trail on persons or content.  This can be used with the new Read History feature discussed next.  If your needs are more sweeping or complex, call and ask about our DocuShare Audit Assistant product.

You can also implement the new configuration option for Enhanced 6 Level Security. 3 levels are installed by default and maintained when upgrading. There's no going back once you change to 6 levels, so make sure this suits your needs before changing. The six levels would be ...

• Read Properties
• Read Content
• Read History
• Write Properties
• Write Content
• Manage (change content, properties, and permissions and delete content)

The new embedded Autonomy IDOL search engine provides better scalability and supports backup and restore of your indexes along with partial reindexing.  If you had to recover your DocuShare installation and had backed up your index from several days ago, you could restore the index and issue a command to reindex only the content that had been added since the backup.  This makes large repositories easier to manage by eliminating the need in such situations for reindexing all your content.

Xerox' SimpleDoc technology reduces the database and storage requirements by eliminating the initial version and rendition objects. Once you add a new version, the additional objects are then added.  This is valuable to those using DocuShare for a great deal of archival of documents which aren't often or ever changed.  It won't affect your ability to revise and collaborate.

If you're running on MSDE on DocuShare 6.0.1 or earlier, you will be upgraded to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express when you upgrade to DocuShare 6.5.  If you're approaching or over 200,000 documents, it is strongly recommended that you upgrade to another version of SQL Server that would be scalable.  Speak to your database administrator for recommendations.  Installing your database on a separate server will provide better overall performance.

Support for more 64 bit platforms and newer Linux platforms should be released soon.  Keep your eyes on DoUG - the DocuShare User Group site and forum for the latest releases.  Call or write us if you have any questions.

Extend DocuShare's Reach with Content Circles

Content Circle's new namesake product allows you to collaborate with non-DocuShare users in a secure manner using an Outlook-like interface.  You can isolate a circle of teammates and partners within and outside your office to review and update content you've checked out of DocuShare and when you're finished, you check it back in.  It works with SharePoint, GoogleDocs, and other content platforms, too, so that you can remove the limitations that are imposed by having different resources otherwise inaccessible by your circle of users.  Content Circle's client software is Java based, so it runs on both PCs and Macs.  Content is periodically synchronized to your desktop in the background, so you're always up to date with the latest version of your shared documents.  For more information and a 30 day trial, visit their site at ContentCircles.com and watch their 5 minute overview by clicking on the projector.  Here's how to get started ...

1. Click here for information and to download and install the 30 day trial.  Use promo code criteriafirst or CRITERIAFIRST when registering for additional support.

2. Setup your own circles and invite friends to evaluate it with you.

3. Join our circle for additional documentation on DocuShare 6.5 and Content Circles.  When you start your Content Circles application, you'll see an invitation to accept.

Add your favorite quote to my quotes document and see what others have added.  You'll quickly see how this could help you collaborate with partners and suppliers in bringing your products to market or in better serving your customer base using your documents.  You'll also find information here on how to backup and restore your content indexes using the new IDOL search engine along with other unique information on DocuShare 6.5.

By setting up your trial using the promo code criteriafirst or CRITERIAFIRST, we can offer the additional support you'll want in interfacing with DocuShare for the trial and afterwards, if you choose to become a subscriber to Content Circles.

Faster Uploads to DocuShare

For those of you who have been using ABBYY FormReader Enterprise or ABBYY FlexiCapture with DocuShare, you'll be glad to learn that our DAVupDoc program now works with DocuShare 6.0 and later versions' new Content Intake Mode (CIM) feature.  This speeds uploads of batches of documents up to 50 times faster than our scripted method in DAVupDoc 2.  DAVupDoc 3.0 retains the ability to run scripted uploads to all versions of DocuShare in interactive or batch command line mode while adding the ability to take your tab or comma separated variable (.txt and .csv) output and create a file that DocuShare can ingest using content intake.  We create a single XML file and zip it up with your documents and place it in the folder watched by DocuShare for content intake.  For a batch size of 2500 documents we find DAVupDoc 3.0 take about 6 minutes to generate the zip bundle and DocuShare takes about 5 minutes to ingest it.  Documents are filed where they belong with metadata and the title you specify, just as with the scripted upload method.  Any VBScripts or Perl scripts that you have working with your current DAVupDoc implementation should still work with the content intake mode.

If you're currently on annual support and maintenance for DAVupDoc then you're free to download the new version and install it, but you'll have to send us your new "software code" so that we can send you a liberation (license) key to enable it for more than just a trial.  Setup documentation is included and shows how to change your command line syntax for use with content intake.  If you have any questions or concerns regarding your application, contact us and we'll work with you. 

You can download DAVupDoc 3.0 here.

Be sure to look into DAVLoader 2.0 for your other batch upload processes involving simpler methods of merely watching folders for new content and uploading the documents to a target collection.  This, too, has been upgraded to support DocuShare's new Content Intake Mode in addition to scripted mode.

Capturing Data from Print for Auto-Filing

Are you having to print data to capture it using recognition software or would you like to be able to print your documents and automatically file a copy at the same time.  We've chosen FabSoft as a best value partner for their Reform Enterprise product.  This is a great product for intercepting print and combining it with a form for printing and then splitting the job so that you can also email, fax, or store the document.  We've worked with customers to print and file to DocuShare, all in one pass.  We can take your criteria and create a script that will file your document where it belongs with a meaningful title and metadata you can perform surgical searches against to avoid the Google complex - sloppy search results that you have to manually re-search through.  A terrific example of having computers do your work for you.  For more information, read the brief Reform Enterprise overview and datasheet, then contact us with your requirements.