Ultra Recall for Document Management?

[J-Mac]

Let me clarify a bit: By "document management" I mean either linking or storing all documents pertaining to a particular project.

E.g., I have a few hundred documents related to insurance claims that I need to track. I need the ability to have these documents, which consist mostly of various pieces of correspondence to and/or from insurance companies that have been scanned to PDF files. By "track" I mean being able to select and sort in almost any way, and to search for a specific document or documents quickly and accurately.

There are some applications available commercially that are designed specifically for document control/organization/tracking, but they are primarily "Enterprise" programs and are extremely costly.

I initially just listed them in Excel and have that file set up with a few lookup tables, but Excel loses its simple functionality when you get too many variables in a list like that. Presently I have all the docs in Web Idea Tree, a program originally designed for bibliographies and later marketed as a web site builder. But I would like to put it in Ultra Recall if it can be done easily and if I can search and then view/print the documents as I need.

Thanks for any help and advice on this.

Jim

[quant]

Originally posted by J-Mac
By "track" I mean being able to select and sort in almost any way, and to search for a specific document or documents quickly and accurately.
Can you provide specific examples of what you'd search for and what kind of selecting/sorting you have in mind? For example, you mentioned scanned PDF. Are they OCR? Do you expect to be able to search the text inside or just for the file name? Also, do you still want your files to be accessible by the system (this means that for example other indexing program can see those files)?

[J-Mac]

Hi quant. Thanks for the reply.

I will answer your questions in order:

Searchable by title, date of letter, company, and specific keywords within the files.

Yes, all the PDF files are searchable PDFs.

As per my first answer, yes I may need to search for keywords within the text, and also title.

No, it is not necessary for the files within UR to be recognized by the system. (A copy will be archived outside of UR anyway - general redundant way my mind works!).

Thanks!

Jim

[quant]

OK, UR is capable of indexing the common files like pdf,doc, ... (depending on the setting tools->option->import->keywording). So you will be able to search very fast, but note that the search results will give you only the item name, no highlighting of found terms. If you only linked your files to UR (they could still be indexed in UR), you could setup other indexing program, which can highlight search terms and offer some advanced search techniques (this is the way I do it).

You can set up to view several file types internally in UR (pdf, doc, ...).

Now there are several ways to deal with attributes that you need to add to your documents, Date of Letter, Company, ...
You could create a template with these attributes and create a form for it as well. Or you could be adding these attributes manually (but you can select many items at once to add and set the attribute value). Depends whether you'd prefer the files the have the original icons, like PDF, DOC, or if you used template, all documents with the same template will have initially the template icon (but you could change these using search for specific DocType or just for ".pdf" ".doc" in the Item Title).

I can go on and on, let us know if you need more help ...

[ashwken]

Jim,

You also mentioned existing data siting in Excel, I'm assuming that this relates Claim_No to Claim_Event and possibly Company Info.

There's some massaging that can take place in Excel prior to csv export that could leverage your existing data.

[J-Mac]

Thanks guys!

@quant:

This sounds encouraging - though it sounds like the search capabilities are somewhat limited. That's a little disappointing as I had thought the searching in UR was very robust. But at least I can now start working with it and see how it does work.

What I did not want to do was just start trying to get it all in there and after much reading and working find out that this is something that UR just does not do - or does not do well.

BTW, I do have UR configured to view and edit internally MS Office files and PDF files.

@ashwken:

I'm not certain that I wish to try and work with Excel files within UR. I do see that the Help file insists that UR can view and edit them if configured properly, but I am not able to make that happen. While I can view PDF and .doc files, and edit .doc files, when I try to open Excel files I always get a popup "Open File in Excel" dialog. Same with PowerPoint files. I have MS Office 2003 Professional installed but they will not open in UR.

I have read all that exists in the UR Help file on MS Office files and I cannot find anything that is not properly configured. Unless, of course, there are unstated hacks required to do this.

Thanks!

Jim

EDIT: OK, I see now that I must click in the Excel dialog in order to open the file for internal editing within UR. I had thought that would open it for editing externally. Only problem is that I already had Excel itself open for another two files and I found that I could not do anything at all with those - not even close them or Excel - since I had open a sample .xls file in UR - even after I closed the file in UR. Appears that it locks up Excel for as long as UR itself is open after opening an Excel file for internal editing.

I'll have to make sure to remember that in the future.

Thanks!

[ashwken]

Originally posted by J-Mac
I'm not certain that I wish to try and work with Excel files within UR.
Jim,

I am not suggesting that you work with the native Excel file (xls) in UR, but that we export from Excel the relavent data sets to csv file(s), these csv files can then be imported in UR. Once you have exported the various data sets out of Excel and gotten them into UR, the Excel file will be abandoned.

I'm assuming that there are (3) possible data sets in the Excel file - Claim_No, Company Contact Info, and Claim_Event. If you are working with a "flat" layout, every row represents a Claim_Event with repeating data for Claim_No. and Company.

These are the three entities (tables, folders, templates) that need to be created in UR, the UR Attributes are going to be user-created based on the columns you have in Excel.

