As we told you in the previous post EDM is must for every business.This refers to the process by which images from documents are transferred digitally via a scanner or a multifunctional printer or multifunctional device to a computer system/network. One will often encounter the term Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software when discussing capture which is the process for converting images of text into a usable, editable text format.
Workflow refers to what is often quite a complex process and a process of which there are a number of varieties. Usage will depend on the document management system in which it is applied. Manual workflow is where a user will be required to make decisions as to where a given scanned-in/digitised image will be routed. A rules-based workflow allows an administrator to create a rule or a number of rules which will determine the flow of digitised documents through an organisation.
Typically, an invoice will be routed around a company during an approval process, stopping at various relevant individuals and finally ending up in the accounts payable department. Dynamic rules provide possibilities for a number of branches within the workflow for a given document type. For example, if an invoice amount falls below a certain level, the given invoice can be routed to a lower priority batch. Advanced workflow options can even provide possibilities for content manipulation or the introduction of an external process on the data in question.
Retrieval describes the process by which documents are taken out of storage. Simple document retrieval will usually be possible by the user entering a specific, unique document identifier, where the system will be able to retrieve the document using a basic index. But there are more flexible means of retrieval available within certain document management software packages.
The user may specify partial search terms, either involving the document identifier, or information from the metadata (see later). This would typically retrieve a list of all those documents which match the user's search terms. Some systems even provide the capability of searching by a 'Boolean' expression, which may contain multiple keywords or example phrases that would be expected to found within the document's contents.