PDF documents are ubiquitous. They are now even referenced by “Dr. Rick” in a humorous Progressive Insurance TV ad. What that ad does not acknowledge, and most users do not realize, is that PDF documents are not “searchable” in most cases. This makes it much more difficult to find that elusive copy within a maelstrom of documents. SymphonyOCR is designed to fix this, with no user intervention required. And at a very affordable price.
SymphonyOCR, from Trumpet, Inc., is a comprehensive “optical-character-recognition” (OCR) application, automatically converting all saved PDF’s and TIFF’s from image files to searchable text files. It is an “install and forget” application, dutifully working in the background on your PC, intercepting all saved PDF’s -whether saved to:
- a document management system (e.g., NetDocuments, Worldox),
- a practice management system (e.g., Time Matters, PracticeMaster)
- your local server or hard drive
- A Cloud-based storage service (e.g., OneDrive, Google Drive)
Once installed, the software will automatically search the identified storage repository based on a user-defined search frequency, will queue up any documents it finds which are not already OCR’ed, and will then schedule the docs for processing based on various “back end” storage locations and user-defined priorities.
The screen shot below illustrates the integration settings for a NetDocuments configuration.
Figure 1 – Symphony-NetDocuments integration
Without diving too deeply into the weeds, the workflow for SymphonyOCR works as follows:
- The SymphonyOCR “Finder” searches the storage area(s) at the user-defined interval
- Documents identified for processing are run through the “Analyzer”
- The Analyzer sends documents tagged by the Analyzer to the “Processor”
- The Processor reports its results back to the Analyzer, storing those results in a database for operator review, breaking down results by category.
Below is an example screen shot of a completed analysis, showing details for the document processed and summarizing the Processor and Analyzer results in the left margin.
Figure 2-Analyzer results for NetDocuments
For users of NetDocuments, there is an optional product from Trumpet, the developers of SympnonyOCR, called SignatureBridge. This application creates an automatic link to DocuSign, via the NetDocuments interface. For those documents that require electronic signatures, SignatureBridge makes it incredibly simple to use DocuSign with any document stored in NetDocuments, while simultaneously preserving the integrity of the original via “versioning” of each step in the signing process.
You can read a more detailed description of SymphonyOCR, and of SignatureBridge, and also review subscription pricing for both apps on the Trumpet website by clicking this link.
If you would like to see a demonstration of SymphonyOCR or of SignatureBridge – or both – contact Crosspointe to schedule a demo date and time. We can also run a quick analysis of your present stored documents at that time, to help you determine how much you will benefit by having ALL of your important documents searchable.
Jack Schaller has been active in the field of law office technology since 1989, and has worked with a variety of commercial accounting, legal billing, practice management, and document management software products during his twenty plus years in the software consulting field. During his tenure as a software consultant he has garnered many sales and service awards for his work with legal software products. Jack is a frequent presenter at legal conferences and seminars, and is a regular contributor to TechnoLawyer and other technology publications.