Kofax Front Office Server enables customer-facing employees to trigger back-office business processes directly from familiar front office equipment such as digital copiers, desktop scanners, and fax systems. Kofax Front Office Server unites the following components in the document capture and routing process:

• Input devices like MFPs, scanners and fax systems
• Kofax Capture for advanced document processing options like
• classification, data extraction, PDF conversion and release to ECM systems, workflows or line of business applications
• Personalized user interface options that improve the efficiency of document-driven processes

Top 7 Little Known KFS Facts

1. KFS Web Clients are licensed concurrently, even over a WAN – this means that a 20 KFS Web client license using a modest contention ratio of 5:1 provides scanner connectivity for 100 users.
2. KFS Web Clients permit the uploading of electronic format documents as well as supporting a wide range of personal and workgroup scanners.
3. All images scanned from MFPs i.e. via KFS “device” client licenses do not incur a “click” in the back-end Kofax Capture system, i.e. Kofax Capture PDF (to image only) and export can be used irrespective of the number of images scanned.
4. KFS Web Client includes VRS as a part of the build so VRS-bundled scanners are not needed to realise the benefits of image clean up and “scanning smarts”.
5. KFS Device Clients (i.e. MFPs) can utilise VRS via VRS-Server that is bundled as a part of the KFS Server solution and license fee.
6. KFS can be added to any Kofax Capture system and automatically “inherit” batch classes – thus, all Kofax Capture systems are candidates for immediate deployment of ad hoc scanning.
7. KFS Web Clients are quick and easy to deploy and learn – as no email mechanisms are used,  the solution conforms to Records Management best practice and is secure.

Want to Know More?

Please contact Deltascheme to find out how we can help with your Kofax deployment. Deltascheme is a Kofax partner and leading Microsoft Partner delivering ECM & BPM solutions on SharePoint.

Related posts:

1. Upgrading from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to SharePoint Server 2010?
2. Kofax Ascent Capture 7.x End of Life
3. Deltascheme’s Kofax Export Connector

We have over 14 years of experience in successfully implementing Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems.

Expertise

We focus exclusively on delivering solutions using Microsoft SharePoint and have developed a very high level of expertise.

References

We have an impressive number of references across many industry sectors.

Microsoft Gold Competency

We were  the first Microsoft Partner in the UK, and one of the first in the  World to earn the new Microsoft Gold Competency for Content Management. This competency is gained in recognition of our skills and proven competency in delivering ECM solutions in SharePoint.

Reliability

Other customers have chosen Deltascheme for SharePoint consultancy because of  our breadth of experience, track record, financial stability, quality certifications and because we are often able to provide a complete solution based on standard SharePoint functionality.

Click here to contact us.

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Gold Partnership
2. Document & Records Management with SharePoint 2010
3. Upgrading from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to SharePoint Server 2010?

The Records Centre was introduced in 2007 as a SharePoint site that served as a conventional records archive.     Content from all over the enterprise can be submitted to a Records Centre and then routed to the appropriate place where it picks up the right permissions and policies, such as expiration and auditing.
For SharePoint 2010, Microsoft know it’s important to continue to invest here and add even more “traditional” archive features.     When looking at the broad swath of features they had to choose from, their goals here really focused on providing features that allow you to extract the most value out of an archive and find the data you need.   For instance, here are a few of the new features in a SharePoint 2010 Records Center:

• Document ID: Every document can be assigned a unique identifier, which stays with the document even when it’s archived.   This allows records to be easily referenced by an ID no matter where the document moves.
• Multi-Stage Retention: Retention policies can have multiple stages, allowing you to specify the entire document lifecycle as one policy (e.g. review Contracts every year, and delete after 7 years)
• Per-Item Audit Reports: You can generate a customized audit report about an individual record.
• Hierarchal File Plans: You can create deep, hierarchal folder structures and manage retention at each folder in the hierarchy (or inherit from parent folders).
• File Plan Report: You can generate status reports showing the number of items in each stage of the file plan, along with a rollup of the retention policies on each node in the plan.

