What are Automation Processes?
Automation processes are events that can be scheduled to run at predetermined times. The events can perform many different actions such as starting documents into a workflow process, run and send report results, automatically index documents and OCR documents that are in the system.
How are Automation Processes Started?
Automation processes are initiated by the FileBound Service. When a process is created when and how often it should occur is configured. The FileBound Service monitors the FileBound site and determines when it is time for a process to run. The service will then kick-off the process.
What is the FileBound Service?
The FileBound Service is a Windows Service that can be installed on one or more utility servers or workstations that will monitor a FileBound site. The service communicates with the FileBound server every one minute to determine if it is time to start an automation process. FileBound allows services to be associated in groups. By associating the processes in groups priority can be assigned to make sure that the most important automation processes are run first before other non-priority processes.
What expectations should I have about FileBound Automation Processes?
FileBound automation processes are intended to help with the routine daily activities that occur with FileBound. For example, the Folder Import and Auto-Index processes can be helpful in indexing the 50 invoices a day that a user may scan into the system using a multi-function copier. The processes will import the invoices and then use templates to index and save the invoices.
Automation processes are not intended for the initial document and file ingestion from a backlog of content or conversion from another system that could present the need of importing and indexing hundreds of thousands of items at a single time.
Automation Processes are best used when processing the daily needs of a business that does not have extremely high volumes of content that is processed during a day. Each process has its own unique parameters that it works best within. These are parameters are listed for each of the different processes within this document.
What FileBound Automation Processes are Available in the Various FileBound Editions?
The following chart displays the available automation processes and the edition of FileBound that they are available with. All editions will still need to have at least one FileBound service running against the site to initialize the start of any one of the processes.
| FileBound Edition | |||
| Process Name | Document Management | Workflow | Enterprise |
| Active Directory Sync | √ | √ | √ |
| Global Search | √ | √ | √ |
| Recycle Bin Cleaner | √ | √ | √ |
| Renditions | √ | √ | √ |
| Auto-Index | √ | ||
| Auto-OCR | √ | ||
| Scheduled Report | √ | ||
| Scheduled Workflow | √ | ||
| Site-OCR | √ | ||
| Workflow Summary Emails | √ | ||
Active Directory Sync
An automation Process that will sync users between the Active Directory server and the FileBound server on a scheduled interval.
Benefit:
A system administrator does not have to access FileBound to sync users with their Active Directory system after the users have been added to, or removed, from their Active Directory setup.
Use Case:
A university uses FileBound to store various students’ information. The university has over 500 users. On a daily basis users are added and removed from the groups that have access to the FileBound system. The Active Directory sync process can be configured to run on a 1-hour interval to automatically keep the users in FileBound in sync with the current users that are configured within Active Directory.
Items of Note:
- This process will only work for FileBound premise-based systems.
- This process will not synch users that are in nested groups within the Active Directory system.
Global Search
An automation process that automatically stores information from selected project scopes and associates’ group right access. The information can then be found when a global search is performed. The following scopes are supported by Global Search: Project Name, File Notes, File Indexes, File Key Field, Separator Name, Divider Name, Document Notes, Document Name, Document Full Text, E-form Data, E-form Details, E-form Extra Data, Routed Item Comments, Text Annotations
Benefit:
By using the global search process to cache data from the system users can easily search any data they want to retrieve back in a very timely process. The result list that is returned also allows the user to see where their search result was found, such as a project name, e-form data, divider name or other defined scopes.
Use Case:
A FileBound system is used to store invoices, purchase orders, checks and receiving documents for a hardware store. The store commonly needs to search to see what has been ordered and received from a vendor as well as what they have been charged and paid. Configuring the system to use the Optimized Search feature of FileBound and running the Global Search Process will allow a user to search on a Vendor Name and the system will return all items in the system that contains the Vendor Name in all of the different areas such as index fields, file notes, document notes, full text information, etc.
Items of Note:
- When used on a FileBound Cloud site a locally installed FileBound CAN NOT be used.
- If any group rights are changed for an existing group after a global search process has run it is recommended to re-run a full global search cache again to allow the content to be properly
- located.
Recycle Bin Cleaner
An automation process that will remove items from the Recycle Bin on a set schedule.
Benefit:
Prevents a system administrator, or other user with Recycle Bin rights, from having to access the Recycle Bin and manually remove items.
Use Case:
A FileBound implementation has a requirement that all content that has been deleted by a user must be able to be restored for 30 days after it was deleted. After 30 days the content can be permanently removed from the system. The automatic removal can be made an automated process that occurs at 3:00 am every day.
Item of Note:
- Only 250 items will be removed per scheduled run.
Renditions
An automation process that will generate renditions of .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx and .pdf file formats
Benefit:
Creating renditions of documents like word documents and PDF allow them to be fully supported for viewing on all mobile devices along with MAC operating systems.
