Scanning PDF's

Obsolesce

You have multiple network scanners & you've created file shares so folks can scan & retrieve those files when they get back to their desks.

Looking for some better ideas or how to catalog the pdf's, make them searchable or just a better system altogether.

Ideas, critique's...all are welcome!

Not using SMB v1 I hope...

FATeknollogee

@tim_g I should probably check on that.
A lot of times, these big scanners are finicky...I've had cases where they'll work with a 2008R2 file share but not 2012R2 or Win 7.
You have to wait for them to update their FW.

Mike Davis

I set up a VM running OmniPage with a watched folders job. The users pick the scan template on the copier that says "ocr-pdf" or "ocr-word". From there the copier scans the job to a "ocr-pdf-inbox" folder that Omnipage is watching. It runs through an automated OCR and drops the folder in the \server\scans folder that users have mapped as a drive. They get back to their desk and the scan is waiting for them in what ever format they picked at the copier.

DustinB3403

I had a script at the last place that would empty the "scans" folder every 24 hours.

People leaving all kinds of shit there I kid you not, before I wrote the script there was close to 1TB of PDFs in the share... no one would clean up their stuff.

It was insane. .

FATeknollogee

@mike-davis said in Scanning PDF's:

I set up a VM running OmniPage with a watched folders job. The users pick the scan template on the copier that says "ocr-pdf" or "ocr-word". From there the copier scans the job to a "ocr-pdf-inbox" folder that Omnipage is watching. It runs through an automated OCR and drops the folder in the \server\scans folder that users have mapped as a drive. They get back to their desk and the scan is waiting for them in what ever format they picked at the copier.

Sounds interesting...I might have to hit you up for more details

FATeknollogee

@mike-davis Which flavor of OmniPage are you running?

Mike Davis

@fateknollogee said in Scanning PDF's:

Which flavor of OmniPage are you running?

Currently Nuance PowerPDF advanced.

Edit: Nuance OmniPage 18 is the program that has the Agent. I'm not sure which they are currently selling. I've had this in place a long time.

FATeknollogee

@mike-davis

Is the \server\scans folder a common folder for all users or does it contain sub-folders for each user?
Who deletes (aka cleans) the folder or how do you make sure it stays clean & not just full of junk?

Mike Davis

@fateknollogee said in Scanning PDF's:

@mike-davis

Is the \server\scans folder a common folder for all users or does it contain sub-folders for each user?

Who deletes (aka cleans) the folder or how do you make sure it stays clean & not just full of junk?

yes, the scans folder is a common folder for all domain users. I suppose you could create an individual folder for each user. I did create a different folder for the accounting and HR group, but didn't get down to individual users. I always create a user on the network called "scanner" and give the scanner user access to the folder where the scans land. Then if the copier guy needs the password, he gets the scanner service account username and password, which doesn't have access to any other shares on the network.
Usually IT purges it once in a while, but I think I'm going to have to steal @DustinB3403 's idea and just schedule a job for that task.

Mike Davis

This should go in the I can't even file, but the local copier guys have asked for the domain admin password when attempting to set up stuff like scan to desktop.... That's another reason to have a dedicated scanner service account with a password that doesn't change.

FATeknollogee

@mike-davis said in Scanning PDF's:

@fateknollogee said in Scanning PDF's:

Which flavor of OmniPage are you running?

Currently Nuance PowerPDF advanced.

Edit: Nuance OmniPage 18 is the program that has the Agent. I'm not sure which they are currently selling. I've had this in place a long time.

PowerPDF Advanced says it will "Automate PDF creation jobs using a watched folder."
https://www.nuance.com/print-capture-and-pdf-solutions/pdf-and-document-conversion/power-pdf-converter.html
Is this what you are referring to in your prev post?

Mike Davis

@fateknollogee I think they are still selling their OmniPage line. https://www.nuance.com/print-capture-and-pdf-solutions/optical-character-recognition/omnipage.html
I'm not sure what the difference is between that and the PowerPDF line.

stacksofplates

If you do run NextCloud or something on *nix, systemd has a path unit that can watch a directory and run whatever you tell it to when it sees a change. You could just script a move to a directory based on file name or whatever criteria you wanted.

stacksofplates

Here's an example:

/usr/lib/systemd/system/watch-scans.service:

[Unit]
Description= Starts the logging script

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/scan-script.sh

/usr/lib/systemd/system/watch-scans.path:

[Unit]
Description= Runs scan script on directory change.

[Path]
PathModified=/some/path/to-your/share/

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then just start and enable the path unit.

systemctl start watch-scans.path && systemctl enable watch-scans.path

Mike Davis

@stacksofplates Does *nix have an OCR engine that works well? Last time I looked for an open source one that worked under Windows, I couldn't find anything that worked.

stacksofplates

@mike-davis said in Scanning PDF's:

@stacksofplates Does *nix have an OCR engine that works well? Last time I looked for an open source one that worked under Windows, I couldn't find anything that worked.

That I can’t answer. I don’t do much with scanning documents.