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UK's Allied Images recommends Finlands M-Files for affordable EDMS

Allied Images logo

The South African distributor of Colortrac SmartLF large format scanners recently asked us for a recommendation on a low cost viewing, indexing and filing system.

We asked Allied Images, the UK & Ireland distributor of Colortrac scanners, what it recommends. "M-Files" was the immediate answer. As a result of this enthusiasm for the M-File solution, we asked John Bennet, Allied Images' marketing manager, to submit an article about it.

This article expresses the opinions of Allied Images only and is not a specific product endorsement by the editors of Scanners4CAD.

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M-Files from Motive Systems
M-Files EDMS software

Allied Images is a large format scanning and printing solutions distributor providing a high level of quality products and services throughout the UK. It has clients in AEC, GIS, manufacturing, advertising, reprographics and document management, as well as numerous public agencies at all levels of local and central government.

Since 1989, Allied Images has grown to be a leading supplier of large format scanning and printing solutions in the UK and Ireland. A full range of utility software to support the range of scanners and printers is available, including M-Files – an electronic document management system (EDMS) - from Motive Systems of Tampere, Finland.

M-Files is a an innovative EDMS that solves the problems of managing, finding, and tracking documents in today's information-intensive organizations. Seamless integration with Windows Explorer makes M-Files easy to learn and use, and lets documents be opened and saved directly from all applications. A virtual disk drive serves as an easy and effective space from which to access all files, regardless of file type.

M-Files is very flexible allowing you to add customizable metadata, literally data about data, to your files to streamline your file management system. You can then browse the files by class, project, or any properties you choose. The ability to find documents quickly makes document management easy. You can instantly find documents by both its contents and metadata. And, the document repository's customized structure makes file management simple and efficient.

M-Files automatically preserves previous versions of your documents and records a change log with usernames, time-stamps, and comments. This audit trail can be viewed to see who made changes to a document and when they were made.

Scanning

M-Files is especially useful in scan-to-file operations where documents are scanned either for distribution around an organisation or for storage and archive. The documents are simply scanned into a folder that is monitored by M-Files – designated in M-Files as the “hot folder”.

Colortrac’s ScanWorks software allows documents to be scanned in batch mode where the filename is automatically incremented. In this way a large number of scans can be completed quickly and with ease. When the new files are added to the hot folder they are automatically imported to M-Files.

You then add the metadata that defines the document and its contents. A viewer lets you zoom into the document to read information from title blocks, letter headings and other areas. Certain metadata fields may be made compulsory and, to ensure data accuracy, dropdown lists may be used.

M-Files workflow feature allows notification to sent, via email, to a nominated M-Files user that new documents have been created and that some action needs to be taken.

You can retrieve documents by content or by metadata once they have been imported into M-Files. Views allow you to “drill down” through the metadata to quickly find a specific document. M-Files also tracks changes to documents recording an audit trail of information such as user, time-stamp and comments.

Videos

A video presentation of the process using ScanWorks and M-Files Enterprise to scan, import, add metadata & retrieve documents can be seen on Allied Images, UK distributor for M-Files, web site at M-Files Enterprise and SmartLF scanners in a scan-to-file environment.

M-Files Enterprise

M-Files Enterprise supports web access where a remote user can access the document vault via a web browser interface.

With M-Files Enterprise you do not need to have M-Files client software on the computer you are using. This is ideal for users who may be working remotely; either on a client site, remote office or even at home. You simply add the M-Files Web Access to the browser’s address field and then log in. Documents can be accessed in read-only mode or with full access to allow editing. Once the document is closed it is returned to the vault. You may also create new documents from this interface.

Free M-Files Express

M-Files Express is a free, reduced functionality, version of M-Files. The restrictions include; limiting the number of documents that the vault may contain, no support for hot-folders and no workflows. With M-Files Express, once documents have been scanned into a folder they can be imported, and notifications sent, manually.

A short video presentation of the process using ScanWorks and M-Files Express to scan, manually import, add metadata & retrieve documents can be seen on Allied Images, UK distributor for M-Files, web site at M-Files Express and SmartLF scanners in a scan-to-file environment

Cost

M-Files is sold on a per-seat basis with prices starting as low as £270 for a named user licence. Concurrent user licences, which can be accessed by any user on a network, start at £405. These prices reduce as more users are added.

For further information, please contact:

Allied Images
53 Tenter Road
Moulton Park
Northampton NN3 6AX
Tel: 01604 670679
Email: sales@allied-images.com
www.allied-images.com

Motive Systems Inc.
555 Republic Drive, Suite 200
Plano, TX 75074
USA
Tel: 1-972-516-4210
Email: motivesys@motivesys.com

Motive Systems Oy
Hatanpään valtatie 26
FI-33100 Tampere
Finland
Tel: +358 3 3138 7500
Email: motivesys@motivesys.com

Industry contributors wanting to supply similar articles should contact The Editor, Scanners4CAD.