Use Case:
A FileBound implementation has the requirement that most users will be using mobile devices to access documents. Most of the documents however are word and PDF documents which cannot be viewed on some mobile devices. This process is run daily making these documents viewable for all users on their mobile devices.
Items of Note:
- This process only supports the following document format types: .tif, .tiff, .xls, .xlsx, .doc, .docx, .pdf
- A maximum 1000 items will be processed during a scheduled run.
Auto-Index
An automation process that will process documents in the Indexing Queue with a status of “New”, match them to an indexing template and save the document in the appropriate project or to the quality control queue.
Benefit:
Documents can be automatically indexed based on defined templates, thus eliminating the need for employees to have to spend the time indexing documents to files or having to use Capture to perform this function. If any documents fail to match a template a user can be notified with a link to the document where they can Point and Click index the document.
Use Case:
A company gets invoices sent to them from various locations (Mail, Email, Fax). Instead of a user having to use a capture product to get all of the invoices in and index these invoices they are all sent to the Indexing Queue and automatically indexed by the matched templates.
Items of Note:
- This process only supports the following document format types: .tif, .tiff, .xls, .xlsx, .doc, .docx, .pdf
- Supports both File Templating and Document Type Templating
- PDF document types must be 100 pages or less
Auto-OCR
An automation process that will process documents in the Indexing Queue with a status of “New”. OCR will be performed on the documents and made available for Point and Click indexing within the Indexing Queue.
Benefit:
Having documents in the Indexing Queue that are Point and Click ready significantly increases the speed for users to be able to index documents to files. This allows a user to simply click on the word on the page or rubber band around a grouping of words to use for the index information. This removes the need to manually enter all information.
Use Case:
A company is scanning packing slips when shipments are received. These documents are scanned at the receiving doc into the Indexing Queue. Since there is no common document layout that can have a template applied the Auto-OCR process will prep the document to allow a user to Point and Click index the document within the Indexing Queue.
Item of Note:
- This process only supports the following document format types: .tif, .tiff, .xls, .xlsx, .doc, .docx, .pdf
Scheduled Report
An automation process that will automatically generate a report on a set schedule and email the report to a defined user as a PDF or CSV.
Benefit:
Commonly accessed reports can be automatically generated and sent to the appropriate people for review.
Use Case:
A department manager needs to know how users are interacting with documents in the system. This process can run the Document Activity report for the previous day and send it to the manager.
Items of Note:
- Will not work with any dashboards.
- Custom Reports are not supported.
- Reports with 1250, or fewer, records in the report results will be sent. If the report contains over 1250 records the report will not be sent.
Scheduled Workflow
An automation process that will find files or documents on a set schedule and automatically route them down a workflow process.
Benefit:
Allows FileBound to find content that is not in a workflow process and route content based on the conditions that are specified. Using the find criteria, located files can have e-forms generated for those files as well.
Use Case:
On an annual basis employees need to sign off on a company benefits document. A process can be created to find all employees, generate the Benefits Acknowledgement form, and route it to the user for approval.
Items of Note:
- Will only process up to 1000 items at a time.
- If a find returns more than 1000 items to process the Scheduled Workflow process will not run.
- Only supports workflow processes. Older V4/V5 workflow routes are not supported.
Site-OCR
An automation process that will process documents within defined projects and perform OCR on the documents so that they will be located during a full text search.
Benefit:
Performing OCR on documents using the Site-OCR process allows users to search meta-data that is on a document when index field searching is not enough. As an added benefit highlighting words on page option with the Site-OCR process will highlight the searched words within the viewers yellow as long as it is a tiff image.
Use Case:
Contracts are stored within a project and are added to the system by many different people in a business. The contracts can be added using the Indexing Queue, Integration Kit, Capture, and by a Folder Import process. These contracts are commonly found by entering identifying keywords into the Full Text search field. To make sure that all the documents can be located during a search running the Site-OCR process will guarantee that all of the documents are OCR’d.
Items of Note:
- Only 250 documents will be processed per scheduled run.
- Is not intended for large back-log OCR such as a backlog of 500,000 documents.
- Site-OCR supports the following formats: .pdf, .tif, .tiff, .xls, .xlsx, .doc, .docx
Workflow Summary Emails
A Workflow Summary Emails process automatically sends summary emails to users that have active workflow assignments. You can opt to receive these summary emails instead of individual assignment workflow email notifications. The emails include a count of items for each active parent process and a hyperlink to the Assignments page for each row.
Benefit:
Allows you to consolidate FileBound emails into one email a day instead of an individual assignment workflow email notifications.
Use Case:
The Accounting Manager for your company receives an email every time an invoice processes. This feature allows him to just receive one summary email rather than individual emails for each invoice.
Item of Note:
To receive workflow summary emails, you must have the 'Send Summary Emails' option selected in the Notification Options section of your User Preferences page. To receive only summary emails and not individual assignment notifications, you must also select the 'Disable Individual Assignment Notifications'.