For example, Claim is going to become a Template with Attributes of - Claim_No., Claim_Date, Company_Name, Company_Info,... . Not all of these user-defined UR Attributes will be used during the import of the Excel csv, but you will be importing the csv against the Claim Template so that you end up with Claim Items from the Excel data.

This Claim Template will become the Default Child Template for the Claims Folder, and you'll run the csv import from the Claims Folder.

What I'm not clear on is, does each row (Claim_Event) in the Excel file also represent an actual data file (pdf or other). Also, going forward will all future Claim_Events be exclusively data files or can they also represent user-entered notes (or do all notes become some type of data file that confirms the event - conversation).

We can assign Forms (and Attributes) to either Text or Doc Type Templates, I'm just not sure what you consider a Claim_Event. For example a Claim_Event of user-entered data and notes could have supporting data files as "attachments" (Child Items) to the Claim_Event, these supporting docs could have a Form also - or they could be a Claim_Event in and of themselves. If this is the case then the same Form (and set of Attributes) could be assigned to both a Text and Doc Type Template - you end up with two versions of the "Template" - RTF and Doc.

This is a gross overview, and we can get more specific if needed.

Would it be possible to post an empty copy of the Excel file so that we could see the exisitng strucutre?

[J-Mac]

Thanks ash.

BTW, the only reason I said that about Excel files within UR was because I had not been able to open any Excel files up to that point. However as I noted in my edit in my last post I now see that I can.

As for the data records themselves, it appears that you are anticipating Claim_Event as a sort of primary key, or unique identifier, correct? Or did I misunderstand? Unfortunately these documents do not natively contain any unique identifier, so I had to assign each a user-assigned ID number as a primary key. All of the records are actual, distinct pieces of correspondence, some with related forms. Presently each row in Excel directly corresponds to a physical document - hard copy - which I have scanned to my hard drive using a scanner and software that scans each to a searchable PDF file.

While I currently have not created any record without a related document I do want the ability to add such records myself; records that do not have an associated physical document. So yes, I will need both Doc and Text Templates. I also need to be able to add my own notes to each record. Not that every doc would have a note attached; only those for which I determine a need.

I can't post too much in the way of details here in the forum -- confidentiality issues (My own foremost among them!)

Thank you for all the great help!

Jim

[ashwken]

Originally posted by J-Mac
As for the data records themselves, it appears that you are anticipating Claim_Event as a sort of primary key, or unique identifier, correct? Or did I misunderstand? Unfortunately these documents do not natively contain any unique identifier, so I had to assign each a user-assigned ID number as a primary key. All of the records are actual, distinct pieces of correspondence, some with related forms. Presently each row in Excel directly corresponds to a physical document - hard copy - which I have scanned to my hard drive using a scanner and software that scans each to a searchable PDF file.

While I currently have not created any record without a related document I do want the ability to add such records myself; records that do not have an associated physical document. So yes, I will need both Doc and Text Templates. I also need to be able to add my own notes to each record. Not that every doc would have a note attached; only those for which I determine a need.

In Excel, are you working with one worksheet that contains ALL the Columns (Attributes) - a flat file, or are you working with multiple worksheets and relating them in some fashion.

Can you manipulate the Excel file so that you have a worksheet that contains one row for each Claim, and the Columns that describe just the Claim:

Claim.csv
==========
Claim_No.
Claim_Date
Company_Name
Plus any other Columns

and Save As the worksheet to csv.

On the UR side create the Claim Template (a copy of the Text or Folder Template) and Insert/Assign these Attributes:

Claim_No.
Claim_Date
Claim_Status
Claim_Type
Claim_Summary
Company_Name
Company_Info

Create a coresponding Claim Form and assign it to the Claim Template, gives you the Form above the RTF Viewer Area.

Create the Claims folder and set the Default Child Template to the Claim template (this isn't needed for the import but for new Items). From the Claims folder select File | Import| csv , then from the Mapping dialog select the csv file to import, the Mapping grid is populated, set the Template to use to the Claim template. This will create a Claim Item for each row of the csv.

You can control the naming of the Claim Item on either the Excel side by creating a Column for Item Title (value derived from an expression), or on the UR side by creating a Title Expression for the Claim Tempalte.

The Company_Name value is an aide for setting the Company_Info (Info Item Lookup to Company/Vendor folder) value after import, and would be deleted after processing the Claim import.

Assuming that you have Company Contact records in Outlook, it's easy to shoot them into the Company/Vendor folder and just use the default UR Contact Tempalte - would probably want to create this folder prior to creating the Claim template so that you have a target folder for the Company_Info attribute.

Presently each row in Excel directly corresponds to a physical document - hard copy - which I have scanned to my hard drive using a scanner and software that scans each to a searchable PDF file.

Getting the Claim_Events into UR will take a similar track, but will require some additional consideration. In Excel, I'm assuming you are storing a url for each row of a Claim_Event, is this url absolute or relative?

Since each row of a Claim_Event from Excel is a document you'll probably want to do the import to a temp folder in UR and import against a Claim_Event_doc Tempalte, then Atl-L for multiple selections to Move them to the appropiate Claim Item.

Again, this is a gross overview. I don't see where UR can't do what you want. Getting your exisitng data into UR just takes a bit of work. We can put more flesh on this if you want.