Here’s the home page of the Records Center in SharePoint 2010 for a fictional government agency, the Joint Task Force.   Notice that the home page is a place for records managers to educate the organization on compliance policy, as well as a place to look up a record by its document identifier.

In addition to adding these traditional records management features to the archive,  Microsoft product designers  have made a big bet on the power of metadata to dive 21st century electronic records management.   This manifests itself in several ways in the SharePoint archive:

• Taxonomy and Centralized Content Types:   The archive will be a consumer of enterprise-wide taxonomies and content types, ensuring consistency and context transfer between the collaborative spaces and the archive.  
• Content Organizer: The records router can use metadata to route incoming documents to the right place in the hierarchical file plan.   For instance, it enables you to automatically enforce rules on content that is submitted, like “If a Purchase Agreement is tagged with Project Alpha, send to the Alpha Contracts subfolder and apply that’s folder retention policy to the item.”
• Virtual Folders: The file plan is a great way to manage a repository but often time isn’t what you want to use to navigate and find the content you are looking for.   The SharePoint 2010 Records Center makes use of a new feature called metadata based navigation, which allows you to expose key metadata as virtual folders:

Notice that end users discover content in this Records Center by navigating virtual folders based upon metadata properties on the records.

This bet on metadata is all about empowering the end user, thus increasing the chance of successful adoption of the RM system.   Instead of choosing a complicated node in a file plan, submitters just fill out a few pieces of useful metadata and they’ll use that metadata when they need to find the content again.

In Place Records Management – Injecting Records Management in the Content Creation Experience

Microsoft have  made a huge effort in 2010 to enable you to do effective records management in collaborative spaces.   Auditing, Retention, Expiration, Reporting, Records Workflows, eDiscovery, Legal Hold and Recordization are all features you can use in collaborative space as you are striking a balance between SharePoint’s value to end users and the need for information governance.

Holding all of this together is a new feature in SharePoint 2010 called In Place Records Management.   This allows certain SharePoint documents (or blogs, wikis, web pages, and list items) to be declared records.   The system can prevent such records from being deleted or edited, if necessary by your organization’s definition of what a record is:

Note that some of the documents have locks, implying to the user that they are dealing with records.   When selecting a record, the UI for editing and deleting the item is disabled.

This recordization process can be done either manually, as part of a larger process in a workflow, or as a scheduled part of a document’s retention (e.g. after 2 years).   The key here is that, when declared a record, the content doesn’t move to an archive – it stays where it is so the end users can still find and interact with the content.

Once declared, the system knows about an item’s record status, so you can do things such as create different retention policies for records or use record state when defining workflows in SharePoint Designer.   Microsoft also enable a programmability model so you can perform custom processes and policies upon recordization to meet specialized compliance needs.

Scale: We’re Talking Big

With electronic information growing at a crazy pace and businesses spending billions on eDiscovery every year, records managers have enough to keep them up at night.   The scale of their records/content management system shouldn’t be another worry.

A  large part of  the effort in  this release has been spent adding features to make it easier to scale to massive archives.   Features such as Remote Blob Storage, database query optimizations, internal timer job processing improvements, new database indexing strategies and other engineering initiatives enable  SharePoint to make a great leap forward and all you to have:  

• Tens of millions of records in a single Records Center
• Hundreds of millions of records in a distributed archive:  allow many Record Centers to bind together to act as one logical repository.

How can Deltascheme Help You..?

Deltascheme is uniquely placed in the UK, having extensive experience in both the implementation of full records management solutions and with the design, configuration and implementation of SharePoint.

By way of an example we are often asked the question; “how do you do records management in SharePoint?” As a result we offer our customers a standard three days consulting engagement which is designed to provide a review of your organisations’ high level requirements and to then talk and show how SharePoint can be configured to deliver an effective Electronic Document and Records Management solution.

