Moving Your Existing Documents Into Time Matters by Jeff Krause

I am doing a little desktop cleanup today. I found a set of instructions I had put together for a client regarding how to move documents from their old Windows based system into their new Time Matters document management systems. Since this subject comes up all time, it seemed like a nice opportunity to write a white paper.

The resulting white paper is only a few pages long but describes the process of either linking or moving legacy documents to Time Matters. If you link the documents, they remain in their original location but are visible from Time Matters. If you move the documents, there is an extra step but the documents will be in the same location as the rest of your new Time Matters documents.

The new white paper is available on my website. Just visit http://www.krausepm.com/resources/articles2.shtml.

ScanSnap S1500 Review by Jeff Krause

Introduction

There are a number of reasons why I really like the ScanSnap. It is a great value, especially when you consider the bundle Adobe Acrobat software. It is small enough to be placed on the desktop and affordable enough to be placed on every desktop. It is fast, scans in color and scans both sides of the document in one pass. Finally, it is very versatile, allowing you to recognize text in scans and save the scans to just about any document management system you like.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 is no longer “new.” In fact, I have been using one for about six months. I suppose that one good thing about this belated review is that I have really run the unit through its paces in a real-world setting.

Impressions

ScanSnap S1500

The S1500 looks more a bit more modern than its predecessor S500. The lines are a bit more angular. Overall, it takes up the same amount of space as the previous unit. If I was really into aesthetics, I would mention that the black and silver case with the blue button perfectly matches the Dell monitors on my desk. The catch tray does look a little flimsier than the previous model but I have not experienced a single problem with it during the last six months.

My previous ScanSnap S500 had a tendency to double feed. This meant that I had to babysit scans of multiple pages. I never really minded all that much because the scanning is so fast. Nevertheless, I am happy to report that my new S1500 has not double fed a single time – so far.

Scanning with the S1500

Scanning is incredibly easy with this scanner. Simply insert the page or pages you wish to scan and hit the blue scan button. The paper is pulled through and the scan appears in the default application you have set (more on this later). If the paper was two-sided, the two sides will be pages 1 and 2 of your resulting PDF. Different page sizes are not a problem. The ScanSnap automatically detects this and adjusts the resulting PDF accordingly. Similarly, it automatically rotates pages and removes blank pages. If you scan a mix of documents where some are one-sided and some are two-sided, the blank sides of the one-sided documents are removed from the resulting PDF.

Did I mention how fast it was? To give you some idea of the speed of this scanner, I inserted 10 sheets with printing on both sides. Twenty-eight seconds after hitting the scan button the resulting scan appeared on my screen. This equates almost exactly with the 20 pages per minute that Fujitsu states in the specifications for the S1500. Inserting color documents or inserting some of the documents upside-down or sideways, does not add noticeably to this time. The only thing that does at time is adding text recognition at the time of the scan, which I never do. Why not? For starters, I just do not need it on most documents. Second, I can easily do it after the fact using the OCR features in Acrobat.

Bundled Software

ScanSnap Manager

Once the scan is finished, it can be displayed in one of several ways. All of this is controlled by the included ScanSnap Manager software, which allows you to choose what happens when you select the Scan button. There are seven choices including Scan to File, Scan to Folder, Scan to Email, Scan to Picture, and Scan to Print. There are situational uses for each of these but most users will select either ScanSnap Organizer or Adobe Acrobat as their default setting. The one you choose depends on several factors. The advice I give my clients and personally follow is to select Adobe Acrobat if you will be saving each scan immediately and ScanSnap Organizer if you tend to scan a lot of documents and save and organize them later.

ScanSnap Organizer

Because my typical scanning process is to scan a number of documents in quick succession, then save each of them once they are all scanned, my default is set to the bundled ScanSnap Organizer software. In other words my scanning process is scan, scan, scan, save, save, save. The ScanSnap Organizer is a software tool that will remind you of Microsoft Outlook or any other software that has a main display window and folders within which files can be displayed. As you scan each document a thumbnail of the scan appears in the main window. You can create folders and drop scans into those folders, or double click on any scan and open it in Adobe Acrobat. The ScanSnap Organizer also allows you to right click on any scan and access the previously mentioned Scan to Email, Scan to Print, etc. Personally, I open each document from the ScanSnap Organizer to Acrobat and use TM Save to save it to Time Matters. Once saved, I delete it from the ScanSnap Manager.

