Question

Scan documents into LF and save as PDF

Quick Fields

Updated May 17, 2018

asked on May 16, 2018

I am about to start a project to scan all the old paper documents at my company into Laserfiche.

I will be using fujitsu FI-7160 scanners and Quickfields to scan and fill in metadata.

Is there a way to save these files as PDF files?

0 0

Replies

replied on May 17, 2018

Laserfiche does not offer an option to scan directly to PDF.

May I ask why you want to store your documents as PDF? Storing your documents as PDF is not a best practice for multiple reasons. The first reason is that PDF is a versionized, proprietary format (I know that PDFa is supposed to be archival quality). The second reason is that to open a PDF, the whole document must be sent and received before it can be opened and viewed on/by the client. The third reason is that the PDF format adds more size to the document than TIFFs.

By storing in TIFF, your repository will function at optimal performance, your documents will be stored and secured with longevity in mind, and you can export them to PDF if you ever wish to send them outside of the repository.

4 0

View 1 previous reply

replied on May 17, 2018

We have years of paper documents. When we started using Laserfiche we saved everything as PDF.

We are planning to scan our paper documents into LF. We want all the files to be the same. We don't want some documents to be PDF and some in TIFF format because they open in Acrobat and Laserfiche respectively.

0 0

replied on May 17, 2018

If all you're looking for is consistency, you can go back and generate TIFF pages for all the legacy PDF documents you imported into LF.

I think that would be the much better option rather than restricting functionality and future growth potential to accommodate legacy files.

1 0

replied on May 17, 2018

I have some documents that go through an approval process managed by a workflow and documents are often edited. It would be an extra step to download the pages in PDF, edit them, then save them to LF (currently they open the electronic file, make their edits, and save). Some users are top level executives who would not find an extra step acceptable.

I am also trying to keep my Laserfiche users excited about Laserfiche. I don't want them to decide it's a hassle and stop using it. I believe a successful implementation has a lot to do with buy-in from users.

When changes to a seemingly functional system I think users will cause everyone to focus on what they're losing instead of what they're gaining.

0 0

replied on May 17, 2018 • Show version history

I can certainly understand that reasoning. Just wanted to throw the suggestion out there because we ran into situations in which users started wanting more functionality as they became more comfortable with LF, and catering to legacy processes made it a lot more difficult to give them what they wanted.

However, like you said, sometimes getting the upfront buy-in is the more immediate concern. That being the case, I think your only option is going to involve a Workflow with SDK Script activities that will pick up incoming scans and generate/attach a PDF.

0 0

replied on May 17, 2018

To add onto Bert's comments, TIFF is the preferred/native format for Laserfiche and offers several advantages, including more functionality like page counts, OCR, annotations, etc. However, in my experience PDF does not always add more size to the documents (my experience has been that the TIFF pages usually take up a lot more space than the PDF equivalent).

In our environment, we store documents with both the TIFF pages and an attached PDF because we have a lot of very large documents and pre-rendering a compressed PDF substantially improved retrieval times for the end users who access documents via a third party application.

If you have an absolute need to store PDF documents, you can accomplish that with a Workflow SDK script to generate and attach the PDF to the LF document, but I wouldn't go down that path unless you have some critical need for storing PDF because like Bert mentioned you can always export to PDF when needed without losing the additional functionality of TIFF pages.

0 0

replied on May 17, 2018

I appreciate your insight.

I see the benefits of using LF images but I think I will have to find a way to have everyone dip their toes in the pool before I'll be able to convince them to jump in.

0 0

You are not allowed to follow up in this post.

Question

Question

Scan documents into LF and save as PDF

Replies

Sign in to reply to this post.