Additionally we can assist with the implementation of other applications in SharePoint which are associated with records management such as subject matter access requests (FoI, DP, Environmental and Ministerial, etc.), case management, business process management and integrated scanning solutions (ensuring legal admissibility).  

To discuss further, contact us here

Related posts:

1. SharePoint 2010 & ECM
2. Document & Records Management with SharePoint 2010
3. SharePoint Migration Tools

Related posts:

1. What is Office 365?
2. Records Management & SharePoint

In order to upgrade to SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010, you must first be running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 at SP2 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 at SP2, respectively. For customers running prior versions of SharePoint, including Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003, this means that you must first upgrade to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 prior to upgrading to 2010 versions. Windows SharePoint Server 3.0 with SP2 is available as a free download, and trial versions of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 are available and supported for use in this upgrade/migration process.

Additional Information and Notes

Please note that SharePoint Server 2010 Beta cannot be upgraded to the final release version (RTM). Any use of these steps or guidelines with any pre-release version of SharePoint 2010 should be for testing/evaluation only.

The upgrade path will necessarily mean a move from 32-bit OS architecture to 64-bit OS architecture. Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 were supported only on 32-bit operating systems, as opposed to SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010, which are supported only on 64-bit operating systems.

The database platform selected for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 should be consistent with the planned platform for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010. For example, if SQL Server 2008 will serve as the database software for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 trial versions you should maintain that version for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 to avoid downgrade support limitations such as SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2005. For additional information on SQL Server 2008 downgrade rights see: SQL Server 2008 Licensing Frequently Asked Questions

How can Deltascheme help?

As a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner, Deltascheme can help you to implement your new SharePoint Server system by providing:

• Consultancy to define your business requirements
• Professional Services to design, install and configure your system
• Data migration tools to re‐classify & import your legacy content
• Solutions to enable paper content to be scanned into the system
• Services to deliver standard forms and workflow processes
• Expertise to integrate SharePoint with your existing applications  

Deltascheme is a leading provider of business and technical consultancy for Electronic Content Management (ECM) and Business Process Management (BPM) solutions based on Microsoft Technologies.  

To discuss your requirements, call us on +44 (0) 1628 401 800.

Related posts:

1. SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements
2. Operating System Requirements of SharePoint 2010
3. Kofax Ascent Capture 7.x End of Life

• End of Life Announcement – December 1, 2009
• End of Sale (Last Time Buy) – March 31, 2010
• End of Support – March 31, 2011

End of Sale – Deltascheme customers who currently own Ascent Capture 7.x will have until March 31, 2010, to purchase additional licenses or add-ons to their license. Effective April 1, 2010, Ascent Capture 7.x licenses and add-ons will no longer be available for sale. The intent of this announcement is to provide customers with notice so they can budget and define what additional Ascent Capture 7.x licenses they may require prior to the March 31, 2010, End of Sale.

Upgrade Software – Kofax customers who have current Support agreements with Kofax can download the most current and supported versions of Kofax software from the Kofax Electronic Fulfillment site at http://delivery.kofax.com. An order with Kofax is not required to acquire the most current software versions from the Kofax Electronic Fulfillment site.

Earlier Versions – Support for Ascent Capture 5 officially ended December 31, 2005, and support for Ascent Capture 6 officially ended July 31, 2008. It is important for customers utilizing those versions that they upgrade to a supported version as soon as possible.

Questions – If you have any questions or require additional information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Online Resources – Kofax Ascent Capture 7.x End of Life Announcement, FAQ, and supporting documentation
http://news.kofax.com

Deltascheme

Deltascheme is a leading provider of Enterprise Content Managment (ECM) and Business Process Management (BPM)  solutions based on Microsoft Technologies. We use Kofax to provide integrated scanning solutions that automate document driven business processes in a timely and cost effective manner. Contact us to find out how we can help with your project.

Related posts:

1. Kofax Capture 9.0 Released
2. Upgrading from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to SharePoint Server 2010?
3. Deltascheme’s Kofax Express Connector for SharePoint