The fact that Adobe Acrobat Standard has always been included with the ScanSnap is one of the scanner’s best selling points. The S1500 includes the newest version of Acrobat, 9 Standard. I often describe the ScanSnap as a “paper to PDF” machine. It is the fastest way to turn a piece of paper into a PDF file and, as we all know, PDF is a nearly universal format that can be read by almost anyone and is compatible with every document management system used in professional office. From a scanning prospective, PDFs are also more compact than some of the traditional scan to formats like TIF.

If you choose Adobe Acrobat as your default application, scans will appear immediately in Acrobat. This is very useful if your scanning process is scan, save, scan, save, etc. Simply use Save As in Acrobat and save the file with a name and location of your choice or, if you use a document management system, save it from Acrobat into that system. For those of you who already have Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional, you can continue to use that application with your ScanSnap S1500. Adobe also offers upgrades from 9 Standard to 9 Professional. These upgrades are available for approximately $150.00 and are available via download from Adobe’s website.

I do not mean to short-change the other software bundled with the ScanSnap S1500 but I must admit that I am not all that familiar with these products. For example, ABBYY FineReader is bundled as an OCR application. It receives very good reviews, but I have not used it. Instead, in the rare event I need OCR, I use the OCR Text Recognition function in Acrobat.

Conclusion

The ScanSnap S1500 has a suggested retail price of $495.00 but you can almost always find it for less. Like earlier models, there are $50.00 rebates available and many resellers will sell if for less than the $495.00 list price.

Overall, the ScanSnap S1500 continues the traditions established by its predecessors – speed, accuracy, ease of use, loads of features, and great bundled software. It is an integral part of my own office and a tool I recommend to all of my clients.

For more information on the ScanSnap S1500 including a Flash demo, visit my website at Krause Practice Management - Fujitsu Scanners.

Creating an Email Retention Policy by Jeff Krause

Recently, two different clients have asked me to help them create an email retention policy. In that my clients are law firms and law departments, they have been able to write the specific language themselves. My assistance has been in helping them determine what the policy needs to include and how to formulate the actual policy. Here are some of the guidelines we have come up with.

What needs to be retained and for how long? Most firms consider an email retention policy because there is too much email clogging up their server. Therefore, their real goal in creating an email “retention” policy is to get rid of what they don’t need and keep what they do. What you have to keep depends on ethical obligations, client requests and many other factors. Therefore, the first thing your policy should do is define exactly what needs to be retained. List the types of emails that need to be retained and the reason that you are retaining them.

Determine how you will index and file the retained emails. Saving emails in a disorganized fashion defeats the purpose of an email retention policy because it becomes impossible to find them when you really need them. How do you organize your emails? The obvious answer is a document management and/or practice management system. Document management systems like Worldox offer features to categorize, profile and index emails. The same is true for practice management systems like Time Matters. Thus, the second step is to determine how you will save the emails so that they can be found and retrieved when necessary. Your policy should include the method required to save emails, including any specific information regarding profiling and indexing.

What happens to the rest? The last big question you have to ask is what happens to the emails that do not have to be retained and, assuming they are going to be purged, when they will be deleted. It is not hard to come up with a policy here but it can be very hard to enforce it. If your users are following the previous two guidelines, any emails left unfiled beyond a certain number of days are the ones that can be deleted. However, if they are not following them, some emails requiring retention will be mixed in with the emails to be purged. The answer? Training and policy enforcement. Your users have to be thoroughly trained regarding the importance of saving emails and how to do so. For your part, some mechanism must be in place to verify that they are doing so.

Once again, these guidelines do not attempt to suggest the actual language of your email retention policy. They are intended to help you formulate the language in your policy.

