Laserfiche Overview (2)Laserfiche – Document Management Overview
Laserfiche document management system makes it possible for users to search, retrieve and view documents with any Web browser. With the user-friendly
graphic interfaces, it is easy to perform common operations, such as search and retrieval.
Laserfiche WebLink allows the user to either browse documents or search for a specific document(s)
by using a single word or phrase in a document.
Using Laserfiche WebLink:
The program saves both an image file (an actual picture of the original document) and a text file created
by the program through its OCR (optical character recognition) capabilities.
The files are saved in a standard folder tree similar to what you would expect to see in any common file
manager program.
To browse documents, click on the ‘Browse’ tab. Open the ‘Clearwater Document Imaging’ folder in the left pane. Continue opening folders until you find the document
you are looking for. To view the document, click to open.
To search for a document using a specific word or phrase, click on the ‘Search’ tab. This will provide you with complete
directions on the two basic types of searches that can be performed via WebLink.
Click on the document to open it.
Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Fields icon will show you how the document was indexed within the database.
If the document has comments attached using the Sticky
Notes, it can be viewed
Viewing version information for a document will display a list of all versions of that document. This allows you to view the different versions of a document.
A
search can be performed for documents that have been assigned a particular informational or security tag.
Lists the existing relationships that have been established for the specified
document.
Clicking on this icon will open the thumbnail view in the left pane of the window. You can browse and click on the thumbnail images to open a particular page of the
currently opened document.
Fields
On the left pane of the window, the field data assigned to a document or folder is displayed. Additionally, it displays the template that is associated with a document or folder.
Icons
Download PDF
View Image
View Text
Download electronic file
When you see the message "Image not available", you will need to download the file to your computer
to view it by clicking on the ‘Download electronic file’ icon located next to the PDF icon in the WebLink navigation area, as shown in the illustration:
An electronic file is any
file that will be opened using an application other than Laserfiche.
By default, opening an electronic document will display the electronic file in its native application (i.e. Microsoft
Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, etc.) outside of Laserfiche. For example, viewing a Word document stored in Laserfiche can load Microsoft Word.
To print or Save a document from Laserfiche
WebLink in a PDF format, click the PDF icon to download the document, and then click on the printer icon.
Customization
The searches performed for any relevant field displays
results on the page. The default number of results displayed on a page (Hits per page) is set at 20 but you can choose the number of results you would like per page as shown in the above
illustration.
‘My WebLink’ can be used to customize Browse and Search options. For instance, you can choose to view the ‘Name’ and ‘Page Count’ of a document only.
Search
The search feature is a powerful tool that can be used to find any document. You simply need to know something about the document(s) that you are looking for. You can then
use this information to perform an appropriate type of search. For example, if you know that documents are named after the ‘Name of the Party’ associated with a document, then you could
perform a name search for all documents with a particular ‘Name of the Party’. On the other hand, if ‘Name of the Party’ was stored as field data, then you would perform a field search
for the desired ‘Name of the Party’. If the ‘Name of the Party’ is a part of the text assigned to the document, then you have a third option, which is performing a full-text search.
Highlighted
Search words - Once a document is identified after a full text search, the Search word is highlighted. This makes it easy for the user to immediately zoom in on the relevant section
instead of having to look through multiple pages of a document. The importance of this becomes obvious when the needed word occurs on page 97 in a 200-page document.
When a document
is scanned or imported into Laserfiche, the advanced OCR engine essentially reads them and creates a text version of their contents.
Make sure to click the ‘Reset’ button before
starting a new search in order to clear your previous search.
The online help for the search feature is available at http://weblink.myclearwater.com/weblink7/help/WebLink.htm
Types of Searches:
Fuzzy logic
There are times when we misspell words. Fuzzy logic compensates for these errors by searching for spelling variations. For example, a fuzzy logic search
for “goat” would find “goat”, “gout” and “coat.”
Wildcards
Wildcards are used to represent one or more characters in a word. This is useful when you would like to retrieve all documents
containing variations of a word or when you are not sure of the exact characters contained in the word that will be used to search for documents. Wildcards can be used in either full-text
or field searches.
Wildcard
Description
*
(Asterisk) Represents zero or more missing characters. For example, govern*s would find "governors", "governments", and "governs".
?
(Question
mark) Represents any single character. For example, gr?y would find "gray" and "grey", but not "gravy".
[]
(Brackets) Brackets are also used as a wildcard for any single character.
A limited set of replacement characters can be specified within the brackets. For example, gr[ae]y would find "gray" and "grey", but no others.
-
(Dash) This operator indicates
a range of characters. For example, b[a-i]t would find the words "bat", "bet" and "bit", but not "but".
Boolean Operators
Whenever full-text searches are performed, there are usually
several documents that meet the search criteria. Boolean operators (AND, OR and NOT) help fine-tune searches and reduce the number of unrelated documents on the results page.
Operator
Description
Sample
&
(AND) Valid search results must match the search criteria that appear before and after the ampersand.
Phrase1 & Phrase2
|
(OR) Valid search results must match either
the search criteria that appear before or after the pipe (vertical bar “|”).
Phrase1 | Phrase2
-
(NOT) Valid search results should not satisfy the search criteria that appear after
the dash.
Phrase1 - Phrase2
Please contact the Official Records and Legislative Services department at (727) 562-4090 if you have any questions or comments.