If your company owns a modern multi-function center for photocopying, faxing and scanning and has the scan to email function, you can use ValuePRO's direct scanning to jobs function. This feature gets you closer to a paperless office by giving you an electronic means of storing any documents that you've created or received in paper format.
To setup and use the scan to ValuePRO feature:
Limitations and Error Handling
ValuePRO will automatically attempt to match the inbound scanned document to the job number you have provided, however if you have entered an invalid or non-existent job number, ValuePRO will automatically forward the job to the email address of your choice. This failure address is defined by the system setting called Import Failure Notification Address. By default, we set this setting to valuations@[your ValuePRO company domain].com email address to ensure that you admin staff can simply manually identify which job to file the document under using the Email Center.
The application also places a default 5Mb limit on PDF or TIF scanned file sizes. Files large than this limit will be automatically returned to the send and CC'ed to the address defined in the Import Failure Notification Address setting.
1. Setup your Multi-Function Center (MFC)
Scan-to-ValuePRO works best when there are the fewest number of key strokes required of users as possible on the MFC. Most MFCs provide a Scan to Mailbox quick select feature - that makes it only a 2 click process to select Scan-to-ValuePRO.
ValuePRO will provide an email address for you - generally formatted as scan@[your ValuePRO company domain].com.
You will need to setup a one-touch template that points to this email address. You will need to consult your MFC documentation to ensure that your scanner can send email to external addresses. ValuePRO cannot provide any support for setting up one-touch templates for your particular brand of MFC.
Common problems that do occur are:
- The MFC does not have a default SMTP server address configured
- Your firewall has blocked your MFC from sending email externally
Your local network or IT support staff will need to address these issues for you.
Do not direct scanned documents to your valuations@[your ValuePRO company domain].com address that we provide you for general email. ValuePRO processes scanned documents differently and in an optimised manner that lets users get more out of scanning when sent to the correct address.
ValuePRO needs to somehow retrieve a valid ValuePRO job reference number from the MFC. This is usually accomplished by the user entering additional information to the email that is sent. Most MFC devices have some kind of facility to enter a reference number. Depending on which option results in the fewest keystrokes for users, ValuePRo can support extracting the job number automatically via any of the following methods:
- Subject Line - Simply place the entire job number, and nothing but the job number, in the subject line of the email. ValuePro will not be case sensitive to upper and lower case letters in the job number. ValuePRO also automatically strips out the RE: and FW: prefixes in case an email is being forwarded from anther users account.
- Message Body - By pre-arrangement with ValuePRO, it is possible for us to extract the job number from a known location within the body of the email. You would need to provide a known unique prefix and suffix to the job number for us to be able to extract the job number automatically - this is a second preference and may involve a paid customisation request to ValuePRO.
- File Attachment Name - If no job number is found in the subject line, ValuePRO automatically looks for the job number in the file name if it finds the underscore character. Eg: 123456_001.pdf -> ValuePRO would interpret this file as belonging to job number 123456.
- Custom Header - By pre-arrangement with ValuePRO, it is possible for us to extract the job number from a custom header in the email message if this is supported by your MFC.
We strongly recommend that you configure a meaningful and unique senders address in your MFC. This will enable you later on in ValuePRO to identify which MFC was used to scan a given document.
Scan-to-ValuePRO will only process emails with either a PDF or multi-page TIF attachment. GIF, JPEG and BMP files are not supported, however these file types can be sent to photos@[your ValuePRO company domain].com instead.
We also required that document scanning resolution is preset to a maximum 150 dpi (which is usually more than reasonable for document processing and subsequent re-printing).
2. Test your Scan-to-ValuePRO Setup
Is it important that if you require any changes to the standard ValuePRO scanning job number extraction rules, that ValuePRO first receives a test scan from your MFC to support@valuepro.com.au with your job number sent. We then use this example email to make any necessary changes to the extraction routines for your firm. Please notify us in advance by phone when you intent to send your test email through.
3. Using Scan-to-ValuePRO
A user wishing to scan a document direct to a given job in ValuePRO will follow these steps:
- Collect documents and place only pages related to a current job into the MFC document feeder.
- Select the one-touch template called "Scan-To-ValuePRO" - or whatever you have named your template.
- Enter the job number using the numeric/alphanumeric keypad of your MFC. (You may have to press another button to signal to the MFC that you wish to alter the subject line)
- Press the Start button; wait for the pages to pass through the feeder.
- If you encounter a jam or problem, simply restart the process from the beginning. You may need to fan your pages to prevents further jams.
- If all pages have passed through the feeder, you can decide whether to send the paper to archive, recycle bin or return to your paper filing system.
It is recommended that you place a similar list of steps tailored to your organisation's procedure on a sheet of paper above each MFC device.