Blawger Survivor Update. Quite a few survivors left. Today, I will send you over to The Nutmeg Lawyer, where Adrian Baron has a post called Twits Tweeting on Twitter. The post describes some “interesting” posts by right-wing nutjobs. I probably come from the other side of the political fence and could find just as many posts by left-wing moonbats. I think the interesting thing is how the Internet has become a place where all of the extremists finally have a place to hang out and exchange conspiracy theories. Perhaps the ability to put just about anything on the Internet, and find people who believe it, is one of the reasons our country has become more divided along partisan lines than at any other at any time I can remember.

9:30 PM. Looks like I survived one more day.

Column on ScanSnap Community Site by Jeff Krause

I have written a short column that appears on the new Fujitsu ScanSnap Community site in the “Ask the Experts” section. The column is entitled “How Can I Integrate a Case Management System with ScanSnap.” If you are interested take a look. There are some other interesting columns there including several that explain some the functions included with ScanSnap like Scan to Email or Print.

Time Matters Archiving and Documents by Jeff Krause

“How do we archive documents to our Closed Files folder while using Time Matters?” This is a common question from firms that are new to Time Matters, or any other document management system. The question is asked because many firms that save their documents through Word/WordPerfect/Windows move their documents to a Closed folder once the matter is concluded. The reason is obvious. They want to unclutter their list of open files to make it easier to find documents.

With Time Matters or another document management system, the whole point is to make things easier. You should be able to find your documents easily no matter where they are and there is no reason to archive the old documents, especially if that means changing their physical location.

For starters, the document management system is designed to keep track of where your documents are and this is how you locate and retrieve documents. In theory, you should never even have to look at the documents in Windows. Who cares where they are when find them from the Time Matters Matter or Document Lists. Moving closed file documents serves no real purpose when you have a document management system.

Second, with Time Matters and most other systems, moving the documents will actually do more harm than good. Most document management systems link to the saved location, so moving the document will break the links. In Time Matters this means that the “FileName” field will point to the wrong location and you will see a big “?” when you look at the document record. This is not to say that you cannot use the Time Matters Archive feature. Just remember that this only places the Document Record (not the document) into a different Time Matters list. It does not physically move the file. This way, the document will no longer show up in the main Document List but will still be accessible to the system.

Old habits die hard, so if you insist on using Time Matters but moving closed documents on your server, there is a Time Matters feature that can help. Using the File Menu, Utilities, Document Management, Document Paths feature you can repoint the link in the File Name field. Use this with caution. You must precisely identify the part of the path that will change and what it will change to. PRECISELY! I most often find that people trying to do this identify too little of the path and end up moving too many documents because they have not narrowed it down enough.

All of my comments here presume that you are not saving your documents to the Files folder in Time Matters. I do not recommend this and believe you should save them to a separate document folder but that is a discussion for another post.

Document Right Click in Time Matters by Jeff Krause

Last week, someone asked me whether Time Matters had a document “viewer” like many other Document Management applications. The answer is yes and there are a number of other useful functions that can be found in the same place.

There are actually at least two places where you can access the document viewer but the one I want to discuss her is the right click functionality in the Document List or Document Sublist. Right clicking on any Document record in Time Matters produces this menu of choices.

Time Matters Document Right Click

As you can see, the View File selection is one of many useful ones under this menu. Viewing a file opens a rather simple view that does not necessarily include all of a document’s formatting. However, it is often just enough to tell you whether this is the document you are looking for. Other functions within this menu allow you to Open the File, Create a PDF, Print the File, and Open a New Version of the File.

The Document viewer is also available when you perform a search of a Document Index in Time Matters.

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Moving Your Existing Documents Into Time Matters by Jeff Krause

ScanSnap S1500 Review by Jeff Krause

Creating an Email Retention Policy by Jeff Krause

Column on ScanSnap Community Site by Jeff Krause

Time Matters Archiving and Documents by Jeff Krause

Document Right Click in Time Matters by Jeff Krause

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