iCapture® Suite

Designed for mission critical data capture applications in the data center, iCapture® is an automated data capture system that is designed for high-volume processing. It consists of a series of extensible and scalable modules that support the full range of capture functionality suitable for all government organizations. The scripting customization feature simplifies the extraction of handwritten, machine-printed, and bar-coded data through the use of high-speed scanners, imaging technology, and industry leading recognition software.

As depcited in the illustration above, our iCapture® architecture is configured as a collection of interchangeable service modules which we learned is essential in building modern data capture solutions for our large tax and labor customers. Our typical installation supports multiple high-volume data streams with scriptable rules for any number of exception queues. We support a variety of output formats including XML outputs and customized out put to any mainframe environment. This modularity provides one of the key features of the product in its ability to incrementally expand to add both functionality and scalable performance in response to changing requirements and increased business needs.

While it is important to efficiently redesign or streamline the data flow, it is equally important to leverage existing interfaces between disparate systems to achieve the savings for our customers early in the project. This extends to a well-proven plan for achieving the migration from current production to enhanced production with our system.  Our solution is entirely open, and having designed and coded every application within the iCapture suite, it is entirely extensible.

iCapture Product Features

System Features

• Supports seamless integration with Windows 2003 active directly security.
• Supports multiple environments on a single hardware platform, i.e. production, test, development and training
• Supports multiple workflow on any defined environment
• Supports  automated scheduling of all system services.
• Centralized system-wide startup and shutdown.
• Centralized system configuration.
• Centralized auditing.
• Centralized network event logging.

Form Definition Tool

• Comprehensive tool for complete batch and form definition
• Recognition engine independence.
• Built-in image processing properties: orientation, de-skew, and de-speckling
• Multiple versions of same form type.
• Batch balancing field definition
• Built-in double-key properties
• Built-in support of “Repeatable Groups”
• Automated “Cascading Field” definition
• Built-in support of bookmarks

Queue Management Features

• Designed for high-volume, lights-out, data center operation
• Real-time, event-driven client/server interaction with distributed services. No polling.
• Scalable and modular architecture
• Designed for high-reliability in mission critical applications
• Supports web based control, monitor, status, and configuration tool.
• Supports transactional lock management.
• Supports customizable transaction unit: a transaction can be a thousand-page batch or single-page document.
• Supports configurable automated batch split and collation service.
• Provides dynamic work-item routing.

Business Rules Processing

• Support easy-to-use, non-procedural assertion-based scripting. No binaries required.
• Supports complex data validation and verification
• Supports complex data substitution and data “scrubbing”
• Supports complex data formatting for export
• Supports re-use of common business rules
• Supports 4 levels of rules execution: field, page, document, and batch.
• Supports end-user scripting of rules with embedded SQL and custom plug-ins.

Export

• Scripted formatted output in any arbitrary format.
• Supports XML. PDF, TIFF, JPEG, CCITT G3/G4,and many more
• Supports unlimited number of Export adapters

Performance Monitoring and Reports

• Built-in performance and audit records collection.
• Batch audit report

 

iCapture Applications	Standard Application Description
iScan/iScanPlus	Document Scanner Application. Capable of doing both high-speed color scanning and exception scanning. Also capable of remote/offline scanning. Scanner operator may enter information pertaining to the batch (batch number, receipt date, number of pages, etc.) into the batch header input screen and the application would assign a unique Document Locator Number (DLN) on each scanned page that enters the workflow. Exception scanning (“rescan”) feature allows specific pages to be re-scanned without having to re-scan the entire batch
iEditor	User Keying Application. Consist of multiple modes: Context Editor (iFieldEdit): correct low confidence OCR-recognized data Key From Image (iKFIEdit): heads-up data entry from scanned images Key From Paper (iKFPEdit): heads down data entry from physical papers Manual ID (iExcManualID): manually identify pages not recognized by the system Exception/Research Editor (iExcEdit): advanced feature of Context Editor to further resolve issues with the documents (e.g. batch imbalance, missing account numbers, etc.) All modes of iEditor allow business/validation rules to be applied to each field, page, document or the entire batch.
iFormEdit	Form Definition Application. The application is used to associate various data capture attributes specific to a collection of forms associated with a batch. This includes such information as the form type, form identifier, field type, field geometry, character attributes, and other related information.
iQMonitor	The browser based workflow monitoring tool. Capable of assigning priorities to batches, managing workflow routes and transferring batches between workflow queues. Also capable of generating a JIT (Just In Time) Inventory and Batch Aging reports
iStatViewer	Browser based Performance Report Viewer. Capable of generating scanning productivity reports, keying productivity reports, batch audit trail, exception reports, suspect reports and OCR throughput and accuracy reports.

The following Table lists the standard Window Services (“backend components”) within the complete suite of iCapture™ software.

iCapture Applications	Standard Application Description
iScanXfer	Scan Image Transfer Service.  A backend service to transfer scanned batches to a designated location.  This feature supports the ability of the scan station to simultaneously scan while the images are transferred to the destination share.
iFormID	Form Identification Service.  A backend service to automatically identify each scanned page.
iTransBuilder	Transaction Build Service.  A backend service to parse the scanned batch to organize the contents of the batch based on the identification of the pages.
iImageProc	Image Processing Service.  A backend service to de-skew, de-speckle and remove static form artifacts (lines, boxes, logo, etc) to improve character recognition.
iOCR	ICR/OCR Service.  A backend service to extract the ASCII content of each field through the configured recognition engine for either handwritten or machine printed characters.
iSplit	Service to automatically monitor the size of the batches and split it into sub-batches of manageable size or arbitrary size (minimum size supported is a batch of a single document).  The corresponding iCollate in the end of the workflow can be configured to re-assemble the sub-batches in the original batch scanned/processed.
iPostProc	Rules-based Post Processing Service.  A backend service to validate and verify multiple field values against pre-defined business rules scripted using a 4GL assertion-based language (iSL).  Rules are defined hierarchically to provide for rules inheritance by multiple forms and form types.
iCollate	Corresponding counterpart to the iSplit service to re-assemble the sub-batches to the original split batch.
iExport	Data Export Service.  A backend service to format the captured forms information to upload both the data and images to legacy system and document management system.
iStatGen	Statistics Generation Service.  A backend service to parse, extract and calculate statistical performance information into the SQL database.  The granularity of the data collected is especially detailed to support user-customizable reports.
iPurge	Purge/Clean-up Service.  A backend service to deallocate system resources associated with the work item to be returned to the FREE queue.

If you would like to receive a more detailed description of the iCapture™ solution, or the Technical Data Sheets on any of the modules and applications that can be used in your customized solution, you may contact us at sales@impression-technology.com