Even the best physical filing systems have drawbacks: the cost of storage space, the need to pay rent for records that have to be kept off-site, the time it takes to locate and refile documents, and, of course, the time wasted finding lost or misfiled documents. You might even have a designated "librarian" who is the only person allowed to file documents. If you store microfilm, it becomes even more cumbersome, since special equipment is needed to view and print copies, and searching a roll of microfilm is slow and tedious.

We had to find a better way. The vision was to totally eliminate our file cabinets. Everyone was to get an "Electronic File Cabinet" integrated into the screen(s) they use. That meant both scanning and viewing documents right from their own PC.

We shopped around for a package, but decided to code our own PowerBuilder solution. We built a custom "Electronic File Cabinet."

Choosing a Scanner
We purchased several different scanners to evaluate them. For our users in the field, we picked the Fujitsu Scan Snap S500. It scans 18 pages a minute in color in duplex, which amounts to 36 images per minute. It goes directly to PDF format, and is fast and easy to use. You literally press one button and start scanning. It's about the size of a toaster, and connects via USB. The images are beautiful, and well-compressed. It rarely jams. When it does jam, you press one button to open the scanner and get back to business quickly. No matter how much we scan, the "window" never seems to get dirty. If you do need to clean the window, a simple wipe with a T-shirt and alcohol is all it takes. This scanner automatically adjusts itself when the paper has a background color, or if there's a variety of paper sizes. The S500 is a winner.

We also tried a Kodak scanner. It was very fast, at 70 pages a minute, but its firewire interface meant that most laptops didn't have a built-in port. One of its nicest features was that its software displays the pages as they are scanned in real-time. Because of its high cost, and its heavy weight, this scanner was destined to stay at the office. We would only send it out into the field for the very biggest scanning jobs.

You might wonder how we justified the cost of buying scanners. Prior to using scanners, we used microfilm cameras. Considering the cost of buying film, developing the film, running out of film on-site, re-filming jobs due to technical problems, such as power glitches or leaking of light, printing to paper on specialized equipment, and storing the microfilm, there were compelling reasons to buy scanners. Did you know that even a small 20GB hard drive can hold more records than anyone could possibly scan, even weeks at a time? We don't run out of film any more, and we can print our PDF files on standard laser printers.

Interfacing with the Scanner
There are three ways to interface to a scanner: ISIS driver, TWAIN driver, and File Capture.

Since our S500 scanner has neither an ISIS nor a TWAIN driver, our choice was simple: we had to capture the PDF after it is created. This solution works for all scanners.

Each scanner has a "landing directory" where it puts its scanned files.

The PowerBuilder application needed a "setup" screen, where you configure the "landing directory." Then, after you scan the document(s), you press a "Done" button on a PowerBuilder screen. At that point, the PowerBuilder application simply looks for new files in this directory and files them. Filing is done by calling the FileMove() function.