Doucemnt Management/Scanning software compatible with Sims

[Kyle]

I wonder if anyone could help me. I have been asked to look into Document Management software that must be compatible with Sims as well as other areas. We are looking at MStore and Swordfish as possibles so far but i was wondering if anyone could give advice or experience of using these vendors or any others software out there.

[soveryapt]

Hiya

 

I'm looking at this at the moment as well. MStore and Swordfish do seem to be nice products, I've had demos of both, the other I've looked at is a product called Therefore which is a Canon Product (Canon UK - Therefore).

 

They're all pretty much of a muchness to be honest with you. My thoughts thus far:

 

MStore:

Nice product, easy to understand interface, links well with SQL lookups and such, runs nicely, redaction is a doddle, as is the version control

 

Therefore:

Again, a nice product. I like the fact that the administration is done through it's own system in terms of the folder structure, lookups, workflows, and what not. Can use hot key control and screen scraping technology to work ith pretty much any product out there (including SIMS) to make sure you're filing under the same pupil as you want to from your access in SIMS. The interface has a very Microsoft feel to it in an attempt to make it less of a change for staff to get their heads around as well, very straight forward searching abilities.

 

Swordfish:

Another nice product, doesn't really do anything more than the other products, but at £2000/year for support (and that was a price for us as a relatively small school) it seems rather a lot to pay, but then you do get the fact that you know it will work with SIMS and will always work with SIMS, plus despite the fact it's a system in it's own right, it links directly with SIMS in the fact there is even a button to go to that record in SwordFish from any user profile page. It also ties in a lot more in the fact it takes over from the document storage for SIMS itself, so any documents you might have normally stored within SIMS (photos, letters, etc) are moved into Swordfish and then you get all the version control functionality.

 

In summary for me, I think if it wasn't for the £2000 support tag, Swordfish would be the better option to go for because it links in, but out of the other 2, Therefore seems to be more understandable and a bit more userfriendly. The only downside I can see from this is (certainly with Apogee who we are looking to supply Therefore if we go down that path) we would have to do the leg work to sort out what file structure we would like in the Doc Management system, where MStore and Swordfish have existing Educational Setups that you can then adapt to your needs, but it just gives you a starter for 10.

 

In terms of contacts, Swordfish I went direct to Capita, MStore the Arena Group and Therefore I went to the Apogee Corp Professional Services Team. I'll PM you their details so I don't go shoving them for all to see.

 

I hope that helps somewhat, to be honest, I've had demo after demo, so my heads a bit mashed with it at the moment, but I've tried to whittle out some sense to hopefully help you along the way.

[soveryapt]

Also, my thread on a similar topic to which a few people replied ..

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/123341-digitising-school-archives-new-records.html

[vikpaw]

Also worth checking out Cohesion who were / are Capita partners Cohesion Software

They have a few nice tools and the prices came down a lot, not looked at the other options, so can't compare really.

[localzuk]

We use Callisto Managed Scan here. Works well. Quite cheap too, compared to something like eCopy.